Palestinian Authority loyalists blame “foreign agendas” and “Mossad” for Ramallah protests

Palestinian Police block protesters from reaching the Palestinian presidential headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, during a protest in the town, on 1 July 2012

Issam Rimawi APA images

Have you heard the latest news? Foreign agents, supported by the Israelis and international intelligence agents, are working to destabilize the Palestinian Authority’s rule over Ramallah! It is Egypt all over again! Foreign agendas, foreign agendas, foreign agendas.

According to Adnan Al-Damiri, the spokesperson of the Palestinian Authority’s police force, violent individuals attacked the police and caused chaos. He was referring to the Palestinian Authority’s violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators in Ramallah on Sunday.

Al-Damiri continued that the police didn’t use any riot dispersal method, the police didn’t use any plainclothes security personnel. The dozens of police personnel and special intervention squads equiped with sheilds and battons didn’t exist, according to the police spokesperson’s statement.

Speaking on the matter during a TV interview, Ahmad Assaf, an official spokesperson of Fatah, the political faction that dominates the Palestinian Authority, denied the involvement of any plainclothes security personnel in crushing the protests in Ramallah.

Yes, because over a dozen plainclothed individuals carrying steel battons and guns, who also attacked and arrested protestors, simply didn’t exist. Assaf also added that the protestors are following “foreign agendas” aimed at harming the Palestinian Authority.

To make it worse; Bassam Zakarneh, the Palestinian Authority’s workers union president published a long statement attacking the protestors without making a shred of sense. Here is a small part of what is mentioned in the report from Ma’an News Agency:

Zakarneh said that some of the civil society groups are nests of the Mossad and global intelligence whose goal is destroying the Palestinian society and dismantling it.

Zakarneh said in a statement that Israeli officials are in direct contact with these groups and led directly through some of its officials or indirectly through the global intelligence services so that the 80% of these institutions lead a role to contribute in creating internal divisions and cause the theft of the Palestinian people’s money.

This might be funny, I might laugh a bit, but deep inside me it hurts me so much to read this stuff. Even making it worse is that many people believe the anti-protestors propaganda, especially in comments I’ve read on facebook where people accuse the protestors of being anti-Fatah and aimed at destroying the Palestinian society.

I’d like to end this blog with a quote I’ve read posted on the facebook profile of the news editor at Al-Hayat newspaper, Saleh Masharqa. It reads:

Indeed, it was a painful evening in Ramallah.

The youth and girls who have been attacked insulted, they were the conscience of the March 15 End the Palestinian Division movement. They upheld the responsibility of organizing actions and acted to support the prisoners. They have planted roses before everyone on the tombs of the martyrs of Savoy. They are working to raise the political ceiling for the Palestinian Authority to refuse to receive [Shaul] Mofaz. They are the life of demonstrations and national events in villages, at roadblocks and next to the apartheid wall. They are the people we see during clashes at Ofer to commemorate the Nakba and the Naksa. They are the ones who demonstrate in solidarity with those killed in the camps of Lebanon and Syria.

At a time all official parties and representitives disapear from the political arena, they are the ones who act. You are the bravest and most noble of us you honest patriots, Your small conscience is our memory and stories, your voices are not to be silenced.

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Jalal Abukhater

Jalal Abukhater's picture

Jalal Abukhater is a Jerusalemite, he is a graduate MA(hons) International Relations and Politics from the University of Dundee, Scotland.