Mideast: Two police states, no solution

What remains of Palestinian civil rights is rapidly being eroded by the dictorial Palestinian governments that respectively control the divided Palestinian territories. Palestinian civilians are paying the price as the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and the Fatah-affiliated and western- back Palestinian Authority (PA), which rules the West Bank, continue to target their political opponents as part of their bitter power struggle. "We don't have a police state here in Palestine. We have two police states. One in Gaza and one in the West Bank," says Rabie Latifah from the Palestinian human rights organisation Al Haq. "The abuse of Palestinian civilians by both Fatah and Hamas security forces has become systematic and is no longer the exception to the rule," Latifah told IPS. Mysterious bomb blasts, assassinations by masked gunmen, detainees denied access to their lawyers, torture and death in detention, the random arrest of critical journalists, and the banning of peaceful demonstrations are but a few of the human rights violations sweeping the Palestinian territories. While armed men are being arrested, politically motivated arrest campaigns are also targeting citizens suspected of merely sympathising with the opposition. "We have endured over 40 years of occupation and human rights abuses by the Israelis, and now we are doing it to ourselves," says Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR).