In Jenin, Palestinian Terror Groups Warn Palestinian Authority: ‘We Won’t Allow Anyone to Take Our Weapons’

In Jenin, the Jenin Battalion, whose members are connected to the Iran-supported Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), have now issued a warning to the Palestinian Authority Security Services: “We Won’t Allow Anyone To Take Our Weapons.” More on this defiance, now spreading throughout the Palestinian-ruled parts of Judea and Samaria, can be found here: “Jenin militia warns PA: ‘We won’t allow anyone to take our weapons,’” by Khaled Abu Toameh, Jerusalem Post, August 19, 2023:

Armed members of various Palestinian terror groups – the PIJ, Hamas, the PFLP, and others, have been issuing defiant warnings, directed not at Israel but at the P.A.’s security services, that they will not be disarmed. The latest such warning comes from the Jenin Battalion, connected to the Iran-supported Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

This open defiance of the PA, as it tries fitfully to re-establish its control in the West Bank by arresting members of terror groups and confiscating their weapons, is a great embarrassment for the PA, whose writ in the West Bank does not run much beyond Ramallah and Jericho, while it has lost control over the cities of Jenin and Nablus, both considered the main centers of resistance to the Israelis. Throughout Judea and Samaria, attempts by the PA to disarm members of other groups — Hamas, the PIJ, the PFLP, the Lions’ Den — have proceeded very slowly.

The Jenin Battalion, whose members are affiliated with the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), announced over the weekend that it won’t allow anyone to confiscate its weapons. The announcement is seen as a direct challenge to the Palestinian Authority security forces, who have arrested several PIJ men in the West Bank over the past few weeks.

That the PA Security Services have only managed to arrest “several PIJ men” shows the difficulty of their task; these PIJ men enjoy the support of the population, who warn them of impending raids, help to hide them, and even meet with violence the PA’s attempts to arrest PIJ members.

“We will absolutely not allow anyone, whoever it is, to take the weapons of the resistance away from us,” the armed group said in a statement at a rally on Friday night to commemorate 12 Palestinians killed during last month’s large-scale Israeli security operation in Jenin Refugee Camp. Most of the slain Palestinians have been identified as gunmen.. Dozens of masked gunmen from various Palestinian factions participated in the rally.

In fact, all 12 of the Palestinians killed by the IDF were “gunmen” — that is, members of terror groups. Eight of them were members of PIJ, while the rest belonged to Hamas and the PFLP.

At the rally in Jenin there were not only members of PIJ, but also gunmen from other Palestinian factions, demonstrating their united defiance against the Palestinian Authority, headed by the widely hated Mahmoud Abbas, who is seen as a collaborator with the Israelis for daring to attempt to reestablish control over the various terror groups in the West Bank. But Abbas is not so much collaborating with Israel as he is trying to keep the PA in control, and hence to assure his own power.

 Saeed Nakhleh, a senior PIJ official, said the rally carried “several fiery messages to the Israeli occupation, first and foremost that attempts to eliminate the resistance fighters will fail.” He said the Jenin Battalion won’t target the Palestinian security forces “to avoid schism in the societal fabric.”

Nakhleh promises that the PIJ will not “target” the Palestinian Authority’s security forces, but it will resist any attempt by those services to arrest or disarm members of the PIJ: that, after all, was what the rally in Jenin was all about — a declaration of defiance by the Jenin Battalion, which is largely made up of PIJ members: “We won’t allow anyone to take our weapons.”

Nakhleh added: “Although the security forces of the Palestinian Authority are chasing and arresting the resistance fighters on orders from the occupation and the US, our rifles will remain directed only toward the Zionist enemy. The day will come when the members of the security forces will realize that what they did against the mujahidin (warriors) was not right.”…

This promise by a PIJ official not to turn the PIJ’s weapons on the PA, but to keep them aimed “at the Zionist enemy” does not seem borne out by reality, with reports of PIJ members resisting arrest by the PA, and even firing on members of the PA’s security services. And what can it mean to insist, as the PIJ does, that “we won’t allow anyone to take our weapons,” if not a promise to use violence against anyone –Palestinian or Israeli — who tries to do that? The terror groups hope to avoid using violence against PA attempts to arrest its rivals in Hamas, the PIJ, PFLP, and others but, if necessary, they will be prepared to fight any attempt to disarm or arrest them.

