"The security reform is a victim of the Israeli army's success. Israelis have got used to a life virtually free of suicide bombers. There is no way they can expect the same effectiveness from the PA forces. But those forces cannot build up to the same level unless Israel gives them leeway to do so. As so often in the Israeli-Palestinian puzzle, it is a case of chicken and egg."
Dit klinkt alsof een 'life virtually free of suicide bombers' een soort van luxe is die je niet altijd kunt verwachten, in plaats van een vanzelfsprekend recht op leven. Als de PA de Israëli's geen leven vrij van aanslagen kan garanderen, zullen zij moeten leven met operaties van het Israëlische leger. De Palestijnse politie en veiligheidsdiensten kunnen natuurlijk met het Israëlische leger samenwerken, maar worden dan door de eigen bevolking als 'collaborateurs' gezien.
Bovendien, en dat is het echte probleem, staan veel leden van de Palestijnse politie en veiligheidsdiensten achter het 'gewapende verzet' tegen Israël, waar zij zelf voor een deel ook aan mee hebben gedaan in het verleden. Op het moment dat men de plegers daarvan zou beschouwen als terroristen, niet als martelaren, als verraders en niet helden, als zij die Palestijnse rechten verkwanselen, in plaats van ze standvastig te verdedigen, is er een kans dat men het terrorisme tegen Israël effectief kan bestrijden, en het vertrouwen van Israël kan winnen.
Ratna
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The Palestinian territories
Chickens and eggs
Apr 24th 2008 | RAMALLAH
From The Economist print edition
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11090104
Chickens and eggs
Apr 24th 2008 | RAMALLAH
From The Economist print edition
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11090104
Reform of the Palestinian security forces can barely get off the ground
THIS month Israel agreed to let the Palestinian Authority (PA) open 20 police stations in the West Bank. For the first time since the Palestinians' violent second intifada (uprising) began eight years ago, they will be in rural areas, where Israel, not the PA, is in charge of security. Last month Israel also gave the PA permission to deploy 620 special-forces troops in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, home to some of the most diehard Palestinian militants.
It is all part of a $5.4 billion plan meant to speed the arrival of a Palestinian state. Israel is negotiating a "framework agreement" (no longer a fully-fledged peace deal, as planned last autumn) with the PA's president, Mahmoud Abbas. But it has always insisted that Mr Abbas must first show that his security forces can take the place of the Israeli army in fighting Palestinian gunmen.
That is asking a lot. The PA has never had full control of the West Bank, many security people are ex-militants, and the armed "resistance" to Israel is popular. Besides, reform of the PA's security forces has a long and tangled history.
The dozen-odd forces, each loyal to individual commanders and politicians, were the divide-and-rule method by which the late Yasser Arafat, Mr Abbas's predecessor, held on to power. Both men have used them as patronage and to soak up unemployment, letting them swell to around 85,000-strong, far beyond the 30,000 limit envisaged in the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s. Foreign donors tried in vain to make Arafat slim them down. During the intifada, Israel destroyed most of their buildings and facilities.
After Arafat's death in 2004, security reform returned to the agenda, but was dropped again after the Islamist Hamas movement defeated Mr Abbas's party, Fatah, in parliamentary elections in 2006. A Hamas-Fatah power struggle broke out. American-led attempts to undermine Hamas by equipping and training the PA forces, which remained mostly loyal to Fatah, exacerbated the conflict, until Hamas defeated Fatah in the Gaza Strip last June. After that, donors shifted their attention back to the West Bank and, in an attempt to entrench Mr Abbas's authority there, have revived the reform plans.
An American team led by Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton and an EU police mission have both expanded their training programmes, while various foreign special forces, one from as far away as Moscow, are providing anti-terrorist instruction. But the approach is beset with flaws.
A detailed plan presented last autumn by General Dayton sets sensible long-term goals: to unify, shrink and spruce up the security forces, and replace their political loyalties with obedience to whoever runs the PA. It includes establishing new chains of command, replacing equipment, rebuilding bases, creating bodies to monitor performance, and so on. But it is impossibly ambitious. Of the $5.4 billion price tag - for the first three years alone, not including salaries and pensions - just $230m was raised for security at a grand PA pledging conference in Paris in December, when donors were unexpectedly generous in their pledges overall. This will not go far; currently, one foreign official estimates, even the PA's prison space meets only around a tenth of its needs.
Moreover, there is a conflict among Mr Abbas's own cadres between technocratic reformists like his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, and Fatah stalwarts. Shy of confrontation at the best of times, Mr Abbas does not want to antagonise Fatah people by weakening their influence on the security forces, and Mr Fayyad cannot push reforms through without his backing. Apart from one initial round of firings, he has not been able to trim the bloated payroll.
Finally, Israel has stymied the PA's own efforts. As in Jenin this month, earlier this year it allowed the PA to station troops in the city of Nablus. They cleaned up criminal gangs and enforced an amnesty, agreed with Israel, in which militants loyal to Fatah surrendered their weapons. They got results; Israeli officials were quietly impressed. But they hold sway only during the day; the Israeli army continues to make deadly nightly incursions against other armed groups, such as Islamic Jihad. It is conducting similar raids in Jenin, occasionally even against amnestied men.
Meanwhile, Israel's raids on fighters in Gaza, which kill a lot of civilians too, add to the tension in the West Bank. This week there have been hints that Egyptian attempts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza may at last bear fruit. But when such truces have been reached in the past, Gazan groups have soon abandoned them, citing Israel's continuing raids in the West Bank.
