Islamist students vow to fight PA crackdown in West Bank
New campaign calls on Hamas-affiliated students to resist ‘political’ investigation summonses
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleElhanan Miller is the former Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
A group of Hamas-affiliated students living in the West Bank has launched a campaign calling for civil disobedience against harassment by Palestinian Authority security forces.
Titled “It Makes No Difference To Me,” and organized by the Union of Islamic Students in the West Bank, the campaign aims to fight what members say is a PA crackdown on Hamas activists across the West Bank, including repeated summonses for investigations in PA security headquarters.
Hamas has defined the harassment and political arrest of its West Bank operatives as a key issue in its ongoing reconciliation talks with rival movement Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority.
The effort is a follow-up to a campaign launched two years ago, dubbed “I’m Not Going,” Palestinian news agency Safa reported. On Monday, the campaign received the endorsement of the Islamist student bloc, which advised its activists not to turn up to summonses for investigations issued by the PA.
In a statement sent to Hamas news website Al-Resalah, the Islamic bloc said it ascribed high importance to “removing the security threat from the [Islamic] groups.”
According to data released by the Committee of Family Members of Political Prisoners in the West Bank, a grassroots organization associated with Hamas, 118 Hamas activists and supporters were arrested or interrogated by the PA from June 1 to June 13.
“Since the signing of the reconciliation agreement, we hear voices talking about implementing the reconciliation agreement… but nothing makes us optimistic about a quick end to political arrests,” Abu-Muhammad, who spent months in a PA prison, told Safa News Agency.
“We must be explicit and say ‘enough’ to the travesty of so-called political arrests,” he added.
The apparent harassment was not one-sided, however. On Monday, a Fatah spokesman announced that Hamas’s security apparatus summoned a Fatah member in Khan Younis, Muhammad Arbi’, for investigation, for the second time this month.
June 14 marked the sixth anniversary of Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip.
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The Times of Israel Community.