Palestinian professor Abdel Sattar Kassem on Thursday accused the Palestinian Authority's security forces of being behind the torching of his car in Nablus.This is the typical response to questioning authority throughout the Arab Middle East. Question authority and your life is put in danger. It doesn't matter that you're a professor and question corruption in the government, the way that detainees are treated, or seek better governance. The very act of speaking out is a threat to the status quo, and the thugs in control don't take kindly to these threats.
Kassem, who has been waging a public campaign against corruption in the PA for many years, teaches political science at An-Najah University.
Unidentified arsonists set fire to his car on Wednesday morning while it was parked outside his apartment in the Rafidiyah neighborhood of Nablus. The attack came days after the professor issued a statement accusing the PA security forces of unjustly detaining members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He also accused the security services of mistreating the detainees.
Thus, we get violence like we see displayed here. Kassem is lucky that it was only his car that was torched. It could have been his house or bodily harm could have come to him or his family. The thugs wanted to intimidate him into silence.
We might not agree with Kassem or his goals, but what happened to Kassem is syptomatic of what is wrong with the Palestinian polity and Arab polity in general. The inability to handle dissent in a civil manner is a destabilizing and dangerous situation that could spiral out of control.
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