[Ma'an] Fatah-allied Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces arrested four members of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the West Bank city of Nablus on Thursday.Senior PFLP officials said PA forces deployed across the city and arrested Muhammad At-Teriaqi, 17, Muhammad Jihad An-Natur, 18, Omer Tayseer Abdul Haq, 18, and Muhammad Al-Madani, 17.
A source close to the PA security establishment told Ma'an that the arrests were made at Israel's request. If they four had not been arrested, the source said, Israeli forces would have invaded Nablus and taken them to Israeli prisons.
Khalida Jarrar, a PFLP-affiliated member of the Palestinian Legislative Council slammed the arrests as "serving Israeli security interests." "It was a concession to the Israeli conditions and dictates that are imposed on the Palestinian Authority," she said, urging the PA to release the four and cut security ties with Israel. She said such security coordination "serves the occupation."
President Mahmoud Abbas came under renewed pressure to cut security ties with Israel after the assassination of three Palestinian men in Nablus on Christmas night. Israel accused the three of plotting the killing of an Israeli settler. The PA said it would have arrested the suspects if it had been asked.
Earlier this week the Israeli military announced that the PA and Israel had cooperated in foiling a plot to launch a homemade rocket from the West Bank into Israel.
The secular-nationalist PFLP has long been an opponent of security coordination with Israel. In 2006 Israeli soldiers seized PFLP Secretary-General Ahmad Sa'adat from a PA jail in Jericho where he had been held under an arrangement with Israel following the PFLP's 2001 assassination of the Israeli tourism minister.