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Members of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades stand in the old city of Nablus following a confrontation with Israelis that occurred the night before (photo by Nadia El-Awady) |
In the old city of Nablus in the Palestinian West Bank, water flows down the old cobblestone roads that wind between the closed shops of the marketplace on a tranquil Friday afternoon. Stepping to the side of the road in order not to get wet, I curiously follow the water upstream.
The road opens up onto a small square, where armed men casually smoke cigarettes while children and teenagers admiringly watch on. A small fire truck stands in the middle of the square, a man using its hose in swish-swashing movements to wash away the signs of a confrontation from the night before between members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Israeli army.
This was my first visit to Nablus. That night I awoke suddenly to the sounds of gunfire and the resonating boom of Israeli sound bombs. It lasted till the next morning. I endured this for three consecutive nights; the duration of my stay in Nablus. Nablusian nights belonged to the Israeli army, its days to the armed militants, and Palestinian security services were nowhere to be seen.
| Nablusian nights belonged to the Israeli army, its days to the armed militants. |
Variants of this scene can be found throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Whether it is Israeli incursions, fighting among rivalling Palestinian factions, or just common crime, violence is an everyday occurrence in the lives of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian security sector has frequently been the focus of barrages of criticism from Palestinians, Israelis, and the international community for not being able to contain the violence. In 2005, with an Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip imminent, something drastic was in order to ensure a peaceful handover.
At a critical point in the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a precedent was established in the evolution of peacekeeping operations involving third-party interventions. For the first time ever, an entity was formed that defied current peacekeeping norms where governments play the dominant role.
During the weeks leading up to the unilateral Israeli disengagement from Gaza, a flexible model was developed that included representatives of governments, non-profit non-governmental elements, and for-profit elements that eventually played a role in achieving something that had never been done before: The Palestinian security sector was unified under a single command.
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| ITAG's Jarat Chopra (L) and IDRC's Pamela Scholey (photo by Nadia El-Awady) |
"In December 2003, Sharon announced that Israel will leave Gaza," recounted Jarat Chopra, director-general of the International Transition Assistance Group (ITAG), the life-form in which this revolutionary development took shape. "Throughout 2004, the Israelis continued to refine what they were going to do. But the question remained: What does the international community do? What do the Palestinians do?" he explained.
Chopra had been involved for years in peacekeeping operations all over the world, including those in Nicaragua, East Timor, and Somalia. It was his expertise in international law and in peacekeeping operations that brought him to Palestine in 2000, where he worked on and off as a consultant for the Palestinians during a long list of peace negotiations — from Camp David to the Mitchell Committee, and beyond that to the Tenet process.
"Since 2003, I've been sentenced here," chuckles Chopra. The restaurant in which I met Chopra and his counterpart from the Peace, Conflict and Development Program Initiative of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Pamela Scholey, was a befitting backdrop for an interview on reform in the Palestinian security sector.
As I walked into what was clearly a fashionable restaurant in upscale Ramallah, uniformed Palestinian policemen stood outside the main entrance, anxiously awaiting an important arrival. Later on, as we were speaking, an international group of men and women were swept through to the upstairs confines of the restaurant. From where we were sitting, we could only catch a glimpse of them as they were hurried away.
In the months following the Israeli announcement, Chopra explained, the Palestinians refused to undertake any planning for the role they would play during and after the disengagement. They weren't fully convinced it would happen to begin with. But the Palestinian Authority also had a political position: since the Israeli disengagement was being conducted unilaterally without having negotiated it with the Palestinians, they would not involve themselves in the issue until it was actually implemented.
"So throughout 2004 there's no planning," said Chopra. "The Israelis are planning. The Palestinians are not planning. And the international community cannot respond until the Palestinians start planning. So we need to strike a break."
What made the situation incrementally worse was the fact that, although an interministerial committee of the Palestinian Authority was set up to discuss what system needed to be set in place in order to manage civilian affairs in Gaza after the pull-out, it rapidly became obvious that no such system would be agreed upon. "We began to realize that the only way to solve this would be to prepare the Palestinian security services to deploy, to control the ground, and to maintain control until the civilian side was ready," said Chopra.
| Israel had always been against involving the international community with their conflict with the Palestinians, Chopra said. |
Israelis had always been against involving the international community in their conflict with the Palestinians, Chopra explained. According to their point of view, when UN peacekeeping forces were involved in Lebanon, mainly Israeli violations were reported whereas Lebanese violations were overlooked. Also, they feel, the one time when the UN was involved in negotiations, it was the one time they left, referring to the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai.
However, the Israelis would also find it useful to involve the international community in certain tasks. "There was an odd operational space that couldn't be filled neatly by the UN and couldn't be filled by the World Bank," which had been working with Palestinians on civilian matters, Chopra explained. In order to address Palestinian security, "we had to invent something that would fit," he said. "So we, as a non-profit entity, ran the first independently-run peace operation and it was called the International Transition Assistance Group (ITAG)."
ITAG had its work cut out for it. With only a few months to go until handover weekend in September, ITAG developed a three-phase strategy. Phase I involved the creation of a detailed review of the Palestinian Authority (PA) security services and analyzing the post-disengagement landscape. Phase II would involve creating a plan among the Palestinian security services for the disengagement, and Phase III would involve its implementation.
