Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network extends its highest salutes to the martyr Nizar Banat, assassinated three years ago today, a stalwart fighter against corruption and for the liberation of Palestine who worked tirelessly to end “security coordination” between Palestinian Authority security forces and the Zionist regime.
Nizar Banat always struggled to protect the Palestinian people through liberation from Zionism and imperialism, and reactionary Arab regimes and the Palestinian Authority, created in order to serve the Zionist regime. He stood firmly for the people and the Resistance forces in Palestine and throughout the region.
The assassination of Nizar Banat reflected a conscious policy of the Zionist occupation and the Oslo Palestinian Authority affiliated with it, carrying out specific function to protect the existence of the occupation and its control over the Palestinian people in the West Bank.
Serving as an agent of the occupation, the PA practices all forms of oppression, including political arrests, violent raids and assassinations, in order to benefit the Zionist colonial project and to protect the privileges of the small sliver of the Oslo sector and upper Palestinian capitalists benefiting from the status quo.
The assassination of Nizar Banat cannot be considered apart from the assassination policy against Palestinian leaders and fighters carried out continuously over the decades by the Zionist occupation regime, from Ghassan Kanafani to Fathi Shiqaqi to Saleh Arouri.
The “security coordination” framework, overseen by the United States, Canada and the European Union (all engaged in training, funding & oversight of Palestinian Authority security forces), is designed to employ Palestinian agencies to carry out the mission of Zionist colonialism. That is, imprisoning and targeting the Palestinian resistance and Palestinian organizers, writers, intellectuals, student activists who remain committed to the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea, without the collaborationist entity of the Palestinian Authority.
The purpose of these Palestinian Authority security forces and the “security coordination” project under which they carry weapons is to prevent the Palestinian people and their liberation movement from effectively resisting and overthrowing the Zionist regime.
It acts in full service of the interests of Zionism and imperialism, while bearing a Palestinian flag emblem on each agent’s badge, while the resistance forces from Palestine to Yemen to Lebanon, to Iraq, Syria, Iran and beyond, resist the genocide in Gaza and fight for full liberation of Palestine from Zionism and of the entire Arab and Muslim region from imperialism.
Three years ago today, PA security forces – trained according to the standards created by U.S. officials, such as Gen. Keith Dayton – invaded Banat’s home in Dura, al-Khalil at 3:30 am, exploding the door off of the hinges, mimicking almost exactly the terror of the daily Zionist night raids in Palestinian homes across occupied Palestine. They beat Nizar, and then reported him dead. To date, there has been no justice or accountability for the assassination of the martyr Nizar Banat.
Thousands of Palestinians marched in the streets in outrage at the assassination of Banat, demanding not only justice and accountability for those responsible for the killing but also the downfall of Mahmoud Abbas, bringing down the PA regime and its collaboration with Zionism, and the entire Oslo project on which it is based.
Indeed, the Palestinian people and the resistance have repeatedly demanded an end to security coordination since the beginning of its implementation, while PA President Mahmoud Abbas has declared it to be “sacred.”
The entire Oslo process has been devastating for the Palestinian people: Thousands of Palestinian lives have been stolen on the path of Oslo, while the political frameworks of the Palestinian struggle have been distorted, hijacked and compromised. While Palestinians inside occupied Palestine ’48 continue to affirm their identity and existence and organize for liberation, the official Palestinian leadership of the P.A. instead “recognized Israel”, the Zionist settler colonial project on 78% of Palestine.
The historic, heroic Al-Aqsa Flood and the past nine months of resistance to genocide have underlined the deep unity of the Palestinian people throughout occupied Palestine from the river to the sea and everywhere in exile and diaspora, & their commitment to resistance until liberation. These are two things that the Oslo project was meant to destroy and undermine, yet has failed utterly to do so. Instead, the resistance is stronger than it has ever been, despite the horrific genocidal US-Zionist war crimes that have taken over 40,000 martyrs.
The assassination of Nizar Banat brings echoes of many previous cases of PA security forces’ brutality and complicity with Zionist crimes – from the Zionist assassination of Basil al-Araj shortly after al-Araj and five of his comrades were imprisoned and tortured in PA jails …to the killing of Omar Nayef Zayed, found dead outside the PA Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he had taken refuge after Israeli occupation authorities attempted to seek his extradition, decades after he had escaped from colonial prisons.
Perhaps most infamously, the PA imprisoned Ahmad Sa’adat, the General Secretary of the PFLP alongside his comrades Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, Majdi Rimawi, Basil al-Asmar and Hamdi Qur’an in the PA’s Jericho prison, under U.S. and British guard, for four years from 2002-2006 before they were kidnapped from Jericho prison by Zionist forces, who besieged the prison days before Ismail Haniyeh was to be sworn in as Prime Minister of the PA, after the resistance campaigns associated with Hamas won the PLC elections and vowed to liberate the prisoners of security coordination.
Now, all of them are held in Zionist jails, subject to torture, abuse and medical neglect. It is not only in these high-profile cases but in the daily practice of PA security coordination that Palestinian Authority political detention serves a “revolving door” with Zionist imprisonment for many Palestinian resisters and youth leaders. Indeed, Nizar Banat himself was held as a PA political prisoner on multiple occasions. Today, as the Resistance fights with all its might against the genocide, the PA continues to imprison and pursue heroes of the resistance.
Nizar Banat’s blood is on the hands of the PA – and therefore it is on the hands of the Zionist regime, the United States, Canada, the European Union and all parties involved in creating, sustaining and propping up the “security coordination” framework. “Security coordination” with the Zionist entity benefits only the occupier and colonizer at the expense of the Palestinian people. The PA and its bosses must be held accountable for its ongoing betrayal of the Palestinian people and its collaboration with Zionist colonialism.
To honour Nizar is to boycott, isolate and resist Zionist occupation. It is to stand with all the regional forces of Resistance as they heroically confront the genocide and expose all of the contradictions of the Zionist regime.
The Oslo project is backed by Zionism, imperialism and reactionary regimes – and it must and will fall on the road to the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. Nizar Banat lives, Palestine lives! Glory to the martyrs!
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