Beirut, Lebanon – The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) ban on Al Jazeera is part of a broader attempt to silence criticism of its security operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, according to activists and analysts.
The ban came nearly a month after the PA launched a crackdown on a coalition of armed groups calling themselves the Jenin Brigades.
The groups are linked to Palestinian factions such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and even Fatah, the party that controls the PA.
Since early December, the Palestinian Authority has laid siege to Jenin camp, cutting off water and electricity to most residents, in an alleged attempt to restore “law and order” across the West Bank.
However, their indiscriminate tactics in Jenin coincide with a broader attack on free expression, activists and human rights groups told Al Jazeera.
Suppression and censorship
Activists and human rights groups said dozens of people were summoned and interrogated – some beaten – over social media posts opposing the PA’s operation in Jenin, although prominent Palestinian figures were still able to post critical posts about it to write the security operation.
Most of those detained were released, but some were forced to upload apology videos, according to rights groups.
Sanad, Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency, reviewed and verified three apology videos circulating online.
“There is tension over the PA’s operation and people don’t feel safe to talk about or share with us what happened to them when they were arrested,” Murad Jadallah, an activist with Al-Haq, said Palestinian human rights group in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority emerged from the Oslo Accords between Palestinian and Israeli leaders in 1993. It stipulated that the Palestinian Authority should recognize Israel and eliminate Palestinian armed groups in return for a Palestinian state alongside Israel by 1999.
However, Israel has used the last 30 years to expand illegal settlements on large swaths of stolen Palestinian land, nearly tripling the number of settlers in the occupied West Bank.
As an occupying power, it still controls most aspects of Palestinian life and frequently carries out raids, killings and arrests in the West Bank, even in areas where the Palestinian Authority is said to be in full control.
Although hopes for statehood are fading, the Palestinian Authority is sticking to its mandate under the Oslo Accords, leading to accusations from many Palestinians that the government is effectively cooperating with Israel to maintain the occupation.
Over the years, the Palestinian Authority has also increased repression of Palestinian opponents and dissidents. In 2021, the Palestinian Authority arrested critic and activist Nizar Banat, who died in custody.
According to Amnesty International, the Palestinian Authority failed to adequately investigate his death.
Recently, on December 28, a sniper shot and killed Shatha al-Sabbagh, a journalist who had spoken to residents of the camp about the security operation.
Her family blamed the Palestinian Authority forces, but the Palestinian Authority denied responsibility and blamed her death on “outlaws.”
Four days later, the PA banned Al Jazeera – believed to be the most popular media network in the occupied West Bank.
“If this decision is enforced, it means that Al Jazeera … will not be able to monitor what it monitors and documents today,” said Munir Nuseibah, a political analyst at the Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka.
“This will have implications for the Palestinian cause as a whole. Al Jazeera… reports to the world about Palestine,” he told Al Jazeera.
“The way the Palestinian Authority is currently handling the situation is that there is only one truth and that the truth is their narrative,” Al-Haq’s Jadallah said.
disinformation
Some Palestinian Authority officials have alleged that armed groups in Jenin camp are part of a broader Iranian-backed conspiracy or “extremist outlaws” aimed at undermining Palestinians’ quest for statehood.
According to Ahmed Mohamed*, an activist who monitors digital freedoms in the Palestinian territory, the Palestinian Authority’s rhetoric aims to link the Jenin Brigades to a foreign conspiracy in order to discredit them as legitimate resistance to the Israeli occupation .
“This is a refresh of Israeli propaganda … which claims that the Palestinians are not acting of their own will but at the direction of Iran and that Iran is the great bogeyman,” Mohamed said.
“It is a merit that Iran supports resistance activities in Palestine and repressive regimes elsewhere, but the PA is trying to claim that they are the ones who have the Palestinians in mind and pursue pro-Palestinian policies,” he added.
Iran has traditionally provided financial and military aid to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) – two of the factions that make up the Jenin Brigades – as part of its broader policy of promoting Israeli and US hegemony in the region to challenge.
However, according to a report by the European Council on Foreign Relations, a UK-based think tank, Hamas and PIJ are not puppets and remain rooted in their desire to resist Israeli occupation.
Meanwhile, the United States and Europe are the Palestinian Authority’s main donors, whose positions are often at odds with broader Palestinian aspirations and views.
Social media platforms close to the PA shared a video showing four men wearing white trousers, white tunics and ill-fitting white hoods over their heads. The men also appeared to be wearing explosive devices on their torsos and claimed they would blow themselves up if PA security forces entered the Jenin camp.
Some of these PA-affiliated sites claim the men belonged to an “extremist” battalion called 313, which is also the name of a unit fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Sanad said the video was never uploaded to social media sites linked to the Jenin Brigades and “appears to have been created to mislead the public.”
“There is no battalion with the official name of Battalion 313 (in Jenin),” Sanad noted.
Coercion and intimidation
The head of a leading West Bank human rights group, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, said the Palestinian Authority had also forced officials to take part in demonstrations in support of the Jenin operation.
“(Officers) risk being punished if they are deemed absent (at these pro-PA protests),” the source told Al Jazeera.
“You could face administrative penalties or a call from PA security forces.”
Al Jazeera obtained a copy of an official government letter that appears to confirm the claim.
The letter was addressed to the mayor of Masafer Yatta in Hebron and demanded that certain employees not be punished if they failed to show up at a demonstration on behalf of the Palestinian Authority on December 24.
Therefore, the letter states that employees would typically be penalized if they missed a pro-PA demonstration.
Al-Haq’s Jadallah added that PA security forces often confiscated the phones of those they interrogated and replaced their critical social media with posts glorifying the PA and its activities in Jenin.
Palestinian security forces warned detainees not to delete the new posts after their release, he said.
The head of the human rights organization also argued that the Palestinian Authority is exploiting cybercrime laws – and anti-incitement laws – to justify suppressing free expression.
In 2017, the Palestinian Authority adopted a cybercrime law by decree that allowed authorities to arrest people for “inciting hatred” on social media and for “disturbing public order.”
Critics of the cyber law argued that the laws, which are broadly worded, could be abused by the PA to increase cyber surveillance and suppress dissent – a long-standing practice of the Israeli occupation.
“The laws are being used to suppress any criticism of the Jenin operation and particularly harsh criticism,” the source said.
“If someone shows open support for the Jenin Brigades… then they risk being drafted.”
