by David Bedein
Jerusalem - The Middle East News Line, known as a reliable and credible source, reports that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has drafted a plan that would end direct U.S. involvement in Palestinian security in the West Bank.
The plan calls for Palestinian trainers to replace those brought by the United States as well as the marginalization of the team headed by U.S. security coordinator Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton. Under the plan, Lt. Gen. Dayton would no longer have access to PA security forces or field operations.
“The idea is to have only Palestinians train and direct the security forces,” a PA official said.
The official said the PA draft covered security requirements and goals for the next two years. He said the plan has been divulged to only a handful of senior officials, including Interior Minister Said Abu Ali and several security chiefs.
The PA leadership, prodded by the ruling Fatah movement, determined that U.S. intervention was hampering security force development and undermining the legitimacy of the regime of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
“There is a consensus that the American presence has to be significantly reduced in 2010,” the official said.
The PA security plan, drafted by the Palestinian Interior Ministry, called for the replacement of Western security trainers with Palestinians. Palestinians would be selected to instruct police and other security officers in a range of skills.
A key step was the PA decision not to renew the contract of DynCorp International, responsible for training and mentoring Palestinian security forces in the West Bank and Jordan. The official said the Palestinians have succeeded DynCorp in conducting a two-month officers’ course while training in Jordan has been suspended.
In the future stage, the Palestinian official told the Middle East Newsline, Lt. Gen. Dayton, in his post since 2007, would be marginalized. Lt. Gen. Dayton’s staff has already been restricted to coordination with the Interior Ministry and was no longer involved in direct training or planning.
“Dayton’s role would be limited to bringing money and equipment for the security forces,” the official said. “He would not deal with PA operations or deployment.”
Earlier in the year, Lt. Gen. Dayton’s staff was expelled from the Interior Ministry’s Strategic Planning Department. Dayton’s staff was also said to have been racked by internal disputes, and in February the general replaced his British deputy director.
See this story in the Philadelphia Bulletin
See this report at Israel Behind the News
Showing posts with label Keith Dayton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keith Dayton. Show all posts
Monday, May 24, 2010
Saturday, May 15, 2010
CONTINUED U.S. TRAINING OF PA SECURITY FORCES: A DANGEROUS VENTURE
by Arlene Kushner and David Bedein
It has been reported that U.S. President Barack Obama recently pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to continue the American program for helping the Palestinian Authority upgrade its security forces
That program in question began in March 2005, with the establishment of a U.S. Security Coordinator Team, headed by Lt. General Keith Dayton. Plans called for selected PA National Security Force troops to be trained and equipped by the United States. Presumably, over time, the old PLO militia would be transformed into a professional force that would help to build a nation.
Five years later, with millions of dollars and much effort having been expended on this on-going program, cogent reasons for doubting its wisdom present themselves.
Major-General (res.) Ya’akov Amidror-former head of the IDF's Research and Assessment Division- suggested last year that Americans may be acting with “a certain naivete,” attempting to fulfill their dreams [for peace] while ignoring pertinent facts. Concurring, an Arab journalist with connections to the PA has stated forthrightly that, “To expect political fruits from this is a mistake-an illusion.”
One of the more serious questions that has surfaced concerns the loyalty of the troops that are being trained. General Dayton says they are loyal to “the Palestinian flag, and the Palestinian people.” Palestinian society, however, is founded on traditional Arab culture, whose first allegiance is to the clan (hamula), and not the nation.
Dr. Mordecai Kedar, research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, observes, “...when (not if) there will be domestic problems in the PA/Palestinian State these people will be loyal primarily to their clan rather than to the state, since they will never shoot their brothers or cousins...”
The role that Hamas might play vis-à-vis these forces is a cause of alarm. PA troops being trained are expected to stand against Hamas, so that it cannot take over in Judea and Samaria.
Yet a proposal for a “unity government” that would forge a Fatah-Hamas coalition remains on the table.
JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs in Washington DC, has voiced strong reservations about the wisdom of U.S. training of a Palestinian security force without a clear understanding of the authority to which that force would ultimately answer. It is within the realm of possibility that the very PA troops expected to contain Hamas might ultimately be commanded by Hamas. After all, that is precisely what occurred in Gaza, where we witness the Hamas armed forces brandishing American weapons.
Meanwhile, the fear that Palestinian troops may turn their weapons on the IDF stems from the precedent of what occurred with the outbreak of the second Intifada ten years ago, when Palestinian troops that had been nurtured and trained by the US and even by the IDF engaged in a full scale armed rebellion against Israel.
