Daily Times

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has lambasted the Palestinian leadership for crushing dissent. The global rights watchdog this week released its 149-page report — ‘Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent’: Arbitrary Arrest and Torture Under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas– which is the result of two years’ of fact-finding and extensive interviews with some 147 witnesses.

The investigation details how the Fateh-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip routinely arrest and torture those peacefully critiquing party and state policies; as well as each other’s opponents. Thus painting a grim picture of internal power-plays whereby ordinary citizens become disposable collateral damage. Indeed, this has reignited calls for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the Palestinians for possible crimes against humanity; as President Mahmoud Abbas seeks to take Israel to The Hague for the same.

Such brutality is unacceptable. Indeed, the Palestinian leadership must rethink its outright rejection of the claims; while resisting the temptation to frame these as part of a broader conspiracy to undermine the case for statehood. For these are two distinct issues. What is required now is for those implicated in atrocities to be probed and brought to account. Failure on this front will simply lend weight to voices that continue to denounce the Palestinians as being unfit for self-rule.

But, more importantly, inaction will serve as a betrayal of the people who have endured a military occupation by a foreign power for the last 70 years. And who face a second oppressor. For as the executive director of the Palestinian human rights organisation al-Haq rightly emphasises: “The fact that Israel systematically violates Palestinians’ most basic rights is no reason to remain silent in the face of the systematic repression of dissent and the torture Palestinian security forces are perpetrating.”

Then there is the subject of what exactly constitutes anti-state rhetoric. This is a question that has been spotlighted in the aftermath of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. No one is arguing that freedom of speech comes not without responsibility — such as avoiding incitement to violence of any kind. But this does not warrant the torture of journalists going about their work. Or, indeed, activists peacefully protesting electricity shortages. Sadly, this is now emerging as a global phenomenon: whereby non-militarised states either under the guise of parliamentary democracy or else constitutional monarchy strangle independence of thought with an iron fist. This is despotism by every name.

In the Palestinian context, local journalist Taghreed Abu Teer sums it up best when he says: “[I]t is very painful that we have a regime before ever having a state.”  *

Published in Daily Times, October 25^th 2018.