Palestinian gunmen free slain Gaza strongman’s son

GAZA, Friday (Reuters) - Palestinian militants freed the son of slain ex-security chief Moussa Arafat on Thursday after kidnapping him and shooting dead his father in a raid they called a reprisal for “collaboration” with Israel.

The killing had stirred doubt about whether Palestinian security forces can keep order in the Gaza Strip, seen as a proving ground for Palestinian statehood, once Israelis leave the occupied territory during a planned pullout next week.

Maj.-Gen. Arafat, a cousin of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was a Gaza strongman kept as an adviser by President Mahmoud Abbas after being fired as head of military intelligence in an anti-corruption crackdown in April.

A militant coalition, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), reaffirmed an earlier claim of responsibility for what it called the “liquidation” of Arafat at his Gaza City home on Wednesday and the brief abduction of his son Manhal.

Abbas’ office quoted him as saying that Arafat had been “assassinated by treacherous hands” but there was no immediate official comment on how his son’s release has been secured or what, if any, measures would be taken against the PRC.

A masked PRC spokesman told reporters that Manhal had been freed after Palestinian Authority negotiators undertook to redress “the crimes of the dead collaborator Moussa Arafat”.

The spokesman accused Arafat, who led violent crackdowns on the Islamist movement Hamas in the 1990s, of helping Israeli forces track and kill at least two Palestinian militants.

Arafat also trafficked in alcohol and drugs and arranged for the killing of several fellow Palestinians as part of an extortion racket, the PRC spokesman alleged.

Arafat never shied from using an iron fist and had many enemies. His foes came from within the ruling Fatah movement as well as the armed factions that dominate many of Gaza’s streets after five years of an uprising against Israel.

Arafat was removed from his top post following Abbas’s election in a clean-out, under local and foreign pressure, of top brass who were widely seen as incompetent and corrupt.

But a plethora of militant factions and armed groups all hope for a slice of power in Gaza, the first entire territory Palestinians will have had to rule without an Israeli presence.