Amira Hass has written a new article reporting that Jenin Camp residents — and PA care not to antagonize some of them — are partly responsible for blocking the investigation in the assassination of Juliano Mer-Khamis in Jenin Refugee Camp two months ago. Her reportage, in Haaretz, is posted here.
But, she wrote, there appear to be other forces of inertia at work as well.
Hass wrote: “Of the four law enforcement agencies investigating the case – the Palestinian police, the Israel Police, the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service – none seems to be working particularly hard to solve it, says Abeer Baker, the attorney for the family”…
The Hass article also said: “Despite a promise made by PA President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting he held with a delegation of Israeli-Arab writers and artists, the Palestinian police are not guarding the theater; the actors are rehearsing for a new play outside the camp. At the meeting, which took place about 10 days after the murder, Abbas said the PA would make every effort to solve the murder … A native and former resident of the camp, who is a Fatah member, told Haaretz the theater ‘was more important abroad than to Palestinians in the West Bank and the camp’ … The dead-end probe also raises questions about the attitude of the residents of the camp to Freedom Theater, which was considered particularly daring and critical, and threats prior to the murder show that certain circles in the camp saw it as a foreign element … Secrets are said to be hard to keep in the refugee camp, especially because it is assumed that the PA security agencies have numerous undercover agents operating in the camp … Residents of the refugee camp said the man who shot Mer-Khamis covered his face with a stocking cap only as he fled the scene and that he removed it about 150 meters away when he got into a car. The cap fell out of his pocket and is now in the possession of the Palestinian police”…
It is also widely assumed that the Israeli intelligence and military have numerous sources of information in the camps, and throughout the West Bank as well.
The article also reports that “The Shin Bet confirmed to Haaretz that it and the IDF are jointly investigating the murder, although the Shin Bet would not confirm to Haaretz whether it was in charge of the probe … Right after the murder, the IDF demanded and received from the PA a summary of its findings from the crime scene, along with Mer-Khamis’ car, his cell phone and his computer. The actor’s friends in Haifa and Jenin said they believed clues helpful to the investigation in terms of the threats he faced could be found in his computer and phone. But Baker, the family’s attorney, said the police have informed her that they have no findings to report so far. The spokeswoman for the Samaria and Judea District police told Haaretz the autopsy report had been sent to the Justice Ministry with a recommendation that it be sent to the Palestinian Authority”…