![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/635886561770297865-gettyimages-461564742-1-jpg.jpg\")
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas (right) sits next to chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat during an Arab foreign ministers urgent meeting at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo in January 2015 to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the situation in Libya.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo Credit: Mohamed El-ShahedAFP\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Maj. Gen. Majid Faraj is the powerful head of Abbas’ Mukhabarat, or General Intelligence Service. Born in the Dehaishe refugee camp to \u2013 in his words \u2013 “a very basic family,” Faraj rose through the ranks as a soldier in the shadows, first in the Tanzim, the armed wing of the PLO and then in the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security Organization (PSO) formed in the aftermath of the 1993 Oslo Accords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike Erekat, Faraj is not media-savvy. He doesn’t grant on-the-record interviews; this is a first, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You’ll find no Wikipedia pages on the man who, by his account, “spent many years in Israeli jails\u00a0like my brothers” before becoming a PSO commander of the Bethlehem district and then head of military intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faraj’s\u00a0father was killed by Israeli forces in 2002, at the age of 62, in an operation triggered by a spate of suicide bombings throughout Israel. “He was shot in Bethlehem when he went to buy milk and bread,” Faraj recounted. “They thought he was carrying a bomb.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Majid Faraj whispers to President Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas during an April 2014 meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo Credit: Abbas Momani\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The general neglected to mention that his father had violated a curfew at the time, or that he was felled by an Israeli heavy machine gun, making it almost impossible to wrap all the remains in a burial shroud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Early last month, Erekat’s 37-year-old nephew Mazen Aribe, an officer under Faraj’s command, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers after he allegedly opened fire with his legally issued handgun at a checkpoint, wounding two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Dec. 3 event marked yet another setback for the nonviolent resistance project that Erekat, the high-profile politician and peace negotiator, and Faraj, the secretive, security strongman, have come to embody, each in his own way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In conversations two weeks after Aribe\u2019s death and four months into the latest wave of so-called lone wolf terror \u2013 during which 29 Israelis and nearly 160 Palestinian assailants [updated SUnday afternoon 1\/17]<\/span> or suspected perpetrators have met their deaths in stabbing, car ramming and occasional shooting attacks \u2014 both men shared a bleak prognosis of bloodshed to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First link: from Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website www.mfa.gov.il<\/p>\n\n\n\n [ADD CITATION; israel’s ministry of foreign affairs, ffures\u00a0as of jan. 15]<\/p>\n\n\n\n An image released by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs tallies recent casualties.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo Credit: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs: http:\/\/bit.ly\/IsraelMFAgraphic<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n For Erekat, the story of Aribe \u2013 his sister’s\u00a0son\u00a0who made a career in containing violence through coordination with Israeli security arms before that fatal December day \u2013 marked a kind of personal failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/635886570521854063-gettyimages-481860045jpg.jpg\")
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