Birzeit University in the West Bank. Photo: Hanna Kreitem via Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – The Palestinian Authority sent its security forces to round up dozens of student Hamas activists in the West Bank for interrogation in recent weeks.

A Hamas-aligned student group won an April 22 student council election at Birzeit University near Ramallah, the seat of the PA.

“Everyone knew that this was going to happen,” Nagham Yassin, a Palestinian student at Birzeit, told Al Jazeera. “It happened last time the Islamic bloc won in 2007. Everyone assumed it would happen this time. Anyone who goes into student politics — especially Hamas supporters — knows they risk arrest.”

According to another Hamas supporter, Jihad Saleem, Palestinian security forces blindfolded him, deprived him of sleep, and held him in stress positions during a 24-hour interrogation.

“They wanted to know how the Islamic bloc won the elections. They wanted to know how Hamas’ supporters had funded the election campaign on campus,” Saleem told Al Jazeera.

A Human Rights Watch report said that 25 students have been arrested, detained, or summoned for interrogation since April 22.

Despite signing a unity agreement a year ago, little progress has been made between the West Bank-ruling PA and Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip in 2007. Leaders on both sides have declared the deal dead.

Israel has long feared Hamas’s presence in the West Bank and has cited those concerns in peace negotiations. Last year, Hamas terrorists abducted and murdered three Israeli teenagers near the Israeli town of Alon Svhut in Gush Etzion.