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Human Rights Watch Report Demonstrates Palestinian Leadership's Weakness, Inability to Lead

(Al Jazeera) Yara Hawari - On Oct. 23, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published an extensive 149-page report on the abuses and crushing of dissent by both Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The interviews collated by HRW detail some horrific cases of torture. The arbitrary arrests and interrogations of students, activists, journalists and political opposition is characteristic of many despotic regimes in the region. While the report does not reveal anything new - indeed various Palestinian NGOs have long documented this kind of repression - it elevates these extensive and troubling details to an international platform. The intense development of the security sector in the years following Oslo resulted in security personnel being elevated to politically powerful positions. The merging of the political and security elites created the perfect environment for a police state. The abuse of power documented in the new HRW report demonstrates the weakness of the Palestinian leadership and its inability to lead their people. The time has come for us to think about what kind of leadership we actually want after Abbas, rather than who comes next. The writer is the Palestine Policy Fellow of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.
2018-10-31 00:00:00
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