Popular Resistance Committees

The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) are a Palestinian militant network which operates in the Gaza Strip and are regarded as terrorist organizations by Israel and the United States.
Set up late 2000 by Former Fatah and Tanzim member Jamal Abu Samhadana, the PRC is composed from ex-Fatah militants combined with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades activists. The PRC is specilized in planting roadside bombs and vehicle explosive charges - directed against military and civilian convoys in the Gaza Strip.

The PRC is said to be responsible for planting the explosives (some weighted more than 150kg) which destroyed 4 Israeli tanks and a US diplomatic convoy, leaving three Americans dead, in an attack which breached international law. Following the attack on the American convoy, the USA demanded that the Palestinian Authority will find those responsible and bring them into justice. Palestinian officials say that because of lack of progress in the attack's investigation, the USA halted financial support for the PA and casted unofficial sanction over its accounts. Recently, after heavy US pressure, the PA tried 4 suspects in a Palestinian military court, but intelligence agencies dismissed the tribunal as a "mock trial" and said the suspects indeed were PRC activists, but not those responsible for the attack. The suspects were released in March 2004, less than one year after the attack.

On May 2, 2004, the PRC, along with Islamic Jihad claimed that they had murdered an Israeli pregnant mother, Tali Hatuel, and her four daughters aged 2 to 11 in Kissufim road in the Gaza Strip claiming the attack was in retaliation for the Israeli defence Forces assasinations of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who had been killed shortly before.[1]. Hatuel was an unarmed civilian resident of the Gush Katif Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip. The car she was driving in carried stickers with messages such as "Uprooting the settlements - a victory for terror".