Indeed, only last week, The Palestinian Authority issued an official report, funded by the American government and by the European Union, which indicates that the the Palestinian security forces had risen to that of a "pre-army." level That report, available HERE, published by the Palestine Center for Policy and Social Research, mentions that the PA armed forces have been significantly professionalized under the U.S. military aid program, which, over the past 18 months, has trained five Palestinian battalions, under the framework of a U.S.-sponsored training in a four-month course held in Jordan”. The report states that that the United States has increased funding for PA security forces and plans to allocate more than $100 million over the next year.
In other words, were PA troops, in frustration and anger, to turn on Israel, they would do so with a new-found competency, thanks to the intense training they are being provided by the U.S.
Perhaps the time has come for Prime Minister Netanyahu to recall that a major stipulation of his plan for a Palestinian State that he presented at Bar Ilan University on June 14th, 2009 was that "In any peace agreement, the territory under Palestinian control must be disarmed, with solid security guarantees for Israel"
See this story at Israel Behind the News
It has been reported that U.S. President Barack Obama recently pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to continue the American program for helping the Palestinian Authority upgrade its security forces
That program in question began in March 2005, with the establishment of a U.S. Security Coordinator Team, headed by Lt. General Keith Dayton. Plans called for selected PA National Security Force troops to be trained and equipped by the United States. Presumably, over time, the old PLO militia would be transformed into a professional force that would help to build a nation.
Five years later, with millions of dollars and much effort having been expended on this on-going program, cogent reasons for doubting its wisdom present themselves.
Major-General (res.) Ya’akov Amidror-former head of the IDF's Research and Assessment Division- suggested last year that Americans may be acting with “a certain naivete,” attempting to fulfill their dreams [for peace] while ignoring pertinent facts. Concurring, an Arab journalist with connections to the PA has stated forthrightly that, “To expect political fruits from this is a mistake-an illusion.”
One of the more serious questions that has surfaced concerns the loyalty of the troops that are being trained. General Dayton says they are loyal to “the Palestinian flag, and the Palestinian people.” Palestinian society, however, is founded on traditional Arab culture, whose first allegiance is to the clan (hamula), and not the nation.
Dr. Mordecai Kedar, research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, observes, “...when (not if) there will be domestic problems in the PA/Palestinian State these people will be loyal primarily to their clan rather than to the state, since they will never shoot their brothers or cousins...”
The role that Hamas might play vis-à-vis these forces is a cause of alarm. PA troops being trained are expected to stand against Hamas, so that it cannot take over in Judea and Samaria.
Yet a proposal for a “unity government” that would forge a Fatah-Hamas coalition remains on the table.
JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs in Washington DC, has voiced strong reservations about the wisdom of U.S. training of a Palestinian security force without a clear understanding of the authority to which that force would ultimately answer. It is within the realm of possibility that the very PA troops expected to contain Hamas might ultimately be commanded by Hamas. After all, that is precisely what occurred in Gaza, where we witness the Hamas armed forces brandishing American weapons.
Meanwhile, the fear that Palestinian troops may turn their weapons on the IDF stems from the precedent of what occurred with the outbreak of the second Intifada ten years ago, when Palestinian troops that had been nurtured and trained by the US and even by the IDF engaged in a full scale armed rebellion against Israel.
Indeed, only last week, The Palestinian Authority issued an official report, funded by the American government and by the European Union, which indicates that the the Palestinian security forces had risen to that of a "pre-army." level That report, available HERE, published by the Palestine Center for Policy and Social Research, mentions that the PA armed forces have been significantly professionalized under the U.S. military aid program, which, over the past 18 months, has trained five Palestinian battalions, under the framework of a U.S.-sponsored training in a four-month course held in Jordan”. The report states that that the United States has increased funding for PA security forces and plans to allocate more than $100 million over the next year.
In other words, were PA troops, in frustration and anger, to turn on Israel, they would do so with a new-found competency, thanks to the intense training they are being provided by the U.S.
Perhaps the time has come for Prime Minister Netanyahu to recall that a major stipulation of his plan for a Palestinian State that he presented at Bar Ilan University on June 14th, 2009 was that "In any peace agreement, the territory under Palestinian control must be disarmed, with solid security guarantees for Israel"
See this story at Israel Behind the News
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Training the Palestinian Security Forces for What?
by Jonathan Rosenblum, Director of Jewish Media Resources
On Thursday afternoon December 24, Rabbi Meir Chai, a 45-year-old religious school teacher, was shot and killed as he left the Shomron settlement of Shavei Shomron, in which he lived with his wife and seven children. Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade claimed responsibility almost immediately, and promised “more quality operations from us.... “
Two days later, on Shabbos, Israeli forces blockaded Nablus and surrounded the homes where the three Al-Aqsa Brigade members who plotted the attack lived. None of the three surrendered in response to a demand from the IDF forces that they do so, and each was subsequently killed in gun battles with Israeli forces.
