But in Israel, the force is seen as an expedient for countering Hamas and other militant groups – a vehicle to enable the Palestinian Authority to fight terror within its own cities so that Israel doesn’t have to. (full article…)

One element of the blackmail, which reportedly has been exercised by the Israelis on the Palestinian Authority in order to persuade them not to go forward with consideration of the Goldstone report in Geneva, was a denial of the granting of a license to a second Palestinian cell phone company in the Occupied Territories. (full article…)

In Gaza, posters appeared on walls on Wednesday calling Mr. Abbas a traitor and saying he should be consigned to “the trash heap of history.” Gaza is controlled by Hamas, the militant Islamic group that is the Palestinian Authority’s main rival. (full article…)

…then they would mention that resentment of the Mahmoud Abbas and the Zionist Collaboration Regime is not confined to Hamas, but most sectors of Palestinian society. Reading this in the Times, you would imagine the poster is simply political posturing by Hamas (which certainly exists), but faced with a regime that runs the Israeli occupation by proxy and crumbles to US/Zionist demands almost without exception, Palestinians of all stripes oppose this clown. Imagine that Richard Goldstone cares more about pursuing justice in Gaza than the lousy regime in Ramallah!

A member of President Mahmoud Abbas’ inner circle says the Palestinian leadership made a mistake by suspending action on a Gaza war crimes report . (full article…)

This entire episode makes we wonder if the U.S. is opening a way for Mohammed Dahlan to push Abbas aside.

The decision by the United Nations Human Rights Council to delay the vote on the findings of its report into the Gaza conflict – in line with a request by the Palestinian Authority – has shocked the Palestinian public.

Palestinian sources told Haaretz that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made the decision to delay the vote immediately after meeting with the U.S. Consul General last Thursday, without the knowledge of the PLO leadership or the government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and without any consultation. (full article…)

PA source: US to press Israel on settlements (full article…)

In a startling shift, the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council dropped its efforts to forward a report accusing Israel of possible war crimes to the Security Council, under pressure from the United States, diplomats said Thursday. (full article…)

“The PA has reached the point where it has to decide whether it is working with us or against us,” senior figures in the defense establishment have said. (full article…)

The U.S. Congress recently approved additional funding for the training in Jordan of three more battalions of the Palestinian national security force, and by the end of the year the Palestinian Authority will have a total of seven battalions at its disposal whose training was supervised by the Americans. (more…)

Notice that Isabel Kershner’s report in The New York Times does not mention U.S. training specifically and refers only to mysterious “western funds”.

A Hamas operative died in a Hebron prison overnight Monday after being interrogated by Palestinian Intelligence personnel. (more…)

Senior Hamas member Sami Abu Zuhri rushed to respond to the Qalqilya incident, referring to it as “a gift from the Palestinian Authority to Israel and to (US President Barack) Obama in honor of his visit to the region.” (more…)

The two, Muhammad Samman and Ahmed Yassin, were killed in a pre-dawn raid carried out by Abbas’s security forces on a building where they were hiding. Three policemen and the owner of the building, Abdel Nasser Basha, were also killed in the raid, which was described as one of the bloodiest intra-Palestinian incidents in the West Bank in recent years. (more…)

From the detailed description provided by Dayton, it’s clear that the Palestinian forces he’s enabling could certainly be accused of carrying out the self-policing of the West Bank for the Israelis. Because the West Bank is, after all, occupied by Israel and riddled with illegal settlements besides — plus beset by a surrounding wall, 600-plus intrusive checkpoints, and a network of Jews-only highways — the Palestinian troops are utterly at the mercy of the Israelis. Each recruit is vetted by US security forces (i.e, the CIA), then vetted by Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence arm of Israel, and then by Jordan’s super-efficient intelligence service, before they begin their training in Jordan. Dayton made it quite clear that the Palestinian units thus trained are primarily deployed against two targets in the West Bank: against criminal gangs, and against Hamas. So far, they’ve received $161 million is US funding. (more…)

Demonstrators ripped apart hundreds of posters of PA President Mahmoud Abbas that were plastered on walls and buildings along the street leading to the heavily fortified compound known as the Muqata, the PA government headquarters. All this was done within spitting distance of the heavily armed soldiers who patrol the sidewalks and roads leading to the Muqata. The popularity of Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, has plunged to an all-time low in the wake of allegations of corruption, and of collusion with Israel during its bloody January offensive in Gaza which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians. (more…)

