Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas holds a picture of an Israeli soldier pushing Palestinian Cabinet minister Ziad Abu Ein, Ramallah, Dec. 10, 2014.
Palestinian Authority Minister Ziad Abu Ein’s death on Dec. 10 in a violent altercation with Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, unleashed the usual discrepancies between what actually happened and Israeli propaganda toward downplaying or rationalizing excessive violence with fatal consequences.
While an emphasis on the PA’s fluctuations regarding security cooperation with Israel has resurfaced in the media, Israeli news outlets such as the Jerusalem Post availed themselves of the opportunity to propagate biographical information pertaining to Abu Ein which is lacking in context — information which is also related to U.S. participation in violating the human rights of Palestinians.
Without substantive background information, the Jerusalem Post describes Abu Ein as “the first Palestinian ever to be extradited from the US to Israel,” referring to his 1981 extradition over allegations that he had a role in a 1979 bombing in the city center of Tiberias, Israel.
A 1981 report by the Christian Science Monitor sheds more light upon the events surrounding the then-20-year-old Abu Ein:
“Abu Ein claims that the two Palestinians who signed confessions incriminating him while held in Israeli prisons in connection with the same incident have since retracted their statements. He also claims to have 14 witnesses who can verify that he was miles away at the time of the bombing.”
Abu Ein’s fate lay in the hands of the U.S. State Department. The U.S. agency sought to hand Abu Ein over to Israel, despite the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Israel stating that individuals wanted for crimes of a political nature are exempt from extradition. A federal court decision that the case pertained to the “indiscriminate bombing of civilians” made his extradition possible, as it asserted that the allegations amounted to a “common crime” of murder, punishable under U.S. and Israeli law.
Abu Ein was ultimately extradited and sentenced to life imprisonment in Israel in 1981. He was released as part of a prisoner exchange deal in 1983, later re-arrested by Israel, and released again in 1985 during another prisoner swap known as the Jibril Agreement. Abu Ein was also subjected to the Israeli practice of administrative detention a few months following his second release and again during the Second Intifada in 2002.
Diverging conclusions
The autopsy results released by Israeli and Palestinian pathologists showed different conclusions. Both Israeli and Palestinian pathologists agree that Abu Ein’s cause of death was a hemorrhage in the coronary artery. But while the Israeli autopsy team claims that Abu Ein’s death stemmed from a preexisting heart condition which left him “more sensitive to stress,” Palestinian forensic expert Saber al-Aloul stated, “The death is considered to have originated from injury and not natural causes.” Al-Aloul further asserted that bruising around Abu Ein’s neck indicated the use of force, and some of Abu Ein’s front teeth were missing.
The official Israeli reaction to Abu Ein’s death has been one of public shows of regret, followed by the familiar impunity that safeguards Israeli soldiers from accountability. The Israel Defense Forces’ Central Command found no evidence of violence that led to the death of Abu Ein. As reported in the Times of Israel, a preliminary internal investigation determined that “all soldiers on the scene – including one who was recorded grabbing Abu Ein by his neck and yelling at him – acted in accordance with army regulations.”
In the wake of Abu Ein’s death, Saeb Erekat, a top aide to PA President Mahmoud Abbas and the chief negotiator in the peace talks with Israel, declared that the PA would issue an official statement regarding the termination of security cooperation with Israel.
The termination, Erekat said, was necessary because, “We see Israel as having complete responsibility for the murder of Ziad Abu Ein.”
Erekat also declared that the PA would seek recognition of a Palestinian state from the United Nations Security Council and apply to join the International Criminal Court.
In the following weeks, the PA did indeed seek statehood recognition from the U.N. Security Council. The draft resolution on statehood recognition failed to tackle the realities of colonization, and it was drafted by countries with historic ties to powers like the U.S., which is also a strong supporter of Israel. Even though it eliminated the Palestinian right of return — a term the pro-Israel camp is staunchly opposed to — the Security Council still vetoed the motion.
Meanwhile, the PA also signed the Rome Statute, which allows Palestine international legal recourse at the ICC. Signing the Rome Statute — the first step toward utilizing the ICC to bring Israel before the court for war crimes — will also be replete with difficulties in the course of seeking justice. Most cases at the ICC center on leaders of African nations — a reflection of the system that justifies historical exploitation and colonial violence, hence the impunity that protects imperialist powers from prosecution after they instigate conflicts. With the backing of a superpower like the U.S., Israel will undoubtedly be protected from prosecution by the same system that decides the applicability of international law.
Security cooperation
However, the issue of security cooperation — particularly the initial declarations on halting the security cooperation agreement and the subsequent reneging — is evidence of the dependency upon Israel and the U.S. that characterizes the PA and the decisions it makes. At the request of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the PA decided to retract its initial statement of ending security cooperation with Israel. According to Mondoweiss, PLO Central Committee member Nabil Shaath said terminating security cooperation would be unlikely – a “re-defining” of the agreement would be more plausible.
Security cooperation has made the PA becoming an accomplice to various crimes, including aiding Israeli Occupation Forces who stormed West Bank villages last summer under the pretext of finding the Palestinians allegedly involved in the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenage settlers. Operation Brother’s Keeper, the prelude to last summer’s Operation Protective Edge, resulted in the detention of 422 Palestinians, including prisoners released during the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. Among those re-arrested was Samer Issawi, whose hunger strike that led to his release became a national and international protest symbol.
More generally, Israel and the PA have both deemed security cooperation necessary to quell “Hamas terror,” a euphemism often used to deconstruct Palestinian resistance, maintain the prevailing narrative of security concerns, and emphasize the importance of security cooperation.
Yet, as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) consistently points out, security cooperation with Israel is ingrained at a diplomatic level. Its continued existence safeguards both Abbas’ political position as well as the legitimacy of the PA, which was established under the guise of state-building during the Oslo Accords.
As PFLP member Khaled Barakat stated in a series of lectures held in Lebanon: “The Palestinian Authority is a corrupt institution, and it is administrating corruption. Security cooperation with the occupier is treason.”