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Palestinian Authority Stops Contacts with Tel Aviv After Nablus Operation

Palestinians inspect a house that was demolished during an Israeli army raid in the Old City of Nablus (AFP)
Palestinians inspect a house that was demolished during an Israeli army raid in the Old City of Nablus (AFP)
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Palestinian Authority Stops Contacts with Tel Aviv After Nablus Operation

Palestinians inspect a house that was demolished during an Israeli army raid in the Old City of Nablus (AFP)
Palestinians inspect a house that was demolished during an Israeli army raid in the Old City of Nablus (AFP)

The Palestinian Authority (PA) stopped all contact with Tel Aviv in response to the Israeli military operation in the West Bank city of Nablus, which killed 11 Palestinians.

Palestinian sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Authority was dealt a treacherous blow two days after it withdrew the Security Council draft resolution condemning the Israeli settlements.

Under a US-sponsored agreement, Israel also reportedly agreed to temporarily suspend unilateral actions in the occupied West Bank, including army incursions into Palestinian territories.

The sources confirmed that the Palestinian leadership, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, decided to stop contacts and move immediately to the Security Council to request international protection and suspend the security coordination.

The Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hussein al-Sheikh, announced that the Palestinian leadership resorted to the Council to request international protection for the Palestinian people "in light of the continuing crimes of the occupation."

Later, the Palestinian UN ambassador, Riyad Mansour, said consultations have already begun with the head of the Security Council on protecting the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian move came in the wake of the bloody Israeli attack on Nablus, and the approval to construct 3,000 settlement units.

Haaretz said that Israel's Civil Administration's Higher Planning Council advanced on Wednesday plans to build 4,000 housing units in the settlement, the most significant number of units approved in the past two years.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the Israeli approval of building new settlement units, saying it was an "extension of the occupation's crimes."

It said that the policy of "racist colonialism of the occupation" is based on the gradual and silent annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Israeli officials did not immediately comment on the settlement construction, but military officials said that the understandings regarding the security situation matter are meaningless.

Asked whether this could undermine the understanding and further aggravate the situation ahead of Ramadan, an Israeli military official said the problem is already tense, as it were in 2022. 

He noted that Israel should be prepared for retaliatory attacks in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza.

He indicated that the army would continue its operations as required and needed, adding that the understandings are unimportant as long as Israeli security is threatened.

Later, Israeli sources acknowledged that the operation in Nablus marked a quick end to the understanding.

The Hebrew channel 12 reported that the Israeli security establishment condemned the Nablus operation.

The Israeli army and police raised their alert level in preparation for a possible violent response to the operation and deployed reserve Border Police units to East Jerusalem.

A senior military official told reporters that the Israeli army expected a possible response to the military operation.

The Israeli military said late Wednesday that Palestinian shooters opened fire from a passing car at a checkpoint in Homesh in the northern West Bank.

Israeli military sources announced that a Palestinian woman was shot after she attempted to stab a security guard at the Ma'ale Adumim settlement in the West Bank. Her injuries were described as "moderate to serious."

The Palestinian territories are experiencing unprecedented anger after the Israeli attack on Nablus.

The national forces announced a general strike in the occupied Palestinian territories in protest against the Israeli raid in Nablus.
 
Shops, schools, and banks remained closed after Palestinian political parties on Wednesday announced a general strike in the cities of Ramallah and Nablus. They called on Palestinians to protest near Israeli army checkpoints.

Meanwhile, Ynet Palestinian affairs analyst Avi Sakharov said that escalation is imminent, noting that an operation in broad daylight in Nablus may have been necessary to prevent an attack, but there is always a price for such operations.

Haaretz military analyst Amos Harel wondered how urgent and necessary this operation was, adding that it risks sparking revenge attacks and rockets from Gaza.

Harel warned it could now trigger revenge attacks from the West Bank and rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

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Shining Light on Austin Tice who Went Missing in Syria

A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot
A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot
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Shining Light on Austin Tice who Went Missing in Syria

A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot
A banner for journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012, hangs outside the National Press Club building in Washington, US, May 2, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File phot

In recent months, American officials have raised the fate of Austin Tice in talks with Syria’s new leadership, led by its interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa.

The American citizen vanished in 2012 in a Damascus suburb.

According to Britain’s The Economist, the American side still insists that Tice may be alive and says there is no evidence of his death.

The magazine has spoken with an Assad-regime insider and gained one of the first authoritative public accounts of the abduction and an insight into one of the former Syrian regime’s darkest secrets.

The source is Safwan Bahloul, a high-ranking general in then Syrian president Bashar Assad’s security state. He has chosen to speak out and share details of Tice’s ordeal. He confirms that Tice was held not by opposition groups, but rather by the Syrian state, with Assad’s full knowledge, and was held for some time in a compound of the former president’s most trusted aide. The general also reveals his own culpability.

In the summer of 2012, Bassam al-Hassan, a shadowy adviser in Assad’s inner circle, learned that Tice was in the suburbs of Damascus. He set in motion a plan to seize him, according to General Bahloul. A freelance journalist contributing to the Washington Post, Tice was preparing to take a break in Lebanon after a grueling period reporting in opposition-held Syria. He sought a fixer to try to cross the border, and it turned out the fixer was working for Hassan, the general claims.

After he was captured, Tice was held in a garage inside Hassan’s compound, not far from the presidential palace, says the general. The site lay outside the regime’s formal prison system—off the books and under direct control of Assad loyalists. Was Assad aware of the abduction? “He knew, absolutely, he was happy with the capture,” the general says.

Bahloul was ordered to interrogate Tice. The journalist “had a satellite communications device...an iPhone and another small phone. I started going through his phone book, you know, trying to have a clue who he is.”

Bahloul confirms that Tice managed to escape his cell for 24 hours (this was originally reported by Reuters). The general himself was suspected of aiding the escape attempt (something he denies), though he was later cleared.

“He rubbed his body with the soap in order to lubricate his chest when getting through the window, and he used the towel...There was broken glass, cemented broken glass on top of a fence. So, he put it upon it, and then he climbed it and threw himself to the other side,” said the general. Tice was recaptured.

Bahloul has settled his affairs with Syria’s new rulers and is one of a handful of senior officers not to have fled the country. He says he did not see Tice again after his fourth and final interrogation. The last confirmed information on the reporter was a video uploaded to YouTube in September 2012 in which he is seen blindfolded and surrounded by masked men shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

American officials believe the video was staged to make it look like Tice had been captured by militants and not the regime. The video was masterminded by Hassan and shot in the countryside north of Damascus, says Bahloul.

In December, as the Assad regime crumbled, thousands of desperate prisoners were broken out of Syria’s sprawling torture-and-detention network after Assad fled to Moscow, raising hopes that Tice might be among them. He was not.

Today the Trump administration and Tice’s family continue to ask questions. One possibility is that he is alive and still in Syria, perhaps hidden somewhere in the remote farmland of the country’s Alawite coastal heartland, parts of which remain outside the control of Sharaa’s security forces. Another is that he was spirited out of the country to Iran, or Hezbollah-controlled parts of Lebanon. Or he may have been abandoned in a hidden prison, or killed amid the chaos of the revolution, another victim of Assad’s reign of terror. One man may have the answer: Hassan, the shadowy adviser, who is believed to have fled to Iran and may now be in Beirut.