The response of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian media to the murder of Rabbi Chai and to Israel’s subsequent killing of his murderers raises again troubling questions about the Palestinian security services forces currently being trained by American and European experts.
Since 2005, the Untied States and EU have spent hundreds of millions of dollars training thousands of members of the various Palestinian security forces on the assumption that those forces will constitute one of the key institutions of the Palestinian state in the making. Those forces have been trained both in the basic police work and tasked with anti-terrorist efforts (at least in the minds of the trainers), on the assumption that a reduction in anti-Israel terror is a key component in winning Israeli agreement to the creation of a Palestinian state.
The results so far do not justify the investment nor give much cause to hope that the Palestinians are any closer to creating a stable political entity capable of living in peace with Israel. In The Case for Democracy, Natan Sharansky argued that only a democratic Palestinian state, in which citizens are capable of freely proclaiming their views in the marketplace, offers any hope of long-term peace with Israel. The creation of a trained police force would not have been self-evidently the first item on the agenda in creating the basics of a civil society capable of evolving into a democratic state. Nor has the record of the Palestinian security forces provided much cause for optimism on this score. Palestinian human rights groups have raised constant complaints against the various security forces for arbitrary arrests, brutality, and shakedown operations.
Nor has the training proved successful in creating a national identity that supercedes various other identities. Almost all members of the security forces are simultaneously members of Fatah, the revolutionary Palestinian organization from which most of the current leaders of the Palestinian Authority were drawn, and profess loyalty to Fatah. In addition, American trainers are not sufficiently sensitive to the importance of clan loyalties in Palestinian society.
The latter may have played a key role in the total failure of the American and European-trained forces to prevent a Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, even though those forces enjoyed a vast numerical advantage over the Hamas forces. Many Palestinian Authority fighters simply deserted or joined with Hamas fighters. Low levels of loyalty and esprit de corps have also characterized the Palestinian Authority forces in confrontation with Palestinian gunmen on the West Bank since 2007. Palestinian Security forces proved incapable of evicting Fatah gunmen from the casbah. They proved similarly ineffective in operations against an Islamic Jihad group in the Kabatya refugee camp. And in a mock drill, fake “Hamas” operatives attacked a PA prison and freed all the prisoners after the Palestinian security forces fled the scene.
Most important from Israel’s point of view, the American-trained forces have proven to be indifferent as an anti-terrorist force. As Maj.-General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the IDF Staff and Command College and former head of the IDF Research and Assessment Division, points out, police work may have legitimacy in Palestinian society, anti-terrorist activities do not. Israel continues to carry out 70-80% of the anti-terrorist actions in the West Bank. To the extent that the Palestinian Authority security forces have conducted such operations, it has been almost entirely out of a desire to prevent a repeat of Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip in the West Bank, not out of any desire to protect Israel from terror attacks.
Indeed it would be impossible to expect Palestinian security forces to show any commitment to anti-terror action when the Palestinian Authority leadership continues to glorify terrorism. After the murder of Rabbi Chai, approximately 100 meters from the site of a recently removed security checkpoint, the Palestinian Authority issued no condemnation of his murder, even after the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade claimed responsibility. Palestinian media described Anan Subbah as the mastermind of the murder of Rabbi Chai, after the former was killed by IDF security forces. And yet Palestinian Authority President Abbas sent personal condolences to “the holy martyrs of the Palestinian revolution,” and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salem Fayyad personally visited the families of the slain terrorists. Meanwhile the official Palestinian media denounced their deaths as “murder in cold blood” and an “assassination.”
The proclamation of Rabbi Chai’s murderers as “military commanders, brave heroes and fighters,” was of a piece with the Palestinian Authority’s consistent glorification of terrorists. In late December, Abbas sponsored a celebration of the 50th birthday of Dalal Mughrabi, the mastermind of the 1979 Coastal Road Massacre, in which 37 Jews were killed. The official proclamation described her as the “bride of the cosmos,” and the Palestinian Authority daily proclaimed her “the heroine of the Palestinian heroines.”
Two high schools, numerous sports competitions, a new computer center, a Palestinian summer camp and a town square have been named after Mughrabi to date. A one-hour Palestinian television special recently celebrated the 1979 attack. In a similar vein, the Palestinian Authority just issued a musical video celebrating Wafa Indris, the first Palestinian female suicide bomber.
