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Palestinian Authority Tightens Grip on Hamas in West Bank

Hamas says a crackdown by the Palestinian Authority has damaged Hamas' formal structure in the West Bank, but that it is reorganizing nevertheless.
Mohammed Ghannam shows photographs depicting what he says are injuries sustained when he was detained by Palestinian security forces, at his home in the West Bank village of Dura, near Hebron May 12, 2013. Ghannam, 44, said plainclothes security forces from the Palestinian Authority (PA) detained him last month for belonging to Hamas and beat him mute. Led by the secular Fatah party, the PA has pursued surveillance, firings, arrests and torture to bar its Islamist militant rivals Hamas from public life in t
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When Hamas resorted to what it called “military decisiveness” in June 2007 by expelling the Palestinian Authority (PA) from Gaza and establishing control over the entire Gaza Strip, it was clear that the PA would retaliate by launching a rigorous anti-Hamas arrest campaign in the West Bank. Hamas accused the PA and Israel earlier this month of escalating matters by arresting and torturing its leaders and supporters in the West Bank.

A senior Hamas leader in Gaza told Al-Monitor that what the PA is doing against the movement in the West Bank is a desperate attempt to eradicate Hamas completely and is the embodiment of security coordination between the PA and Israel, claiming that the number of Hamas detainees is in the hundreds. They are held in a number of West Bank prisons that are affiliated with the PA’s General Intelligence and Preventive Security agencies.

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