RNA - Al-Resalah, a Gaza-based news site, cited "trustworthy" Palestinian sources as saying that the Palestinian president was officially considering dissolving the committee and "merging it with one of the main branches or offices of the occupied West Bank-based Interior Ministry”, Ma'an reported.
On Monday, hours after the report was published, the website of al-Resalah could not be accessed at Ma'an's offices in Bethlehem in the West Bank, though the site could be accessed through a VPN.
The PA recently blocked 11 Palestinian news websites, all allegedly affiliated with either the Hamas movement or Muhammad Dahlan, a political rival of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in the occupied West Bank.
A staff member of al-Resalah in Gaza told Ma'an via telephone that they were looking into the matter to confirm if the website had in fact been blocked, or if it was dealing with an unrelated technical issue.
The report had said that “President Abbas did not oppose the plans of Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s government to dissolve the Prisoners' Affairs Committee," quoting anonymous sources that said they "expect the decision was made in agreement with the US administration as a goodwill gestures by the PA to American political interests in the region."
The sources also speculated that the decision to dissolve the committee was part of ongoing PA efforts to revive the decades old Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
"The Palestinian government will officially announce that the decision to dissolve the Committee of Prisoners' Affairs resulted from the financial crisis, but the reality is very different, given the pressures on the PA to agree to start a new round of negotiations without preconditions," the Palestinian sources told al-Resalah.
Head of the Prisoners’ Affairs Committee Issa Qaraqe reacted to the report and said he has not been notified about any such plans to dissolve the committee. "We have not been notified that the president or other members of the Palestinian leadership are considering freezing the Committee of Prisoners' Affairs," Qaraqe told Ma'an via telephone Sunday evening, without providing further details.
The report came days after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the PA had informed him that it had agreed to stop the “martyrs” compensation program, though he later backtracked on the statements after they were refuted by both Israeli and Palestinian officials.
Qaraqe, the committee chief, said Tillerson’s remarks were false and represented “an aggression against the Palestinian people. Qaraqe added that no such decision could ever possibly be made, since it would spell the end of the PA with the Palestinian public.
"Almost every other household among the Palestinian people is the family of a prisoner or martyr," Qaraqe said. "Anybody who thinks he can execute a decision like that is badly wrong."
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