But while the U.S.-trained Palestinian security forces have proven largely ineffective against Palestinian terrorists of various stripes, they do threaten Israel. Twice before have CIA-trained Palestinian security forces, with whom there was a façade of cooperation with Israel, turned their guns on Israelis - the first time during the Tunnel Riots of 1996 and the second time at the outset of the Second Intifada called by Yasir Arafat after the 2000 Camp David summit. The fear is that those being trained under the supervision of U.S. General Keith Dayton may prove more effective than their predecessors. Dayton has himself stated that U.S. training has lifted Palestinian expectations of receiving their state within two years, and he raised the spectre of the Palestinian security forces turning their guns on Israel if those expectations are not met.
There is evidence that those U.S.-trained security forces include members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade responsible for the murder of Rabbi Chai. PA Prime Minister Fayyad, the great “Palestinian moderate” in Western eyes, has previously offered shelter to Brigade members in the compounds of the Palestinian security forces and paid their salaries out of PA coffers. Dan Diker, one of Israel’s most respected political analysts, writes that senior Al-Aqsa Brigade commanders have been assigned senior positions in the PA security forces, such as Aba Jabbal, the senior Palestinian Authority officer in Nablus. The mastermind of the murder of Rabbi Chai’s murder, Anan Subbuh, was found with two M-16s in his possession, even though as part of a U.S.-brokered amnesty agreement, he had foresworn any future possession of such arms.
Senior members of the Israeli defense establishment point out that the Palestinian security forces are not only receiving training from the United States and Europe, but high quality equipment. For instance, advanced surveillance equipment capable of monitoring military communications networks, intelligence networks, and cellular phones has been employed against Israeli targets. Abu Yousuf, a senior officer in Abbas’s Force 17 Presidential Guard, told the New York Sun (August 21 2007), “I do not think the operations of the Palestinian resistance [a code word for terrorism] would have been so successful and would have killed more than one thousand Israelis since 2000... without these [American] trainings.”
After the IDF eliminated the three terrorists who murdered Rabbi Chai, the United States demanded public clarifications from Israel of what had taken place. No similar clarifications were sought from the PA after Rabbi Chai’s murder and the PA’s failure to condemn it.
Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, executive vice-president of Agudath Israel of America, wrote to Secretary of State Clinton, of Mr. Abbas’s failure to disassociate himself and the Palestinian Authority from Rabbi Chai’s murder, “There is something deeply wrong here.” When the recipients of half a billion dollars in aid under the 2010 foreign aid budget law “are linked to terrorists, and even have words of praise for terrorists, it is only logical to question the wisdom, not to mention the moral rectitude of our aid,” he continued.
Indeed.
Jonathan Rosenblum is the director of Jewish Media Resources, a leading media organization dedicated to furthering an understanding of Torah Judaism. Jewish Media Resources works with foreign journalists stationed in Israel and with local journalists by providing access to leading figures within the Orthodox Jewish community in Israel, and with information and insights about the community. Jonathan also serves as an English-language spokesman for the Orthodox Jewish community with foreign journalists.
View the Post at israelbehindthenews.com
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Special Report: Assessment of US Military Aid to Fatah (The Center for Near East Policy Research)
Assessment of US Military Aid to Fatah
In March 2005, a US Security Coordinator Team was established in order to help the Palestinian Authority reorganize its security services.
The approach of the Team is being presented as markedly different from, and more effective than, prior international efforts to help the Palestinians transform the old Palestinian Liberation Organization militia into a professional force – a gendarmerie – that might serve a state. General Keith Dayton, who now holds the office of Coordinator and is striving to fulfill the mandate with which he has been charged, is on record as saying “What we have created are new men.”
This report takes a careful look at the development of this program and its import.
Click here for the full report in PDF format: Assessment of US Military Aid to Fatah
In March 2005, a US Security Coordinator Team was established in order to help the Palestinian Authority reorganize its security services.
The approach of the Team is being presented as markedly different from, and more effective than, prior international efforts to help the Palestinians transform the old Palestinian Liberation Organization militia into a professional force – a gendarmerie – that might serve a state. General Keith Dayton, who now holds the office of Coordinator and is striving to fulfill the mandate with which he has been charged, is on record as saying “What we have created are new men.”
This report takes a careful look at the development of this program and its import.
Click here for the full report in PDF format: Assessment of US Military Aid to Fatah
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
The Philadelphia Bulletin: Fatah, Hamas Agree on Joint Security Force
by David Bedein
deal Occurs, Despite US Training Fatah to Fight Hamas
A senior adviser to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has said, according to Middle East Newsline, Fatah, the faction that runs the PA, has agreed in principle to form a joint security force with its rival, Hamas.
Nabil Shaath, who is serving as a PA negotiator, said this took place in the course of its negotiations in Cairo, Egypt with the rival terrorist group, which runs Gaza. This has taken place despite the presence of American military advisers in the West Bank who are training the PA’s security forces and U.S. opposition to Hamas.
“There are many details that must be concluded,” Mr. Shaath said.
This marked the second time in three months that a Fatah official claimed an agreement with Hamas in reconciliation talks conducted in Egypt.
Egypt has been encouraging Hamas to agree to the joint security force in an effort to form a unity government with Fatah. The next round of talks was scheduled for July.
See this story in the Philadelphia Bulletin
See this story at Israel Behind the News
deal Occurs, Despite US Training Fatah to Fight Hamas
A senior adviser to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has said, according to Middle East Newsline, Fatah, the faction that runs the PA, has agreed in principle to form a joint security force with its rival, Hamas.
Nabil Shaath, who is serving as a PA negotiator, said this took place in the course of its negotiations in Cairo, Egypt with the rival terrorist group, which runs Gaza. This has taken place despite the presence of American military advisers in the West Bank who are training the PA’s security forces and U.S. opposition to Hamas.
“There are many details that must be concluded,” Mr. Shaath said.
This marked the second time in three months that a Fatah official claimed an agreement with Hamas in reconciliation talks conducted in Egypt.
Egypt has been encouraging Hamas to agree to the joint security force in an effort to form a unity government with Fatah. The next round of talks was scheduled for July.
See this story in the Philadelphia Bulletin
See this story at Israel Behind the News
Monday, May 18, 2009
The Philadlephia Bulletin: US Admits Training Palestinian Armed Forces While PA Negotiates With Hamas
by David Bedein
The American military now openly admits providing military training to Palestinian military forces.
A U.S. military official, Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, assigned by the United States to be a “security coordinator,” has been appointed to train 1,500 Palestinian military personnel. They will be available for “immediate deployment” in the area between Jenin and Nablus, less than an hour from Israel’s populated coastal plain.
He discussed his mission at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies last week.
Lt. Gen. Dayton said: “We also have something in our pocket called the West Bank Training Initiative where we have plans to continue a series of courses in the West Bank on logistics, leadership, first aid, maintenance, English language, battalion staff training and driver education. These are led by our British and Turkish officers with an eye to eventually turning this over to the Palestinians themselves.”
The premise behind American military aid to the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) military forces is the hope the American-trained Palestinian personnel will fight Hamas.
However, the training of Palestinian military units by U.S. advisers is taking place at the same time the PA is negotiating to join forces with the Hamas terrorist organization, which rules Gaza.
All indications show the PA is making every effort to co-opt and include Hamas in its military forces for joint operations against Israel.
Were that to happen, American military advisers and their Palestinian trainees would be placed into direct confrontation with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and with the Israeli population.
Despite assurances to the contrary, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the parent organization of the PA, remains in a state of war with Israel.
To reassure the Washington Institute, Lt. Gen. Dayton downplayed the dangers of the training that the Americans are providing the Palestinians, by saying that “Our equipping is all nonlethal...”
See this story in the Philadelphia Bulletin
See this story at Israel Behind the News
The American military now openly admits providing military training to Palestinian military forces.
A U.S. military official, Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, assigned by the United States to be a “security coordinator,” has been appointed to train 1,500 Palestinian military personnel. They will be available for “immediate deployment” in the area between Jenin and Nablus, less than an hour from Israel’s populated coastal plain.
He discussed his mission at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies last week.
Lt. Gen. Dayton said: “We also have something in our pocket called the West Bank Training Initiative where we have plans to continue a series of courses in the West Bank on logistics, leadership, first aid, maintenance, English language, battalion staff training and driver education. These are led by our British and Turkish officers with an eye to eventually turning this over to the Palestinians themselves.”
The premise behind American military aid to the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) military forces is the hope the American-trained Palestinian personnel will fight Hamas.
However, the training of Palestinian military units by U.S. advisers is taking place at the same time the PA is negotiating to join forces with the Hamas terrorist organization, which rules Gaza.
All indications show the PA is making every effort to co-opt and include Hamas in its military forces for joint operations against Israel.
Were that to happen, American military advisers and their Palestinian trainees would be placed into direct confrontation with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and with the Israeli population.
Despite assurances to the contrary, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the parent organization of the PA, remains in a state of war with Israel.
To reassure the Washington Institute, Lt. Gen. Dayton downplayed the dangers of the training that the Americans are providing the Palestinians, by saying that “Our equipping is all nonlethal...”
See this story in the Philadelphia Bulletin
See this story at Israel Behind the News
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
