RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank: A human rights body Tuesday accused the Palestinian Authority of torture and arbitrary detention and warned it not to repeat the mistakes of Arab states by allowing security forces to become too powerful.
 
The Independent Commission for Human Rights, releasing an annual report on human rights in the PA-ruled West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, said Hamas was also guilty of torture and arbitrary arrest.
It was the Palestinian organization’s first report since this year’s popular uprisings, fuelled by grievances against security forces in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Syria.

“We must avoid the mentality of ‘security first’ at the expense of freedom rights and rule of law,” the report said.
“This method is the shortest route to the the abyss of the police, security regimes which we have seen, and see in live broadcast, in the states around us.”
The commission has criticized the PA for complaints including security screening designed to stop supporters of Islamist Hamas from being employed in the PA bureaucracy.

It said torture and arbitrary detention continued in 2010 in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
In the West Bank, it said “security considerations have been put in front of all others at the expense of rights and freedoms,” listing the security screening process and the role of the security forces in licensing civil society groups.
Hamas and Fatah, the rival group led by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, agreed in April to end their four-year-old feud, including the release of political detainees held by each side.
But Mamdouh al-Aker, who heads the Palestinian negotiating team, said the impact of the unity agreement had yet to be felt.

“It’s business as usual,” he told Reuters. “Nothing has happened on these issues, which are part of the reconciliation,” he said.
PA security forces, retrained with Western support, allowed Hamas supporters to hold a small rally in Ramallah Friday.
Speaking at a briefing, Aker added: “It is important for there to be civilian oversight over the security apparatus so that they do not exaggerate the report’s content to the politicians.”

He said there were numerous cases in Arab states and other countries which showed that security forces might exaggerate threats to stability to strengthen their own position.
In a separate development, a Palestinian photographer who was shot Sunday while covering protests in the Gaza Strip may have been “deliberately targeted” by an Israeli soldier, a media rights group said Tuesday.

“Reporters Without Borders was told that [Mohammed] Othman was clearly identifiable as a journalist at the time of the shooting and was deliberately targeted,” Reporters Sans Frontieres said.
Othman was critically wounded as he covered demonstrations near the Erez crossing in northern Gaza.
The Israeli military told AFP it had received no official complaint about the incident.
The military “categorically rejects the claim that any journalists were intentionally injured as without any basis in fact,” said a statement to AFP.

Othman’s family told AFP Tuesday that he was still in hospital in a “critical but stable” condition.
Meanwhile, two Palestinian protesters who infiltrated Israel from Syria Sunday during huge demonstrations on the Israeli border were deported Tuesday, a military spokeswoman said.

“Two people who infiltrated the Golan from Syria were returned through Quneitra,” she said, referring to a crossing post situated on the U.N.-supervised armistice line between Syria and Israel.
Israeli Army radio said the two were a man and a woman but no further details were available.
Thousands gathered on the armistice line Sunday for demonstrations marking the anniversary of Israel’s creation in 1948, which Palestinians mourn as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.”
Dozens from the Syrian side crossed the border into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.