A group of red-beret-wearing Palestinian police scuffled with Israeli soldiers near Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ residence last week and ordered the military to leave the area of the West Bank under Palestinian security control. Footage of the December 21, 2015 incident was published by local media. It shows Palestinian presidential guards threatening Israeli forces outside of the city of Beitunia near Ramallah.
A Palestinian security official said his officers told the Israeli soldiers they would shoot if the soldiers did not retreat, reported the Bethlehem-based outlet Ma’an News Agency.
Because the confrontation involved Abbas’ personal protection force, the dispute was upgraded to the political track.
Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly apologized to the Palestinian leadership, citing the movement into a region controlled by Palestinian security as a mistake, according to Defense News.
Defense News went on to report the account of an unnamed senior Israeli official who said: ”Our soldiers came to the barrier that blocked off the street and told their soldiers to lower their weapons, that we needed to work here,” continuing, “The security of Abu Mazen [Abbas] started arguing, and after a few minutes, our soldiers understood. They took a different route. There was no violence; just shouting and perhaps pushing.”The Palestinian leadership did not log the incident in its daily monitoring report of Israeli military activities inside of the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.
While interactions between Palestinian security and Israeli military forces are not rare, the schism marked the first time in years when Palestinian police removed Israeli soldiers from a city in the West Bank.
Under the Oslo agreement the West Bank is divided into three regions (area A, B and C). Area A includes all of the major Palestinian cities and is under full Palestinian security control. Israeli forces are prohibited from entering these islands of autonomy, although in practice they cross into area A several times a week. Typically they enter for nighttime incursions and arrest operations, at which time Palestinian police are generally out of sight as a byproduct of security coordination between the armed forces.
The relationship between the two armed outfits has come under increased scrutiny by Palestinians who perceive security coordination as an example of their leadership sanctioning Israeli military control over the West Bank. In a recent survey by the leading West Bank pollster, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 64-percent of Palestinians said they support an end to security coordination with Israel.
Last year the Palestinian leadership voted to end security coordination with the Israeli military, which in theory would mean Palestinian police would make inroads to remove Israeli forces from area A of the West Bank. Despite the formal decision of the Palestinian government, implementation is still under debate. Palestinian leaders are meeting this week in Ramallah for continued discussions on when cutting ties with the Israeli military will take place.
The Palestinian presidential guard is one branch of the Palestinian police force established by the Oslo Accords. The forces train in the West Bank city of Jericho at a $10 million police academy funded by the U.S. government. In 2014 they added the first all-women unit.
The last notable confrontation between the presidential guard and the Israeli military took place in September 1996 when the presidential guard fired shots on Israeli soldiers in both the West Bank and Gaza, during clashes between the Israeli military and Palestinian demonstrators. The incident caused a diplomatic frenzy, and then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, serving his first term, met with the former chairman of the Palestinian government Yasser Arafat.
Thanks Allison, but is there really any substantive sign of an end to the dithering Abbas regime? I know your previous post indicated another intifada on the horizon. However, the overwhelming military might of the IDS is a sobering thought. What will the Palestinian leadership decide/not decide in Ramallah?
Yes, good on the stand taken by the Palestinian guards — Israeli soldiers have long stolen a mile , having been given an inch. The Oslo Accord is surely dead and we must keep up international pressure to see true justice in I/P. Never again should the Christmas celebration in Bethlehem involve a star of candles in tear gas cannisters.
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2015/12/christmas-in-bethlehem
Those of you celebrating this event had better keep your heads down .Max (debunked ) Narr will be here to claim these poor Jewish victims have been “ethnically cleansed” from their historic homeland.
There is a mid-european proverb: “cowardly people will not have a home to call their own”!
The palestinians behave like a bunch of sheep, 67 years of subjugation, daily insults, loss of their rights, loss and destruction of their land and home did not make them to react with a powerful “that is enough”!
Just like a single butterfly does not make a spring, this what I call innocent show of force will not bring anything positiv to the destiny of that people. They must chase all those old men, who are their so called leaders out the PA, elect new, younger ones who have balls in their throusers and who are not bought with a few silver coins, to refer to the Bible and Judas.
They must go to the UN, apply to all UN sections, ask for UN forces to guard the lines between Israel and the West Bank, demand the removal of all illegal settlers, file criminal charges at the ICC, in other words make so much noise that the world cannot ignore them anymore.
Or they can throw stones, get butchered in return, let the IDF to check new weapons on them once a while and keep saying: beeeeeh.
I imagine the Palestinian security force has a very limited set of powers made in Oslo, right? At night they hide so Israelis can come and do whatever they want?
Layers of Israeli police control in occupied land: http://america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2014/7/west-bank-security.html
I want to thank you all for the nice words about me, it seems the buggle sounded an open season on Theo.
In this blog I was already called an anti-semite, a zionist agent and whatever the couch-potatoes can think up, Mooser even offered a couple years ago to have my facial features rearranged.
MW is about 10 years old, I am with you around 5, and what have you achieved during all that time with your blogs? Nothing, more and more palestinians get killed over the years, the israelis populate the West Bank, destroy palestinian houses and even communities. You are kidding yourself and all those who believe in you. The saying “the pen is more powerful than a sword” is coined by cowards who would never dare to stand up for their freedom and rights, they let others do it for them.
Most of you are jews, so remember the 1944 Warsaw uprising of your people, who did wonderful things with very little. They rather died with a gun in their hands than to be butchered later. There are hundreds of other similar examples in the history of the mankind, one is the birth of this nation, where a ragged army of civilians beat the most powerful army of that time.
Wish you all a great 2016, we see what did you achieve by the end of the year.