Palestinians go for de facto state

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad says the Palestinian Authority plans to proclaim a de facto state by 2011.

A vital component in that historic undertaking will be the U.S.-trained Palestinian security forces fanning out across the West Bank to re-establish order. But some Israelis see this new force as a threat.

Palestinian leaders say they can no longer sit and wait for the U.S.-driven peace process to stumble forward. Taking a leaf out of the Israelis' book, they are seeking to establish their own "facts on the ground" -- and a functioning security apparatus is one of the most important.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's refusal to halt settlement-building in the West Bank, as requested by U.S. President Barack Obama in a bid to kick-start the moribund peace process, has dismayed the Palestinians.

Under the so-called road map for peace, a U.S.-brokered document adopted in 2003, Palestinians pledged to crack down on militant organizations and in return, the Israelis would freeze settlement activity.

A key element of the state envisaged by Fayyad, an independent Palestinian figure untainted by the murky dealings of the late Yasser Arafat, is a reformed and accountable security apparatus.

An independent Palestinian state can only emerge with Israel's approval but Fayyad's unilateral initiative represents a departure from established Palestinian political thinking still rooted in the Arafat era and the objective of a negotiated settlement.

It also reflects swelling Palestinian frustration with Israel's continued refusal to make significant concessions to achieve a comprehensive settlement, and thus could end up impeding Obama's efforts.

But the emergence of a cohesive and effective Palestinian security establishment seems to be real enough and this could yet influence events over the coming months.

In recent months, four 500-man battalions of new-era Palestinian security personnel, trained by the Americans in Jordan, have deployed in the West Bank. Three more battalions are being trained and equipped. All personnel were vetted by U.S., Israeli and Jordanian security services.

To a large degree, the Palestinian force has eliminated the criminal gangs that had taken over the territory during Arafat's Palestinian Authority, riddled by corruption and clan-based rivalries, and has begun to re-establish the PA's authority.

These units, trained to conduct police-style operations and enforce law and order, are drawn from the mainstream Fatah movement and have also killed or rounded up large numbers of Hamas rivals bent on taking over the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip.

Most importantly, they are accountable to the Palestinian Authority and not the cluster of competing security chiefs-cum-warlords that existed under Arafat's rule of keeping potential challengers busy plotting against each other.

There is now a palpable sense of order emerging in the West Bank but the important element in all this is that these security units have also eliminated attacks on Israel by militant groups.

This means in effect that the PA, under U.S. tutelage, has turned its back on armed resistance against the Israelis.

That has put Israeli hard-liners, who want at all costs to avoid a peace settlement in which Israel gives up the West Bank, in an awkward position -- to the point that the see the new Palestinian security apparatus as a threat.

U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, the officer who heads the Palestinian security restructuring program, said recently that "their actions have made a positive impression on senior Israeli commanders."

But the Israeli military has refused to allow these U.S.-trained personnel to have any heavy weapons or advanced communications. The new force is also considered to be dangerously under-resourced.

Still, commanders are considering letting the Palestinian Authority form an elite unit of counter-terror commandos to hunt down Hamas die-hards, leaving everyday police operations to regular police trained by the European Union.

Dayton, the mastermind behind the new PA force, was appointed the U.S. security coordinator in March 2005. His mandate expired recently.

But it is interesting that he signed up for an extension -- two years, which neatly fits in with Fayyad's time frame for a de facto Palestinian state. That suggests that Fayyad's declaration had a deeper resonance, and probably U.S. approval, than has been generally appreciated.

The Palestinians feel it is time for the Israelis to respond to the improvement in security by the PA and start pulling out their troops. Fayyad -- and Dayton -- appear to have given them a timetable.