Palestinian businessman: PA wants to arrest me because of a Facebook post

A Palestinian businessman has been forced to go into hiding after Palestinian Authority security forces raided his home in the West Bank in an attempt to arrest him over a social-media post.

Badran Jbara, 60, from the town of Turmus Aiya, north of Ramallah, told The Jerusalem Post he was afraid for his life and would not attend his daughter’s wedding. Several Palestinian intelligence officers raided his home in Turmus Aiya early Sunday morning in an attempt to arrest him, he said.

Jbara, who mostly lives in Panama and holds Panamanian citizenship, was not in the house at the time.

The officers questioned Jbara’s daughter, Suha, about his whereabouts before leaving the house. They left a summons for him to immediately report to the PA General Intelligence Service.

“The Palestinian intelligence officers came to arrest me because of a post on Facebook,” Jbara told the Post. “In the post, which I published three weeks ago, I criticized a senior Palestinian official without mentioning his name.”

The PA security forces recently resumed a crackdown on social-media users, political activists and critics in the West Bank. The clampdown was temporarily suspended after PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced in mid-January his decision to hold parliamentary and presidential elections.

The crackdown began shortly after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Ramallah and met with Abbas and other senior Palestinian officials. During the visit, Blinken said the US administration would resume financial aid to the Palestinians, which was halted by former US president Donald Trump’s administration.

In the past few weeks, dozens of Palestinian political activists have been rounded up by PA security forces on charges of “stirring up sectarian strife” and affiliation with Hamas and other Palestinian groups. Many of the detainees were tortured during their interrogation, with some forced to curse leaders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, human-rights activists said.

Jbara said he published the Facebook post while he was still in Panama and before he arrived in the West Bank last week to attend his daughter’s wedding.

“The Palestinian Authority began searching for me while I was still in Panama,” he said. “They contacted my lawyer and family and demanded that I remove the post and apologize.”

The PA officers who raided his home on Sunday morning told his wife they came to arrest him, Jbara said.

“When my wife asked the officers whether they were from the Israeli army, one of the Palestinian officers replied, ‘Yes,’” he said. “They searched the house for me, but I was not there.”

Jbara said he has no intention of handing himself over to the Palestinian security forces.

“I did not do anything wrong,” he said. “They are now threatening to arrest my daughter, Suha, if I don’t hand myself over. The Palestinian Authority has no respect for human rights.”

Suha was arrested by the PA security forces in 2018 on suspicion of collecting donations for charities affiliated with Islamic groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During her incarceration, she was beaten, slammed against a wall and threatened with sexual violence by her Palestinian interrogators, according to Amnesty International.

“Suha Jbara has described her torture in harrowing detail,” said Saleh Hijazi, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa. “In her testimony, she gives an account of ruthless interrogators who have shamelessly flouted Palestine’s obligations to treat prisoners humanely and violated the absolute prohibition under international law of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

Although Suha Jbara has been released on bail, her trial is continuing.

Her father told the Post he has contacted the Panamanian Foreign Ministry to complain about the PA’s attempt to arrest him and the harassment of his daughter.

“I want to leave Turmus Aiya and never come back,” he said. “There is no security under the Palestinian Authority. It is not safe for businessmen and investors like me. I want to go back to Panama. My advice to all Palestinians living abroad: Don’t go to live under the Palestinian Authority. There are no human rights there.”