A Palestinian civil rights group on Sunday said Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's administration is ignoring a rising tide of lawlessness, including illegal arrests and torture carried out by its own security forces.
Presenting its report for last year at a news conference in Ramallah, the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens' Rights (PICCR) said Arafat's Palestinian Authority appeared to be losing its grip on security in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"It is clear that within the Palestinian Authority there is a shortage in decision making," PICCR chairman Mamdouh Aker told reporters. "They are disabled and incapable of enforcing law and order."
Commission director Said Zaydani said that while there were 48 domestic murders in the Palestinian areas last year, police had not only failed to arrest any suspects but had not launched serious investigations.
Palestinians put some of the blame on Israel. During the first part of the current conflict, Israeli forces destroyed numerous Palestinian police installations, charging that the forces were involved in terrorism. Now the police say they are short of facilities.
Aker said the police also turned a blind eye to car theft and failure to license and insure vehicles, while court orders often went unenforced, leading to a danger that vigilante groups would arise to take the law into their own hands.
"When killings and other violations of law take place, and the Palestinian Authority doesn't take serious measures to confront them, the people will not trust the law," he said.
For some time Palestinian analysts and Israeli intelligence officials have warned of a growing wave of anarchy in the West Bank and Gaza, with the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority losing ground to armed militia groups in several areas, while authorities are unwilling to confront them directly for fear of sparking civil war.
"The phenomenon of people taking the law into their own hands is not new in the Palestinian Authority, but it is lately on the rise," Zaydani said.
‘EYE FOR AN EYE’: Two of the men were shot by a male relative of the victims, whose families turned down the opportunity to offer them amnesty, the Supreme Court said Four men were yesterday publicly executed in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court said, the highest number of executions to be carried out in one day since the Taliban’s return to power. The executions in three separate provinces brought to 10 the number of men publicly put to death since 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out publicly in sports stadiums. Two men were shot around six or seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the center
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
The US will help bolster the Philippines’ arsenal and step up joint military exercises, Manila’s defense chief said, as tensions between Washington and China escalate. The longtime US ally is expecting a sustained US$500 million in annual defense funding from Washington through 2029 to boost its military capabilities and deter China’s “aggression” in the region, Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview in Manila on Thursday. “It is a no-brainer for anybody, because of the aggressive behavior of China,” Teodoro said on close military ties with the US under President Donald Trump. “The efforts for deterrence, for joint resilience
RSS