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PA orders West Bank schools, charities closed due to suspected Hamas ties
By The Associated Press
Tags: Hamas, Palestinian Authority 

Palestinian intelligence agents ordered for two schools for needy children and two other West Bank charities to be closed on Sunday because of suspected ties to Hamas, according to school staff and human rights activists.

School staff said intelligence agents delivered written notices on Thursday, but the situation remained unclear. A Palestinian Interior Ministry official said she was not aware of a formal closure order.

Both Hamas in Gaza and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank have been widening a crackdown on political rivals in recent weeks, rounding up dozens of activists. Since Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, the Abbas government has shut down scores of charities with suspected Hamas links in the West Bank.
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Two Palestinian human rights groups said that late last week, Palestinian security forces targeted schools in Beit Ula and Beit Ummar, two villages near Hebron. The schools have a total of more than 700 students, including orphans and children from single-parent homes, staff members said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

The Palestinian human rights group Al Haq, quoting school officials, said handwritten closure orders were delivered to the schools. In Beit Ula, security agents seized three school buses, a van, computers and documents. In Beit Ummar, they took the keys of the school and locked it, school officials said.

Al Haq, the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, also said security officials broke into the two schools, run by the Islamic Charitable Association of Beit Ula and the Islamic Orphanage in Beit Ummar. The rights group said that two Hebron area charities, the Islamic Association in the village of Zahariyeh and the Islamic Cultural
Center in the village of Dafouh, were also raided.

The group said security agents seized equipment from the four institutions, as well as from two print shops in the Hebron area.

The Islamic Charitable Association in Beit Ula is a branch of a larger Hebron association closed by Israeli troops earlier this year, according to Al Haq.

Fadwa Shaer, an Interior Ministry official who deals with non-governmental organizations, said she was not aware of an order to close the charities, but would look into the matter. She said she had issued a warning to the Beit Ummar school for violating funding regulations.

She said some 160 NGOs have been ordered closed in the West Bank in the past year.

Earlier this year, the Israeli Defense Forces ordered several Hebron charities closed, including a boarding school for some disadvantaged children run by the Islamic Charitable Association. Troops raided a sewing workshop run by the association, but in the end did not close down the school.

An administrator said the school has still not been closed despite the Palestinian Authority order, and he hoped the dispute could be resolved.

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