MEE Staff
Middle East Eye / January 26, 2023
Israeli forces shot dead nine Palestinians during Jenin raids on Thursday, then a tenth during a protest against the killings.
The Palestinian Authority announced it was cutting security ties with Israel on Thursday after Israeli forces killed ten Palestinians in a single day.
“Security coordination with the Israeli occupation government no longer exists as of now,” read a statement from president Mahmud Abbas’s office.
Early morning raids on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank city left nine Palestinians dead.
Later in the day, Israeli forces fired at Palestinian demonstrators in the town of Al-Ram, north of Jerusalem, who had come out to protest against the killings. One man was killed.
The Palestinian health ministry late on Thursday named him as 22-year old Youssef Yahya Abdul Karim Muhaisen.
Heavily armed soldiers, reportedly in a commercial truck, entered the Jenin camp on Thursday morning and opened fire on residents attempting to block their entry.
Several other army vehicles, including bulldozers, then entered the area and targeted a building used as a meeting place for residents.
The latest fatalities bring the number of Palestinians killed this year to 30, including four children.
Abbas’s office said the killings amounted to “a massacre from the Israeli occupation government, in the shadow of international silence”.
“This is what encourages the occupation government to commit massacres against our people in full view of the world,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesperson for Abbas.
The president declared three days of national mourning and ordered flags to be flown at half-mast.
The last time the PA made such an announcement was in May of 2020, following the revelation of Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank as part of US President Donald Trump’s controversial proposals for the region.
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Palestine Authority to stop security coordination with Israel
Middle East Monitor / January 26, 2023
The Palestinian leadership ended, on Thursday, security coordination with Israel after the Israeli army aggression on Jenin refugee camp in the northern Occupied West Bank earlier in the day, which resulted in killing nine Palestinians, including an elderly lady.
The Al-Ghad TV reported that the Central Committee of the Al-Fatah Movement and the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) have held a meeting during the day, chaired by Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, and agreed on a number of decisions including informing the Israeli side that the Palestinian Authority would stop all forms of security coordination with Israel in response to the Jenin crime.
It was also decided to call for an urgent meeting of the various Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to draw broad lines in response to the Israeli government, which is carrying out Judaization operations and settlement projects that amount to the actual annexation of the West Bank, and killing the prospect of a Palestinian State based on the 1967 borders.
It was also decided to invite the United Nations General Assembly, the International Criminal Court, the Security Council and human rights institutions to investigate the Israeli crime in Jenin.
The decisions were officially announced on Thursday afternoon during a press conference held in the city of Ramallah in the central West Bank.
During the conference, presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the PA will ask the United Nations Security Council to implement the decision to provide protection to the Palestinian people, under Chapter VII.
