BICOM

What Happened: Reports suggest around 300 Palestinians with alleged Hamas affiliation were arrested in the West Bank this week .

• The arrests have been interpreted both as a sign of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) insecurity over its weakening authority in the West Bank and as an effort to persuade the US and international community that it still remains in control.
• Senior Hamas official Hussam Badran called the arrests a “stab in the back of the Palestinian national unity.”
• While according to Lior Ackerman, senior fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy, Reichman University, “The PA of the end of 2022 is an entity without governance, very weak and lacking any vision or leadership strategy.”
• According to the Palestinian Lawyers for Justice group, PA security forces have arrested or summoned for interrogation more than 500 Palestinian activists since the beginning of the year.
• Also this week, Relatives of the Palestinian activist Nizar Banat announced that they are to file a case against Mahmoud Abbas’s PA at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over his death.
• Banat, a long-time critic of the PA and Abbas, died following his arrest by Palestinian forces in June 2021. An autopsy showed he had suffered extensive beating.
• Fourteen members of the PA security services were arrested over the incident, before being released on bail earlier this year.
• The family’s case – which the ICC is not obliged to agree to hear – accuses seven PA figures of responsibility for Banat’s death.
• It represents the first time the court has been presented with a case filed by Palestinians against Palestinians.

In Gaza: Hamas marked its 35^th anniversary celebrations. Addressing the crowd remotely, Hamas’ military commander Mohammed al-Deif criticised the PA’s policy of security cooperation with Israel and called instead for support for the Lions’ Den group in Nablus, the Balata Brigades, and militia in Jenin with which Israel has been engaged in regular operations.

• Yehiyeh Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza  said, “We have to give the chance to ignite the resistance in the West Bank.”
• At the same event, Hamas displayed what it claimed was the assault rifle of Hadar Goldin, the Givati Brigade soldier killed in Gaza, along with his colleague Oron Shaul, during Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
• Hamas retains both soldiers’ bodies and is also believed to be holding captive two Israelis: Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, both missing since crossing the border into Gaza in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
• Sinwar also used his remarks to warn Israel that the window was rapidly closing for it to negotiate the return of Goldin and Shaul’s bodies.
• In parallel the IDF this week also disclosed evidence of three rocket sites close to schools in Gaza City. According to their intelligence, staff at the Mo’ath Bin Jabal, the Khalil Al Nobani Secondary Female, and the Al-Furqan Public Schools were working in collaboration with Hamas.
• An IDF statement said that the revelation provided further proof that Hamas ” uses the residents of the Gaza Strip, and in these cases innocent children, as human protectors.”

Context: The week’s events show remaining hostility between Fatah and Hamas.

• The events call into question the October reconciliation agreement, signed in Algeria by both Hamas and Fatah, designed to lessen conflict between the PA and Hamas.
• Some Palestinian analysts speculated that Abbas had deliberately sought to sabotage the reconciliation talks.
• Whilst the last few months have seen an increase in Israeli operations in the West Bank, relative quiet has prevailed on the Gazan front. However, in early December the IDF hit Hamas sites in Gaza in response to a single rocket fire directed at Southern Israel.
• Although the rockets were thought to have been fired not by Hamas but by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Israel followed its policy of holding Hamas responsible for all terror emanating from Gaza.
• Latest polling from the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) showed declining support for Abbas, with his decree forming a high council for the judiciary under his own control proving particularly unpopular.
• Palestinian satisfaction (both West Bank and Gaza) with Abbas’s leadership was at 23%.
• Other headline numbers from the poll showed substantial support for armed factions rival to the PA – 72% were in favour of independent groups like Lion’s Den.

Looking ahead: The further erosion of PA control, together with increasing local popularity and Iranian support could see West Bank militias continue operations against Israelis, leading in turn to further Israeli raids in the West Bank under “Operation Breakwater”.

• With Palestinian elections remaining a distant prospect, and with no clear succession plan for the 87-year-old Abbas, political disunity amongst the Palestinians is likely to continue.
• Hamas deputy chief Khalil al-Hayya recently suggested that Algeria was set to host another series of reconciliation talks at the end of December.
• Hamas’s failure to return the bodies of Goldin and Shaul make it unlikely that Israel will relax the opening of Gaza to humanitarian supplies and other material.