All this "casts a lack of credibility on the PA," says Shami Shami, a Fatah legislator from the Jenin refugee camp. Israeli officials say they cannot risk letting a potential suicide bomber get through, but some PA officials are convinced Israel is deliberately sabotaging the PA's efforts. It is certainly reluctant to surrender any responsibility to it. The green light for the new police stations and deployment in Jenin came only after a lot of American pressure on Israel to give Mr Abbas a chance to prove himself.
The security reform is a victim of the Israeli army's success. Israelis have got used to a life virtually free of suicide bombers. There is no way they can expect the same effectiveness from the PA forces. But those forces cannot build up to the same level unless Israel gives them leeway to do so. As so often in the Israeli-Palestinian puzzle, it is a case of chicken and egg.
------------------------------------
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THIS month Israel agreed to let the Palestinian Authority (PA) open 20 police stations in the West Bank. For the first time since the Palestinians' violent second intifada (uprising) began eight years ago, they will be in rural areas, where Israel, not the PA, is in charge of security. Last month Israel also gave the PA permission to deploy 620 special-forces troops in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, home to some of the most diehard Palestinian militants.
It is all part of a $5.4 billion plan meant to speed the arrival of a Palestinian state. Israel is negotiating a "framework agreement" (no longer a fully-fledged peace deal, as planned last autumn) with the PA's president, Mahmoud Abbas. But it has always insisted that Mr Abbas must first show that his security forces can take the place of the Israeli army in fighting Palestinian gunmen.
That is asking a lot. The PA has never had full control of the West Bank, many security people are ex-militants, and the armed "resistance" to Israel is popular. Besides, reform of the PA's security forces has a long and tangled history.
The dozen-odd forces, each loyal to individual commanders and politicians, were the divide-and-rule method by which the late Yasser Arafat, Mr Abbas's predecessor, held on to power. Both men have used them as patronage and to soak up unemployment, letting them swell to around 85,000-strong, far beyond the 30,000 limit envisaged in the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s. Foreign donors tried in vain to make Arafat slim them down. During the intifada, Israel destroyed most of their buildings and facilities.
After Arafat's death in 2004, security reform returned to the agenda, but was dropped again after the Islamist Hamas movement defeated Mr Abbas's party, Fatah, in parliamentary elections in 2006. A Hamas-Fatah power struggle broke out. American-led attempts to undermine Hamas by equipping and training the PA forces, which remained mostly loyal to Fatah, exacerbated the conflict, until Hamas defeated Fatah in the Gaza Strip last June. After that, donors shifted their attention back to the West Bank and, in an attempt to entrench Mr Abbas's authority there, have revived the reform plans.
An American team led by Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton and an EU police mission have both expanded their training programmes, while various foreign special forces, one from as far away as Moscow, are providing anti-terrorist instruction. But the approach is beset with flaws.
A detailed plan presented last autumn by General Dayton sets sensible long-term goals: to unify, shrink and spruce up the security forces, and replace their political loyalties with obedience to whoever runs the PA. It includes establishing new chains of command, replacing equipment, rebuilding bases, creating bodies to monitor performance, and so on. But it is impossibly ambitious. Of the $5.4 billion price tag - for the first three years alone, not including salaries and pensions - just $230m was raised for security at a grand PA pledging conference in Paris in December, when donors were unexpectedly generous in their pledges overall. This will not go far; currently, one foreign official estimates, even the PA's prison space meets only around a tenth of its needs.
Moreover, there is a conflict among Mr Abbas's own cadres between technocratic reformists like his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, and Fatah stalwarts. Shy of confrontation at the best of times, Mr Abbas does not want to antagonise Fatah people by weakening their influence on the security forces, and Mr Fayyad cannot push reforms through without his backing. Apart from one initial round of firings, he has not been able to trim the bloated payroll.
Finally, Israel has stymied the PA's own efforts. As in Jenin this month, earlier this year it allowed the PA to station troops in the city of Nablus. They cleaned up criminal gangs and enforced an amnesty, agreed with Israel, in which militants loyal to Fatah surrendered their weapons. They got results; Israeli officials were quietly impressed. But they hold sway only during the day; the Israeli army continues to make deadly nightly incursions against other armed groups, such as Islamic Jihad. It is conducting similar raids in Jenin, occasionally even against amnestied men.
Meanwhile, Israel's raids on fighters in Gaza, which kill a lot of civilians too, add to the tension in the West Bank. This week there have been hints that Egyptian attempts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza may at last bear fruit. But when such truces have been reached in the past, Gazan groups have soon abandoned them, citing Israel's continuing raids in the West Bank.
All this "casts a lack of credibility on the PA," says Shami Shami, a Fatah legislator from the Jenin refugee camp. Israeli officials say they cannot risk letting a potential suicide bomber get through, but some PA officials are convinced Israel is deliberately sabotaging the PA's efforts. It is certainly reluctant to surrender any responsibility to it. The green light for the new police stations and deployment in Jenin came only after a lot of American pressure on Israel to give Mr Abbas a chance to prove himself.
The security reform is a victim of the Israeli army's success. Israelis have got used to a life virtually free of suicide bombers. There is no way they can expect the same effectiveness from the PA forces. But those forces cannot build up to the same level unless Israel gives them leeway to do so. As so often in the Israeli-Palestinian puzzle, it is a case of chicken and egg.
------------------------------------
*** Balanced Middle East News ***
MidEastweb http://www.mideastweb.org
Subscribe - mail to mewnews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
MewBkd - Background & analysis -
mail to Mewbkd-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
News Letter - our commentary -
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