Only 13% of the Bethlehem area is under the control of the Palestinian Authority – a new report released by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on Thursday said. (more…)

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas plans to ask his prime minister within the coming week to form a new government without the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers, signaling a breakdown in unity talks with the Islamic militant group. (more…)

The United States has been training senior Palestinian security officials in an advanced officers course in Ramallah for top-brass, Haaretz has learned. The new course, entitled “senior leaders’ course,” is a two-month long program conducted in Ramallah with the assistance and supervision of the U.S., and is part of the project overseen by the U.S. security coordinator in the territories, Gen. Keith Dayton. (more…)

More and more Palestinians are now talking about the prospect of the complete collapse of the Palestinian Authority. (more…)

The Palestinian Authority is a politically defunct organization and a front for Israeli occupation in the West Bank. Any remaining shred of the PA’s credibility was surely blown away when Dahlan’s American/Israeli-trained “security forces” beat and detained Palestinian demonstrating against Israel’s recent slaughter in Gaza.

“It is unbelievable that, all over the world, people were supporting Gaza,” Yazid Khader, a spokesman for the movement, said last week. “Yet here on the West Bank people were unable to do so. We ask: will the blood spilled in Gaza be enough for the Palestinian Authority to move towards reconciliation with us?” (more…)

“Two soldiers were on the tank eating chips, then one man came out of the tank with a rifle and started shooting the kids,” Mr Abed Rabbo, who receives a salary as a policeman from the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in Ramallah said. (more…)

Fatah by now is more or less functioning as Israel’s police force in the West Bank. (more…)

Fatah is keeping a lid on protests, not letting West Bankers draw it into Israel’s war on Hamas. Senior voices in the secular party that runs the Palestinian Authority (PA) see restraint as key to its quest for statehood. Getting entangled in Gaza, they say, would only embolden Hamas. (more…)

The breakdown of an entire society is happening in front of us, but there is little international response beyond UN warnings which are ignored. The European Union announced recently that it wanted to strengthen its relationship with Israel while the Israeli leadership openly calls for a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip and continues its economic stranglehold over the territory with, it appears, the not-so-tacit support of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah – which has been co-operating with Israel on a number of measures. (more…)

Ramallah residents were shocked on Friday when a protest against the Israeli offensive in Gaza was forcibly dispersed by Palestinian Authority security forces using tear gas and clubs. Youth from the Fatah movement assisted security forces in breaking up a rally of solidarity with the Palestinian faction’s rival Hamas in the Gaza Strip. (more…)

“It’s impossible to hold peace negotiations with Israel while its army is committing massacres against our people in the Gaza Strip,” Qureia was quoted as saying. “U.S.-sponsored talks with Israel are now suspended due to the bloody scene that the Gaza Strip is witnessing.” (more…)

Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah said Saturday that they were prepared to assume control over the Gaza Strip if Israel succeeds in overthrowing the Hamas government. (more…)

The Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah has blocked access to a popular news website because of the site’s reporting on widespread corruption among the entourage of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

For several days, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been unable to view the website Donia al-Watan (http://www.alwatanvoice.com) as access has been blocked through the PA-controlled telecom company. Readers outside Palestine and a few inside the country using proxies are still able to access the site.

The Electronic Intifada confirmed that several users attempting to access the website in Ramallah and other parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank could not do so and instead saw a message in English stating “We are sorry, the site was blocked based on attorney General instructions [sic].” (more…)

Yesterday’s nomination of Tzipi Livni as Kadima’s candidate for Israel’s upcoming national election (and especially the pleasant reception of the news by Ramallah) confirms two immutable facts about Israel/Palestinian relations: 1) Israel’s tradition of electing killers to the highest office is alive and well… Likewise, 2) the Palestinian puppet leadership always lick it all up.

Let me elaborate…

To begin, yesterday’s contest between Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz was an old-fashioned battle between two evils. Despite Kadima’s reputation for being “moderate” and offering Israel’s best hope for brokering peace with the Palestinians, both candidates were (in Livni’s case, still is) entirely unfit to rule.

On the one hand, yesterday’s nomination offered Shaul Mofaz – a man notorious for recent revelations that, during his tenure as commander of the IDF in the West Bank and Gaza, he called for 70 slain Palestinians per day. This, as well as his role in demolishing hundreds of Palestinian homes during the same period, has led to accusations of war crimes. David Kretzmer, emeritus professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that recent evidence suggest that Mofaz “committed serious offenses, some of which at least, fall into the category of war crimes.” (more…)