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Monday, February 11, 2008

Peaceful West Bank weekend

Forget the infighting in Gaza - the West Bank itself, which is regarded as under control of the "moderate" PA, is anything but peaceful.

From Ma'an:
A health clinic in the northern West Bank town of Huwwara has come under frequent attack recently, culminating on Saturday night when unidentified gunmen vandalized the interior of the building, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Sunday.

The Ministry said that the clinic has been fired upon several times, and its main electrical generator was stolen.

A Health Ministry statement said that the only losers in such attacks are the thousands of Palestinians served by the clinic. The Ministry said health servives should not be attacked in political or family conflicts.
What a peaceful place, where a health clinic is considered fair game!

Another story, ignored in the Palestinian Arab press, of a kidnapping last week of a female lawyer from Ramallah, the center of the "moderate PA:"
On Wednesday, 6 February, unknown assailants kidnapped the the lawyer Amani Taha Abu Arqoub (28) from the town of Durra southwest of Hebron. The kidnapping took place in Ramallah; and the lawyer’s fate is still unknown.

PCHR’s preliminary investigation and the statement’s of the victim’s family indicate that the lawyer Amani Abu Arqoub left her house on Wednesday morning and headed to the appeals court in El-Bireh for a case against the Palestinian Development Fund. At approximately 11:00, she called her colleague in the law firm, Suheil Ashour, and informed him that she won the case; and that she was on her way to the office of the Palestinian Development Fund in the Masyoun area in Ramallah to collect a check. At 13:37, three of the lawyer’s brothers and sisters received a telephone message from the kidnappers stating that “Amani will be away for 7 days. We will let you speak to her after that.”


The fact that this was not reported, or buried, in the Palestinian Arab press indicates that kidnappings such as these happen with some frequency. Which means that the hundred thousand strong PA "security forces" are a joke that the world continues to fund.