Sami Sawalmeh reports:

When I arrived in the central West Bank town of Qarawat Bani Hassan for a reporting trip on July 31, residents were dealing with the immediate aftermath of an explosion outside a local businessman’s property. An extortion ring operating from Jaljulia, a Palestinian town inside Israel, had detonated the device after demanding money from him, according to prominent figures from the town who preferred not to be named. (A video from the blast site, seen by +972, shows shattered glass across the entire storefront.)

Residents described the group responsible as part of a mafia network whose members appeared to pass easily through military checkpoints to enter the town and leave again. In a landscape dense with Israeli checkpoints, military patrols, and surveillance tools, the residents struggle to interpret such freedom of movement as mere negligence. The same military that chokes Palestinian movement, they point out, suddenly proves unable — or, more likely, unwilling — to stop armed criminal networks from importing weapons and violence across these boundaries.

This mechanism is what local residents and Palestinian analysts call “engineered lawlessness”: Israel’s military apparatus, capable of extraordinary levels of surveillance and control, selectively withholds such power when armed gangs and internal feuds tear Palestinian towns apart from within. [Continue reading…]