RAMALLAH, 22 October 2006 — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday named a loyalist of his late predecessor Yasser Arafat, Gen. Ismail Jaber, to head the security services in the West Bank. A presidential decree said the general would carry the official title of “assistant to the Palestinian Authority president for security affairs in the West Bank.”
Jaber held the post of national security commander for the territory between July 1994 and April 2005, when he was dismissed by Abbas for an incident involving gunmen at the president’s offices during a period of lawlessness.
The Palestinian territories have seen almost daily clashes between the security forces, loyal to Abbas, and a 5,500-man force which takes its orders from Interior Minister Said Siam of the Islamist Hamas-run government.
On Friday Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar defended the deployment of the force on the streets of the Gaza Strip and said it would take on new recruits for the West Bank.
Earlier, dozens of members of Palestinian security services loyal to Abbas blocked streets across Gaza City yesterday to protest the nonpayment of salaries, witnesses said.
Angry protesters blocked the commercial Omar Mokhtar Street and forced shopowners to shut down, an AFP correspondent said.
Wassafi Batala, an officer in the national security service, said: “We haven’t received salaries in six months. Tomorrow is Eid El-Fitr celebration (ending the Muslim holy month of Ramadan) and we have no money for the feast. What can we do? This is the only type of protest that helps.”
Shopowners on the usually bustling street said they were forced to close down. Anwar Helles, who runs a shoe shop said that “state employees, members of Force 17 and all the security services asked us to close because they want their salaries.”
Another shopowner said: “Young men passed through all the shops and asked us to close. What can we do? We are afraid.” Members of the presidential Force 17 also erected barricades and set tires ablaze on arteries in eastern Gaza City.
“We will block all the streets of the Gaza Strip,” one protester warned. The Palestinian territories have been hit in recent weeks by violent clashes between militants loyal to Abbas’ Fatah movement and those loyal to the ruling Hamas party.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers yesterday shot dead a 50-year-old Palestinian in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian emergency services said. Israeli Army soldiers were on an operation in the town of Khan Younis when they opened fire and shot the man, Palestinian witnesses said.