In its statement, the Jenin Battalion claimed that the “heroic battle of Jenin has established clear deterrence equations in the face of the Zionist enemy.”

That “heroic battle of Jenin” that the Jenin Battalion claims as a victory was a quick, 44-hour campaign by the IDF that decimated the PIJ leadership in the West Bank, killing eight of its leaders as well as four terrorists belong to other factions. No Palestinian civilians were killed. In addition, the Israelis destroyed important caches of weapons that had been hidden throughout Jenin camp. It was a complete defeat for the PIJ, which is now crowing about its “victory” over the Zionists.

The militia warned that the Israeli military would pay a heavy price if it tries to enter Jenin again. “We warn the Zionist enemy against attempting to launch any aggression or attack on the Jenin camp, and we affirm that we are always ready to repel the aggression and defeat you, God willing,” the statement read. “Our weapons are ready to defend our people, our land, and our camp. We will continue to resist this occupation until the last bullet and the last fighter. There will be no retreat or surrender; either victory or martyrdom.”

The IDF accomplished what it set out to do in Jenin camp and has no plans now to re-enter the camp, but it certainly is not scared off by the “warnings” from the defeated PIJ.

After every defeat of a Palestinian group by Israel, the Palestinians immediately create a false narrative where they emerged victorious, and the IDF is supposedly now too frightened to try again. Israel, having delivered a devastating blow to the PIJ, does not see the need, right now, to reenter the Jenin camp. But should the need arise, the IDF will certainly not hesitate to “mow the grass” yet again.

As the rally was underway in the Jenin Refugee Camp, clashes erupted between residents of the city of Tubas (in the northern West Bank) and Palestinian security forces. The clashes began after Palestinian security officers arrested Uda al-Shahrouri, a local activist wanted by Israeli security forces for his alleged involvement in terrorism. Shahrouri was arrested after an hours-long standoff during which he barricaded himself inside his sister’s house and threatened to shoot himself. He was eventually persuaded to surrender to the Palestinian officers….

In Tubas, the PA security services have shown just how determined they are to reassert their control, and to round up known terrorists such as Uda Al-Shahrouri. They are unlikely to hand him over to the Israeli security forces — that would cause an enormous uproar among the Palestinians — but no doubt intend to sentence him to a PA prison, as a way of meeting their obligations, under the Oslo Accords, to collaborate with Israel on fighting terrorism.

The PA now seems determined to round up members of other terror groups, both because their challenge the PA’s rule has become ever more threatening, and to fulfill its obligations under the Oslo Accords to collaborate with Israel in fighting terrorism.

The PA crackdown is prompted by two considerations. First, there is the desire to crush the terror groups that are political rivals and threaten to unseat the PA’s current rulers. The PA has been rounding up and arresting members of those rival groups — mainly Hamas, PIJ, and PFLP. The PA’s efforts have been impressive, with 727 cases so far this year of Palestinians being arrested for their affiliation to terror groups, or — and this is a very different kind of infraction — for expressing opinions hostile to Mahmoud Abbas and the PA. Second, the PA has decided to fulfill the commitments it made as part of the Oslo Accords to collaborate with Israel on combatting terrorism. This is not being done to win Israel’s approval, but to show the Biden administration that the PA deserves the nearly half-billion in American aid the Bidenites have sent so far to the PA. No doubt Mahmoud Abbas is eager to emphasize to the Americans the PA’s “fight” against terror groups, in the hope of diverting critical scrutiny from his “Pay-For-Slay” program that both rewards past, and incentivizes future, acts of terrorism. “But we are rounding up terrorists,” you can hear him say. “What more can you ask”?