What happened
Banat had built a following posting videos accusing senior PA officials, including people close to Abbas, of corruption and nepotism, and had previously been arrested and beaten by PA forces before his final, fatal arrest in June 2021. Some 20 armed PA security officers raided the house where he was staying before dawn, dragged him out, and beat him; he was pronounced dead within hours. An independent autopsy — conducted jointly by Palestinian and, at the family's request, additional forensic review — found bruising across his body consistent with a severe, sustained beating rather than any account of a struggle during arrest or a pre-existing medical condition, contradicting the PA's initial account.
The protests that followed were the largest and most sustained demonstrations against the PA's own rule in years, explicitly framed around corruption and the absence of accountability rather than the conflict with Israel. PA security forces responded by beating demonstrators, including women, with batons and rifle butts in full view of cameras, and specifically targeted journalists covering the protests, seizing and smashing equipment. No PA security officer was ever meaningfully prosecuted for Banat's death; an internal PA investigation announced findings without public detail and no one was convicted.
The episode is a useful corrective to any framing that treats the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the only lens through which Palestinian governance should be judged — Banat was killed, and the protesters demanding accountability for his death were beaten, entirely by the Palestinian Authority's own forces, over PA corruption that had nothing to do with Israel.