30 activists were arrested last week. What made the Palestinian Authority change its tune?

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What happened between last Saturday and Sunday, when the Palestinian police arrested some 30 Palestinian political activists, and Wednesday, when it permitted 150-200 people, including most of the freed detainees, to demonstrate?

On Saturday, August 21, social and political activists were arrested in Ramallah’s Al-Manara Square before they could hold a protest demanding to put on trial those responsible for killing Palestinian activist Nizar Banat. Banat, a critic of the Palestinian government, was killed during his arrest on June 24.

As far as the activists know, 14 Palestinian Preventive Security men who took part in the arrest are imprisoned in Jericho Prison. But they are demanding that the senior officials also take responsibility for what happened.

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On Sunday, six others who were only standing in the same square were arrested. For the past few days the square was black with the uniforms of the Palestinian Security Forces, who ordered anyone who looked like a potential protester to keep their distance.

A few of those taken into custody – before they could hold the protest vigil they had planned – were released hours later. Others had been arrested when they protested against the arrests outside the Palestinian courthouse in El Bireh. One of them was detained again a day after his release.

Many of the detainees are known to the public as former prisoners in Israel and as people who have taken part in the popular struggle against the occupation in recent years. Eight of them are in their 60s. In a society accustomed to respect its elders, and whose official leadership consists of Palestine Liberation Organization and Fatah elders, it’s hard not to be shocked by their arbitrary arrests.

The above question, in other words, is what made unnamed senior officials in the Palestinian Authority behave so stupidly again? Why further lower the public image of the PA and Fatah by ordering the arbitrary arrests – in some cases involving violence – of people who had proved their perseverance and proud national stance when they had been imprisoned by Israel? If they had been permitted to demonstrate in peace, fewer people would have noticed that the protests were continuing.

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Some say this reflects the confusion within the PA. Others say it indicates that the senior officials are alienated from the people, and from reality. Still others see an automatic imitation of other Arab regimes under which Palestinian leaders spent a considerable part of their lives.

In the past week, the arrests seem to have become the talk of the town only in Ramallah and in its equivalent bubble on social media. But this is a superficial impression. Part of the detainees came to protest in Ramallah from cities and villages throughout the West Bank. The traditional social networks – that is, family and neighborhood contacts – spread the word of the arrests.

Two of the detainees – Khader Adnan and Maher al-Akhras – have become famous due to the prolonged hunger strikes they held in protest of their administrative detentions by Israel. Others have made a name for themselves in their professions: two scientists, an architect-anthropologist, a poet and author, a film director. They all have circles of friends and colleagues, acquaintances, readers and interlocutors far beyond the Palestinian borders.

For example, take physics professor Imad Barghouthi, who was arrested on Saturday and released the following day. About 5,000 academics signed a petition for his release when he had been an administrative detainee in Israel.

The poet and author Zakaria Mohammed was arrested on Sunday evening, when he stood in Manara square. Neither his white mane of hair nor his name deterred those who arrested him. But a protest that arose immediately, not just locally but also among Arab writers abroad, led to his release within a few hours.

Omar Assaf is less known outside Palestine, but his experience is impressive. As a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he was imprisoned in Israel before the PA was set up. After it was founded, he led the first important class struggle of Palestinian teachers at the end of the ’90s, demanding higher wages and freedom to unionize. During Yasser Arafat’s rule, he was imprisoned for more than a month. He is 70 years old and still active – for the right of return and for democracy.

Palestinians rally against the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, following the death of Nizar Banat, earlier this month.ABBAS MOMANI / AFP

One of Saturday’s detainees was Kawthar Sahwil, a principal of a school for girls in Sinjil. All her students were agitated by her arrest.

Some of the detainees were accused of these absurd charges: illegal gathering (before they had time to gather), slandering VIPs and fomenting denominational or interethnic conflict. The last charge was especially ridiculous. What denominations or ethnic communities? One protester asked rhetorically before his arrest on Sunday, as did the detainees’ families and friends.

Family members, friends and a few of the recently freed detainees stood outside the jail in northern El Bireh on Tuesday, waiting for the release of the other detainees, following a court order. “‘Denominations’ conflict may be in Lebanon, not here,” one of them said. But if you think of a “denomination” as a framework that zealously preserves its social-economic status, then you can certainly describe the ruling Fatah movement in this way.

From the entrance to the detention facility, one can clearly see the building housing the Palestinian Ministry for Prisoners Affairs. The ministry is in charge of current and past prisoners in Israel.

Traditionally, this ministry, like the Palestinian security branches, is one of Fatah’s many bastions. Its people, like their colleagues in the rest of Fatah’s strongholds, were remarkably silent in the recent days regarding the goings-on, although some of the detainees are their colleagues in various activities to resist the occupation.

During the protests Fatah had organized in support of the PA after Banat was killed by Preventative Security personnel, this movement’s leaders were already saying, “Fatah should not be provoked.”

The detainees freed this week hail from various political cultures. Some are identified with the left, mainly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front, others are independents who lean to the left. A few of the freed detainees are known as Islamic Jihad supporters, others are novices in political activity. Members of the new party which was supposed to run in the canceled election, which is called We’ve Had Enough, were also conspicuous. Only one detainee – Youssef Sharqawi – is a veteran Fatah man who returned from exile in Lebanon.

Upon their release, in interviews and on Facebook, the detainees immediately called on the public to participate in a demonstration that took place on Wednesday, initiated by five left-wing organizations. The demonstration passed without incident.

The released detainees said they were shocked by the imprisonment conditions and promised to act to improve them. They said 23 people had been placed in one cell instead of seven, with filthy toilets, a lack of beds, no precautions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, no medicine supply for sick inmates, who have to pay it themselves in any case, and in certain cases, violence against inmates. They didn’t have a lot to say about the food, because most of them were on a hunger strike.

On Wednesday a few of the protesters said that one of the answers to “What happened between Saturday and Wednesday” was “money.” That is, Palestinian Authority donor states warned they’d suspend the financial assistance they regularly provide unless the detainees were freed and the right of freedom of expression wasn’t halted.

This is a speculation, perhaps a wish of the demonstrators. Because after all, the suppression of freedoms and random arrests are nothing new. The authority’s mission – to preserve the stability of the relations with Israel – is more important to the donors than its internal conduct. However, the European Union, Switzerland, Norway and Britain have indeed issued a joint statement expressing their “concern” over the detentions.