Palestinian Security Forces Attack Civilians Protesting Mahmoud Abbas in West Bank

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas gestures as he speaks during a Christmas lunch with mem
THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty
Frances Martel

Multiple reports on Tuesday night documented the eruption of massive protests attracting hundreds of people in the West Bank, under the control of the Palestinian Authority, demanding its 87-year-old leader Mahmoud Abbas step down.

Abbas’s security forces reportedly attacked the protesters – who chanted “the people want the fall of the president,” according to the Qatari network Al Jazeera – with tear gas and stun grenades. The largest such protest occurred in Ramallah, West Bank, though reports indicated that large, angry mobs organized in other major cities in the region, including Nablus, Tubas, and Jenin.

Abbas has run the Palestinian Authority since 2005. Protesters reportedly expressed frustration that the general situation for Palestinian civilians under his rule had not improved in decades and no significant challenges to his rule have surfaced. The protests were also prompted by the mass killing of hundreds on Tuesday at a hospital in Gaza, a Palestinian territory on the other side of Israel from the West Bank, that the radical Islamist terrorist group Hamas blamed on the government of Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a statement following the attack asserting that evidence indicates the hospital was bombed by a misfired rocket belonging to another jihadist organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad; the Israeli Foreign Ministry published a video of a live Al Jazeera broadcast it claimed showed the moment the rocket misfired and hit the hospital.

Thousands of people across the Middle East and North Africa nonetheless took the streets to denounce Israel on Tuesday night, however, attempting to storm Israeli, American, and French embassies in protest of what appeared to be a mass civilian killing by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

In Ramallah, Reuters reported the use of tear gas and stun grenades against anti-Abbas protesters. Videos published by Arabic television networks and international outlets such as Voice of America showed crowds of thousands of people shouting and clashing with police.

The Jordanian newspaper al-Ghad published video of a massive crowd in Ramallah waving Palestinian flags and calling for Abbas to resign.

The Saudi outlet al-Arabiya published videos from Ramallah showing crowds throwing rocks and other projectiles at Palestinian officers attempting to subdue the protest.

Al Jazeera reported that some in the crowd also shouted support for Hamas, the terrorist organization that runs Gaza.

The regional outlet Middle East Eye accused Palestinian Authority security forces of shooting live ammunition “to disperse protests” throughout the West Bank, but videos published by other major outlets in the area appear consistent with the reports of the use of stun grenades rather than live fire. Middle East Eye also accused Palestinian security forces of attempting to run over protesters with an armored vehicle, citing a broadcast on Al Jazeera. The video shows a security vehicle driving around a crowd as protesters run around it and throw projectiles at it but does not show the vehicle actually hitting any protesters.

On Wednesday, as President Joe Biden landed in Israel to meet with top leaders in a “solidarity” visit with the country, alleged “national and Islamic forces” in the West Bank forced civilians into a general “strike” to protest the purported Islamic Jihad bombing of the Gaza hospital. As of Wednesday morning, the strike “paralyzed all aspects of life, with universities, banks, financial institutions, and commercial stores closed,” the Turkish state news outlet Anadolu Agency reported.

Abbas was initially scheduled to participate in a meeting with Biden in Amman, Jordan, but abruptly canceled his participation following the bombing of the hospital on Tuesday.

Biden is in Israel in response to the mass killing of upwards of 1,200 civilians and abduction of hundreds of others by the terrorist group Hamas on October 7. The attack, which Hamas dubbed the “al-Aqsa flood,” consisted of Hamas terrorists breaking through Gaza into Israeli residential areas and going door-to-door killing entire families, including infants, the elderly, and disabled people.

The terrorists left a trail of devastation in the communities they visited, including piles of bodies and dozens of dead babies, some missing their heads and others apparently burned to death. At a music festival taking place in Israel that day, Hamas terrorists opened fire on crowds of young attendees and abducted an unknown number of others, leaving an estimated 260 dead. The terrorists uploaded videos to social media of themselves desecrating corpses and mocking the families of those they killed.

The attack occurred on Shemini Atzeret, the final day of the annual High Holy Day cycle.

Israel has vowed a military response to address the Hamas threat, though it has yet to engage in a full-scale assault of Hamas strongholds in Gaza. Multiple news sources around the world initially reported the Islamic Jihad rocket misfire hitting a hospital on Tuesday as part of an Israeli initiative against Hamas.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect a revised number on the death toll from the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. The Israeli government estimate of 1,400 was revised to around 1,200, according to Reuters.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

 

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