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Fear rules as authority faces collapse

March 8, 2004

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The Palestinians have lost control of their urban ghettos to violent gangs, writes Ed O'Loughlin in Nablus.

Colonel Rabih Khundaji's 1000 policemen are nominally in charge of the Palestinian city of Nablus, but their powers are subject to frequent and abrupt suspension.

"The Israelis have said they will shoot on sight any Palestinian security man who is carrying a weapon," the colonel says. "They have to run away whenever the Israeli forces invade the town."

On Thursday last week, the Israeli army raided the colonel's headquarters at dawn, looking for a Palestinian policeman suspected of involvement in militant attacks. During the raid the Israelis forced the police to hold their hands above their heads and parade with their own criminal prisoners.

"This coincided with the dawn call to prayer, and people were going to the mosque and seeing the police humiliated," Colonel Khundaji recalled bitterly. "They see that the police who are supposed to protect them can't even protect themselves."

Since the present uprising began thre-and-a-half years ago, 26 Nablus policemen have been killed by Israeli forces, including 11 who died in May 2001 when Israeli F-16 jets destroyed the city's prison as part of a wave of retaliation for a suicide bombing that killed six people in Netanya.

Israel points out that Palestinian policemen have been implicated in terrorist attacks: most recently a policeman from Bethlehem murdered 11 people when he blew himself up on a Jerusalem bus in January.

The Israeli Government denies that in towns such as Nablus and Jenin its troops will shoot armed Palestinian policemen on sight. "There is no policy of either shooting or confiscating Palestinian police weapons just like that," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Jonathan Pelled.

"Obviously if there is an operation and we go into Nablus and we run into a policemen who fires at us we shoot back and if we are lucky they get hit."

Whatever the truth, policing is becoming a crisis issue not just in Nablus but across the archipelago of urban ghettoes nominally under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

With Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat under a form of loose house arrest and his security forces divided - largely to prevent a challenge to Mr Arafat - there are mounting signs that the authority is losing its ability to maintain basic order.

In Gaza last week Khalid al-Ziban, a veteran Arafat associate and propagandist, was gunned down by masked gunmen from a rival Fatah faction.

Another Arafat ally, Nablus Mayor Ghassan Sharqa, resigned in protest at the violent anarchy now loose in his town. Four months ago his brother died in what is believed to have been a botched attempt to kill the Mayor.

This death was only one of as many as 40 recent Arab-on-Arab killings in Nablus that had little or nothing to do with the war against Israel.

Most of the perpetrators and many of the victims were young militants belonging to various factions of Mr Arafat's ruling Fatah movement, battling for vengeance, influence and control of lucrative smuggling and extortion rackets. Some victims were innocent Palestinians who were caught in the shootings.

One of these was Shu'eib Shakhshir, a 34-year-old furniture salesman who was caught in a gun battle between known Fatah militants and gunmen loyal to a local hard man.

Fares Shakhshir, his only brother, complains about the lack of progress in the investigation into the killing - even though the identities of those responsible are well known.

"Nablus is a lawless place, but it wasn't always like this. There is no security now, there are just gangs," he says. "We live in a double fear - we are afraid of these people and afraid of the Israeli army."

Born out of the Oslo dream of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian Authority has instead seen its wealth, prestige and territory dwindle in a losing battle with the superior might of Israel. Many observers now fear that the authority - and with it all hope for the post-Oslo peace process - is on the brink of ruin.

"Israel wants to keep everyone on the Palestinian side as weak as possible," said one Western diplomat. "The danger now is that the PA could collapse completely, and they (the Israelis) don't seem to realise that they need them. They could end up destroying them and find out that all they have got are warlords and Islamic sheiks to talk to."

Israel says it has no interest in seeing the Palestinian towns descend into anarchy. Instead, says Mr Pelled, it wants a strong authority with one centralised security force - although not under the control of Mr Arafat, whom Israel blames for all Palestinian "terrorism".

"The concept is that once the Palestinians can ensure a quietening of terrorist activity in a certain area, in these cities, the idea is for us to give them back control of these cities," Mr Pelled says.

Palestinians say that Israel is only prepared to tolerate a compliant Palestinian Authority which, in effect, enforces the occupation on Israel's behalf.

A recent poll showed that a majority of Palestinians already believe the authority exists in name only, and almost one in three think it should unilaterally disband.

Dr Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian human rights activist and harsh critic of Mr Arafat, charges that the authority's main surviving function is to protect the privileged Fatah elite and relieve Israel of the full legal, moral, financial and military cost of ruling more than 3 million unwilling Palestinians.

Even establishment figures such as Mr Sharqa - a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's executive committee - warn of a crisis of Palestinian Authority legitimacy, fed by the lawlessness and feeding back into it in turn.

"Our society has deteriorated to the point where I have employees submitting their letters of resignation because they don't feel protected in their jobs any more," he said, explaining his own resignation last week.

"In some villages the mayors can't cut off power to people who don't pay for it because if they do they'll come and shoot the mayor's power lines out in revenge."








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