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U.S. Funds Abuse of Palestinian Human Rights

[Hudson Institute-New York] Khaled Abu Toameh - The leaders of the Palestinian Authority do not want the international community to hear anything about massive abuse of human rights and intimidation of journalists that its security forces are practicing almost on a daily basis in the West Bank. They want the U.S. and the rest of the world to continue believing that peace will prevail tomorrow morning only if Israel stops construction in the settlements. Investing billions of dollars in training thousands of policemen and establishing new security forces and prisons will not advance the cause of peace and coexistence. Recently, a Palestinian TV crew working for Al-Jazeera was stopped at a checkpoint in the West Bank, where soldiers confiscated a tape and erased its content. This incident hardly received any coverage in the mainstream media in the U.S. and Europe. The reason? The perpetrators were not IDF soldiers, but PA security officers at a Palestinian checkpoint. Walid Omari, the head of Al-Jazeera's operations in the West Bank, told Reporters Without Borders that his crew was preparing a report on the death of a detainee at the PA detention center in Hebron that might have been the result of torture. More than 700 Palestinians are being held without trial in West Bank prisons run by security forces loyal to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas. These security forces are referred to by many Palestinians as the "Dayton Forces," a reference to U.S. security coordinator Gen. Keith Dayton.
2009-07-01 06:00:00
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