Due to the limited amount of time involved — the process began in April 2005, only five months before the disengagement — a great deal of overlapping between the phases was necessary. But even under the stress of time constraint, ITAG's successes were unprecedented.
Phase I produced the first-ever report to clarify the state of affairs in the Palestinian security sector. In vivid detail, it lists the different agencies working under the Palestinian Authority, their capacities in terms of human and material resources, and their disturbingly overlapping roles despite their very detached organizational functioning.
The report, Planning Considerations for International Involvement in the Palestinian Security Sector, was made publicly available. "The report was critical because it allowed the Palestinians for the first time to openly engage ministers, the president, and the prime minister on this issue in very open terms," said IDRC’s Senior Program Specialist, Pamela Scholey. "It opened the door. It broke the taboo."
The IDRC sponsored ITAG together with the Royal Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Chopra added that the report also created controversy among the Israelis and their supporters because it basically showed that the capacity of the Palestinian security services was much less than previously anticipated. The job these forces were expected to accomplish, from the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the international community, for which they were also receiving constant criticism, was simply not within their capacity.
Phase II was no less remarkable. In order to prepare a security plan for deploying forces on the ground during and after the Israeli disengagement, members from the various Palestinian security services had to be brought together for the first time. "This was the first time that the Palestinian security services had ever conducted a plan," said Chopra. "It’s the first time many of them had ever been on the table together," added Scholey. "Many of them had never met!"
Chopra explained, however, that because a large amount of time and effort was required to keep the various sectors from arguing and to keep them working together in the same room, the resultant plan was very one-dimensional. Contingency planning was dreadfully lacking; a factor that would inevitably lead to its demise. Nevertheless, the plan that was developed in effect represented a political agreement between the various sectors of the Palestinian security services. There was agreement on what each of their roles would be during the disengagement. They were working together.
The plan was completed by the end of June. This was followed by Phase III: implementation. Each representative from the planning process brought the plan back to his own branch of the security services where further details were worked out. A sense of ownership was created. The security services were not being handed a plan from the powers that be and told to execute it. They had devised it on their own with the help of ITAG, and felt fully capable as a result to implement it.
Out of Phase III evolved one of the most important accomplishments of the whole process: The various Palestinian security services were unified for the first time ever under the command of a single individual — a major general in the Palestinian army. They also succeeded in implementing the plan, if even for a limited amount of time. They succeeded in working together.
The International Transition Assistance Group, by establishing the first independently-run peace operation, succeeded in creating unity of purpose among what was formerly a chaotic disarray of security services in one of the most sensitive and well-publicized conflicts of our time.
A complex and uncalculated series of events was to take place, however, that would eventually lead to a complete breakdown in the planning process that was achieved.
On the Wednesday prior to handover weekend, Musa Arafat, who was the head of military intelligence, was assassinated. A mob of assassins walked into his house, dragged him out, and killed him right under the watchful eyes of the security services in the area. "This acted like a torpedo into that structure," commented Chopra. If someone like Musa Arafat couldn't be protected, then what authority does this newly formed leadership have? The security services began receding into their various protective holes.
At the same time, while the Israelis were dismantling the Jewish settlements in Gaza, they left the synagogues in place. This left the Palestinian security services in a no-win situation. "What would it look like to the Palestinians if they were seen protecting the synagogues?" asked Chopra. At the same time, if they did not protect them, they would be criticized by the international community. Had the security services not already begun a process of disintegration following Arafat's assassination, they might have had the presence of mind to address this difficult predicament. As this was not the case, Palestinian mobs were shown on television screens all over the world ripping the synagogues apart.
The final nail in the coffin was an early Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The Palestinians were not prepared for this. And rather than leave the Gaza Strip in sectors, the Israeli army pulled out from all sectors at once, creating a security vacuum that a collapsed Palestinian security sector was unprepared to fill.
Peacekeeping operations usually start when a war has just ended, explained Chopra. "But here we’re in the middle of a war," he said. "You have Israelis and Palestinians fighting and 45,000 Palestinian security services fighting each other. And we got a plan. And it worked for awhile," said Chopra optimistically.
Although no one ever regained control over the Palestinian security services as a unified unit, the three-phase process that ITAG implemented demonstrated the possibility of eventually achieving a long-term restructuring of these services. But since the unilateral Israeli disengagement from Gaza in September 2005, much has changed. Hamas won a sweeping victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, resulting in fighting erupting between them and the mainly Fatah-backed Palestinian security services. A confused international community is also left at loss as to how to deal with this new political environment.
"Had the election outcome been different we might well have been into another phase," Chopra reflects. "But the election outcome wasn’t different. So now we’re trying to redefine fundamentally where this goes."
"If I take one thing away from the experience, which I’m interested in not just here [in Palestine] but [to apply] in other places, is that it was a different way of doing business," emphasized Chopra. And back to business it will be, as Chopra and Scholey, with their international team of experts, continue to scour through the ongoing chaos of local, regional, and international events to push forward a process that might become a stabilizing force for the lives of generations of Palestinians to come.
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