Minister defies gun-toting Palestinian militants
West Bank militants demanded that Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Yousef leave their town today, shooting rifles outside a government building to prove their point.
Yousef responded by instantly sacking the local security chief, calling hundreds of security officers to Jenin as reinforcements and demanding the immediate arrest of the militants.
“We are not leaving Jenin before we have arrested this bunch of criminals,” Yousef told Hajj Ismail Jaber, the head of national security forces in the West Bank.
Yousef was appointed last week with the expectation he would clean up the Palestinians’ myriad, and often competing, security forces, reign in local militants and restore law and order to Palestinian areas.
As part of that job, Yousef, a tough ex-general, was on a security tour of the West Bank today.
He was meeting local officials in the government building when Zakariye Zubeydi, a local leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades militant group, and six of his followers approached the building and began firing in the year and demanding Yousef leave Jenin.
Security officials prevented Zubeydi from entering the building and brief scuffles broke out before he and his followers left.
The demonstration was a major challenge to Yousef’s authority and he immediately responded by firing the regional security chief, Fayez Arafat.
“You are not in charge any more, and where is your deputy. You are in charge,” he said, pointing at the deputy.
Yousef then demanded the deputy arrest Zubeydi and his followers.
About 600 Palestinian police officers, armed with rifles, quickly flooded the area and took up positions inside the building.
Zubeydi later returned to the building, armed with a rifle and wearing a bullet-proof vest, for a closed-door meeting with Yousef and a local leader of the ruling Fatah movement.
| Related Stories: |
|
