Protests against the Palestinian Authority (PA) have continued for the fifth day across the West Bank after the death in custody of one of President Mahmoud Abbas’s biggest critics.
Several hundred people took to the streets of Ramallah, Hebron, and Bethlehem for the fifth consecutive day on Monday to protest against the treatment of Nizar Banat, who is a social and political activist, died during an arrest by the authority’s forces in Hebron on 24 June.
Crowds waving Palestinian flags with pictures of Banat and calling for an end to Abbas’s 16-year rule have been met with brutal force from both Palestinian security forces and men in plain clothes loyal to Abbas’s Fatah party. Clubs, metal rods, teargas, and the sexual assault of female protesters have been used to break up the protests and stop reporters from documenting the events, according to the Palestinian journalists’ union.
Banat, 43, was a longstanding critic of the authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank and coordinates on security matters with Israel. He had accused Abbas and his inner circle of rampant corruption and growing authoritarianism and planned to stand as a political candidate in long-delayed Palestinian elections, which were supposed to be held in May.
Banat’s killing became the catalyst for a new round of street protests against what many Palestinians see as a corrupt, repressive and ineffectual ruling class grievances, also fueled by the cancellation of the first elections in 15 years and last month’s war in Gaza.
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