JINSA Confirms My Suspicions

I have attempted to alert the interested parties that American training of Palestinian Authority policemen is not all it's cranked up to be.

Israel's security, I wrote, (for eample, here and here and here) is endangered in the mad rush to achieve "peace" before the Bush end-of-term period.

Well, JINSA confirms my thinking on their
JINSA Report #816 of October 10, 2008:

Missing Mandates, Part II (Palestinian Police)

JINSA has commented over time about the American military mission to train Palestinian security forces. Under Oslo, the Palestinians were supposed to be police; counter-terrorism was left to the IDF. Training stopped during the second Intifada, but resumed in 2005. The Palestinians are now called "security forces," and receive counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency training and equipment.

During the recent Flag & General Officers Trip, we questioned various IDF officials about these forces to understand the extent to which the Israelis believe the Palestinians accept the mission to provide security for Israel and "dismantle the terrorist infrastructure" - the heart of the Palestinian obligation under the Road Map. If the Palestinian security forces haven't agreed to do the job, it is irresponsible for the Americans to give them counter-terror capabilities. We met with the commander of the American training mission as well.

The Israelis did not criticize the American military mission directly. We were told the Americans were "good people," but heard several times that the Palestinians have the capability, but lack the will to partner on security issues. A very senior IDF official also noted that Palestinians who participated in the first training mission were active leaders in the second Intifada. "I told (the Americans) we have experience with the Palestinian police since 1994. It is a big risk for us." And asked whether he worried about the Americans "making better terrorists," his one-word answer was, "Yes."

A senior intelligence official said the Palestinians are "very frank about what they will do and what they won't. They don't have support from Ramallah (the seat of the Palestinian Authority government) to partner with us." Furthermore, he added, the Palestinian training mission makes U.S.-Israel security relations more complicated. "We used to talk to the Americans about issues that concerned both countries. Now, they talk to us about Palestinians."

There are two problems here. First, the Americans are training Palestinians to do a job their leadership has not agreed they will do. They focus on providing skills to the Palestinians because that is a job they can do, and they ignore where those skills might be used because that isn't in the mandate.

The American commander expressed faith in the troops he was training, and carefully defined his mission as being West Bank security (not, by the way, "Israel's security"). "Gaza," he said flatly, "can fall into the sea." And there is the second missing mandate. The Americans have nothing to do with Gaza - for good reason - but the result is that we can at best provide security forces for the West Bank, creating de facto three states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean: Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

That is not U.S. policy, but it is what emanates from the lack of mission for anyone - U.S., Israeli or Palestinian security forces - to deal with Hamas in Gaza.