Trouble in Palestine.

• Position: Palestine National Authority human rights abuses - Editorial

In late June, the Palestinian Authority arrested ten members of the Palestinian security forces in connection with the beating of Nasser Abed Radwan, a twenty-eight-year-old Gaza resident hospitalized in a coma.

It is high time Yassir Arafat curbed his forces and their eager brutality. But punishing officers for a single beating doesn't begin to solve the problem of widespread mistreatment under the Palestinian Authority. According to human-rights advocates, about twelve people have died as a result of mistreatment while in the custody of Palestinian security forces.

In May, the district police commander of Ramallah summoned Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian and an American citizen. He was arrested, held incommunicado for a week, and then released.

Kuttab's crime? Though the police never told him the reason for his arrest, Kuttab is a journalist who has been fighting the Palestinian Authority's repeated attempts to block his broadcasts. On Kuttab's show, Palestinian lawmakers frequently criticize Arafat and the Palestinian Authority for corruption and human-rights abuses.

Kuttab discovered that the Authority was jamming his telecast with an interfering signal that covered the screen with a black rectangle. He complained to The Washington Post and was arrested shortly thereafter.

Kuttab's arrest follows a series of troubling reports about the Palestinian Authority. "There has been a disturbing increase in human-rights violations by the Authority during the past two years," writes William Schulz, the executive director of Amnesty International. "That increase has taken place in an emerging atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Victims of...