A new report reveals that nearly 80 officers of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces have been killed or arrested while carrying out terror attacks against Israeli citizens and IDF soldiers in the past three years. Regavim: “To continue to claim that the Palestinian Authority is a moderating force that fights terrorism is to prop up the same failed concepts and paradigms that went up in blood, smoke, and tears on October 7th.”
A shocking new study released by the Regavim Movement reveals the deep and growing involvement of officers of the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatus – officers who are trained, armed and equipped by the US and Europe – in terrorism against Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers.
The report, titled “Officers by Day, Terrorists by Night,” provides details on 44 “PASF terrorists,” who were posthumously declared “martyrs of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces” after they were killed in the course of terror attacks they carried out against Israelis between 2021 and 2023. In this short period, at least 25 additional officers of the PASF were arrested by Israeli security forces for involvement in acts of terrorism. At least another 7 PASF officers were wounded in the course of terror attacks against Israeli civilian or military targets.
Regavim’s study focuses exclusively on acts of terrorism perpetrated by officers of the Palestinian Authority’s various security branches – Civilian Police, the Liaison and Coordination Office, the General Intelligence Service and other official PA bodies that ostensibly prevent and uproot terrorism and cooperate with Israel’s security system – and does not include acts of terrorism perpetrated by members of Fatah, despite its very close affiliation with the PA. “The study,” explained Regavim’s Naomi Kahn, “focuses on the officers who turned their western-supplied guns on the State of Israel.”
“Officers by Day, Terrorists by Night” draws upon a wide range of primary sources, foremost among them the “martyrdom proclamations” published by the PA, the various branches of the PASF and Fatah, all of which glorify and take pride in the terrorists within their ranks. Regavim’s researchers dug into their backgrounds, revealing proof of the official positions of these terrorists in the PA’s security frameworks. Additional sources shed light on the terrorists’ personal histories, organizational affiliations, time spent incarcerated for security offenses, family affiliations and more.
Cross-reference of the incidents with publicly available information allowed Regavim’s researchers to account for these terrorists’ victims, and to track their broader impact on the narrative and ethos of Palestinian armed struggle against Israel.
The report makes it clear that the Palestinian Authority not only fails to condemn the acts of terrorism that arise from its own ranks, it glorifies the perpetrators; it provides ostentatious military funerals, makes ostentatious, official condolence visits, memorializes the terrorists in public institutions, naming streets, buildings and other projects after them, and more. This conduct is only one aspect of the Palestinian Authority’s support for terrorists who murder Jews – support that is also expressed in the generous salaries for terrorists who are apprehended and incarcerated in Israeli prisons or to the families of terrorists killed in the act.
Regavim’s researchers preface the report by stressing that the data presented is an under-estimate; it does not include PASF terrorists who have not been apprehended or killed in action and who have managed to escape justice. It also does not include terrorists whose personal details or connection with the Palestinian Authority’s Security Forces were not found. Additionally, they note that official statements released by the IDF and the Israeli security system following terror incidents tend to obscure the affiliations of the perpetrators, whether to Fatah or to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (Fatah’s military wing) – and even more so, if the attack was carried out by officers of the PASF.
The report cites abundant evidence of the depth of PASF involvement in terrorism, including statements by PASF Spokesman Colonel Tala Dweikat, who boasted in an interview televised in late October 2023 that “over the past 30 years, the PASF has sacrificed more than 2,000 martyrs,” – in other words, terrorists killed while carrying out attacks against Israeli civilians or IDF forces.
“Our objective is to dispel the fog that has been blinding the Israeli public to reality,” said Meir Deutsch, Director General of Regavim. “Senior Israeli political and military decision-makers regard the Palestinian Authority as a positive force that prevents terrorism and treats the possibility that the PA will turn its guns against Israel as an unlikely threat scenario lurking in the distant future. These attitudes and misperceptions endanger the safety and security of every citizen of Israel.”
“The failure to publicize the information we have uncovered and which we present to the public in our new report has served international anti-Israel forces that advocate turning the Palestinian Authority into an independent State of Palestine under the leadership of Abu Mazen and his cohorts,” continued Deutsch. “To continue to claim that the Palestinian Authority is a moderating force that fights terrorism is to prop up the same failed concepts and paradigms that collapsed on October 7th. The citizens of Israel have been shaken out of their reverie and they are no longer willing to accept statements that are disconnected from reality and that may lead to the next ‘October 7th’.”
To read the full report, click here: https://bit.ly/3ThhTLt
To watch a video about the report, click here:
