Palestinian Authority targets Dahlan’s supporters in West Bank
Supporters of the exiled Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan appear to be taking the brunt of the Fatah leadership's anger, with rounds of political arrests.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian security services in the West Bank have been clamping down in recent days on supporters of the so-called Democratic Reform Current led by dismissed Fatah leader Mohammad Dahlan, who is based in the United Arab Emirates.
An unspecified number of the movement’s supporters were arrested during the past few days. These include Haitham al-Halabi from the city of Jericho, who is one of the founders of the Preventive Security Service and a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council in Nablus.
A Palestinian security source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that those arrested were suspected of arms possession or transfer of “illegal and illegitimate” funds to the West Bank. The source refused to disclose further details.
On Sept. 27, the local Safa news agency quoted an anonymous source as saying the arrests were made based on instructions issued by President Mahmoud Abbas. The source indicated that the Palestinian Intelligence Service carried out dozens of missions — the nature of which was not mentioned — as part of ongoing monitoring operations of the Democratic Reform Current’s activities, in the wake of the normalization agreement between the UAE and Israel.
