International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, 26 Aug 2010

Palestinian Authority security forces, trained and equipped by the US, moved aggressively on Wednesday to crush opposition by Palestinian protesters opposed to the resumption of direct talks with Israel scheduled to start Sep. 2 in Washington. The protesters, led by a group called the National Conference Against Direct Talks, had gathered in a building in Ramallah for a press conference but before it got started the PA Police officers turned off the lights in the building, then stormed it, beating some protesters and confiscating the camera’s of two reporters for the local Al-Watan TV network.

The heavy handed approach is unlikely to quell a growing anger among many Palestinians at what they see as a betrayal of the PA government. Many protesters complained that the PA "succumbed" to pressure from the US and abandoned its principles by agreeing to the talks without any preconditions, as has long been demanded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Protest leaders vowed to continue organizing new press conferences despite Wednesday’s events while a police spokesman said they did not have the proper permits to carry out a demonstration and his men had merely been enforcing the law.

In related news, Palestinian youths threw stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli security forces in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan on Thursday morning, later attacking fire fighters who arrived to put out the fires from their initial onslaught. Four vehicles as well as nearby trees and garbage bins were damaged. Witnesses said the youths were reacting to an attempted break in of a local mosque by Jewish residents of the area.

Elsewhere, the Hamas terror militia which rules the Gaza Strip continues to insist that the PA has no right to speak for the Palestinian people since its mandate to govern expired in January and there have not been fresh elections since and even if there had been, more than 40% of Palestinians live in Gaza, which is under Hamas’ rule and not that of the PA. Hamas will not have a representative at the negotiations and has never abandoned its avowed goal of dismantling the Jewish State and establishing an Islamic state over all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

"If the talks succeed they will succeed to Israeli standards and liquidate the Palestinian cause," Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said during a speech on Tuesday. "Our project is resistance."

"If we reached a peace agreement tomorrow, we wouldn't be able to implement it without ending this split," PA President Mahmoud Abbas recently admitted.

"Were Fateh to make the kinds of concessions that might make a peace agreement possible, Hamas would not only oppose them but would have the means of scuttling anything that involved Gaza," commented STRATFOR analyst George Friedman.

Finally, security forces in Morocco recently rolled up an 11 man terror squad headed by a former gunman for the Islamic Jihad group in the Gaza Strip. According to a recent report compiled by the Intelligence and Terror Information Center (ITIC) the arrests are just the latest indication of the growing trend of Gaza serving as a regional "exporter" of terror and social instability. There are also reports that Hamas is growing increasingly estranged from other armed factions who complain that it is getting soft.

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