RAMALLAH – Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has backed
down from a planned crackdown on insurgents.
Officials said that hours after Abbas ordered a crackdown, he relented
under pressure from his security chiefs. They said the PA chairman was told
that security units would not move against insurgents who come from the
ruling Fatah movement.
"Nobody is willing to take the responsibility for hurting these people
[insurgents]," an official said.
Abbas's order came after Fatah insurgents shot toward his office in
the PA compound in Ramallah on Thursday. The shooting came in protest of PA
efforts to expel up to 70 Fatah insurgents and dismissed security officers
who have been in the compound since 2002. About a third of those people have
been wanted by Israel for attacks.
But PA commanders, supported by Fatah leaders, refused to carry out
Abbas's orders. PA General Intelligence chief Col. Tawfiq Tirawi threatened
to resign rather than participate in any operation to expel the insurgents.
In all, six former
security officers were forced out of the PA compound.
By late Thursday, Abbas withdrew his order for the crackdown. Instead,
the chairman offered the insurgents to join their former units in the
security forces. They would also be offered housing in the Ramallah area.
Abbas has been under Israeli and U.S. pressure to expel from the PA
compound a group of at least 70 Fatah insurgents, many of whom wanted by
Israel for staging attacks against the Jewish state over the last two years.
The group, which included security officers who clamored for better jobs,
had been sheltered by Abbas's predecessor, the late PA Chairman Yasser
Arafat.
"The Palestinian Authority has taken urgent steps to reestablish
security, deal with the perpetrators and protect public property," a PA
statement said. "Units are deployed to prevent any new aggression."
Hours later, Tirawi resigned. Tirawi's followers were said to have been
given refuge in the PA compound in Ramallah.
"I cannot work under these conditions," Tirawi wrote in a letter of
resignation that was later said to have been withdrawn.
Unrest spread from Ramallah to the northern West Bank city of Tulkarm on
Thursday. A mob torched tents of a PA police compound after police shot and
injured three suspects when their car tried to break through a roadblock.
