PA forces’ violent crackdown compounds Israeli aggression against Palestinians

The Palestinian Authority (PA)’s forces have embarked on a significantly violent crackdown on their compatriots amid continued Israeli aggression targeting the Palestinians.

The forces launched the simultaneous suppression and arrest campaign across the Israeli-occupied West Bank several days ago, various Palestinian media outlets reported. The violence has been targeting the city of Ramallah, where the PA is headquartered, and the southern West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron) as well as other places throughout the territory.

The PA troops ramped up the violence on Monday by seizing more than a dozen activists and others, among them many females, who were protesting recent killing of 43-year-old activist Nizar Banat in PA custody last month.

Protests have been raging on across the West Bank over the hugely suspicious death of the outspoken critic of the Authority since last week. Banat was arrested during a raid on his home in al-Khalil.

The swoop targeting Banat, who has been responsible for some alleged damning revelations concerning the PA, reportedly featured significant violence and came without any arrest warrant. He was pronounced dead soon after the arrest, with the forces claiming that he had died of a heart attack on the way to the hospital.

Some sources said the crackdown that has been targeting Palestinian activists over the past days, has been ordered to stop the demonstrations from rising in scale.

However, reports said that the violence had failed to quell the protests, while some of the arrested activists had gone on hunger strike to force the PA to be accountable for Banat’s death.

Separately, Israeli forces attacked Palestinian protesters in the Silwan neighborhood of the holy occupied city of al-Quds.

Reports said the troops fired teargas canisters and rubber-coated bullets to disperse the protesters.

They forced a Palestinian family, named as Abu Ghannam, to demolish their Silwan home with their own hands on the orders of the Israeli municipality. The family was cited as saying that they had been left with no choice other than to give in to the outrageous demand.

On Tuesday, Israeli settlers were also reported to have attacked and razed down a school under construction in northeastern al-Quds. The settlers, who regularly act on their own initiative to target Palestinians, separately attacked Prophet Joseph's Tomb in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Al-Quds has come under a notable rise in the Israeli violence since May, when the regime issued eviction orders to the Palestinian residents of the city’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

The move triggered sweeping protests throughout the occupied Palestinian territories and beyond, and opened the floodgates of international condemnation against Tel Aviv’s actions.

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