The Palestinian Authority's attack on Jenin appeals to the interests of Israel and the West News about the conflict between Israel and Palestine

Beirut, Lebanon – The Palestinian Authority (PA) is cracking down on armed groups in the Jenin refugee camp, in what experts say is an attempt to reassert its limited authority in the occupied West Bank and convince incoming US President Donald Trump that it could be a useful security partner. .

But the crackdown has drawn condemnation from many Palestinians, particularly after the killing on Saturday night of 21-year-old journalist Shatta Sabagh, who had been reporting from Jenin and whose family said she was killed by PA gunfire.

Since the beginning of the PA attacks, they have been criticized for serving Israel's interests because they support the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination.

“Over the past few years, the PA has lost control of the West Bank, and I guess it's trying to regain control to prove its worth to its manipulators, Israel and the United States,” said Omar Rahman, an Israel-Palestine expert with the Near East Council on Global Affairs, a think tank in Doha, Qatar.

“I think he's trying to prove that he can play a role that's still relevant, especially at a time when there are voices in the Israeli government that are trying to force the disintegration of the PA,” Rahman told Al Jazeera.

Heavy repression

Over the past three years, Israeli attacks – both by the army and by settlers – have killed and displaced scores of civilians in the West Bank and destroyed homes and livelihoods.

Following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Israeli forces and settlers stepped up attacks in the West Bank, killing 729 Palestinians, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

At least 63 are from the Jenin camp.

PA security forces have replicated some of Israel's tactics since launching an operation against the camp in early December.

It surrounded the camp with armored personnel carriers, fired indiscriminately at civilians, detained and abused young men, and cut off water and electricity supplies.

A video circulating online and confirmed by Sanad, Al Jazeera's verification agency, shows PA officials stuffing a young man into a trash can and beating him.

“(The Americans) have been training PA security forces to act as SWAT teams and special forces – not as civilian police – to break up (Palestinian) armed groups,” said Tahani Mustafa, Israel-Palestine expert for the International Crisis Group.

“Whenever you see American involvement in terms of training, that's when you see hardline and coercive tactics used against the Palestinians,” she told Al Jazeera.

Security cooperation

BKP was ostensibly created to create a Palestinian state following the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, which initiated a peace process between then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Under the accords, the PA's Western donors — the European Union and the United States — tasked it with maintaining Israel's security by destroying Palestinian armed groups in the occupied Palestinian territory, according to Diana Butu, a Palestinian lawyer and former PA adviser and spokeswoman.

In the 1990s, she explained, the PA defended its crackdown on armed groups as necessary to protect the peace process.

However, the peace process has effectively been dead for at least two decades due to Israel's ongoing confiscation of Palestinian land to build Israeli settlements, she said.

These settlements are illegal under international law, and since Oslo the number of settlers has increased from 250,000 to more than 700,000, according to Peace Now, an Israeli nonprofit that tracks illegal settlements.

As of October 7, 2023, Peace Now said, Israel has confiscated more Palestinian land on the West Bank – 23.7 sq. km (9.15 sq mi) – than in the last 20 years combined.

Butu accuses PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, of still sticking to the Oslo process when Israel has so brazenly abandoned it.

“He is persecuting the same people who want liberation, not from him but from Israel,” Bhutto told Al Jazeera.

The PA's security mandate brought it into direct conflict with Hamas, a rival faction that refused to give up the armed struggle against Israeli occupation after defeating Fatah in the 2006 legislative elections.

The Western donors of the BKP – mainly the USA – put pressure on Fatah to rein in Hamas, exacerbating tensions between the two factions and leading to a brief civil war that began in 2006.

The conflict led to a split in the Palestinian national movement that has not yet been resolved despite numerous attempts at reconciliation.

Since then, Fatah, under PA rule, has ruled two-thirds of the West Bank, while Hamas has controlled Gaza.

“The tactics (of the PA) have never been successful. He never won the hearts and minds of the Palestinians,” Bhutto said.

Struggle for survival

PA officials reportedly say the operation in the Jenin refugee camp is necessary, otherwise Israel will use the presence of militants there as a pretext to drive more Palestinians from their homes and land in the West Bank, as it did in Gaza.

However, experts say Israel plans to formally annex the West Bank and disband the PA, regardless of whether armed resistance continues.

Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has already come close crushing the Palestinian banking system by refusing to renew a government exemption that allows Israeli banks to interact with Palestinian banks.

The PA does not have its own central bank and therefore depends on the Israeli banking system to pay salaries and provide vital imports.

Bowing to US pressure, Smotrich renewed the exemption for a year in early December, but experts fear he will not do so again during Trump's presidency, which begins on January 20.

Failure to do so would collapse the PA – and the West Bank – economically and hasten the formal annexation of the West Bank, the Middle East Council's Rahman said.

Rahman also warned that the ensuing chaos could serve as an Israeli pretext for ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, which is why he believes the PA is trying to convince the incoming Trump administration that it is still a valuable partner in strengthening Israel's security.

“You can't blame the PA for trying to prevent something like this,” Rahman told Al Jazeera. “At the same time, they don't have an alternative vision.”

Mustafa of the International Crisis Group agreed, adding that the PA has isolated itself from regional states and its own constituencies, making its survival dependent on Israel and its backers.

“Israel will annex the West Bank and we are already seeing that reality – de facto and de jure,” she said. “(Annexation) won't be spectacular, but it will be a slow burn.”

“The AP is really counting its days.”