by Michael Jansen

With Israel's evacuation from Gaza and four small West Bank settlements less than two weeks away, the intentions of both Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon and US President George Bush are far from clear. While Israel is determined to depart from Gaza and vacate the northern West Bank colonies, planning for "disengagement" has been haphazard and the withdrawal of the settlers could very well be chaotic. Although Bush has oft declared that he hopes the Palestinians can meet the challenge of "disengagement," he has done very little to be of assistance. General William Ward was dispatched to help the two sides coordinate the pullout and Bush called upon European donors to offer material assistance to the Palestinian Authority but he has provided nothing on the material plane.

Chaos on the Israeli side during the evacuation may very well suit Sharon and his ally Bush because it could lead to confusion and anarchy in Gaza and perhaps exacerbate lawlessness in the northern West Bank. Sharon could prefer a chaotic outcome to a coherent outcome because he could argue that Israel cannot afford the security risks of pulling out of any more occupied territory.

Bush could also opt for chaos because he could throw up his hands and say he cannot proceed with the "roadmap," which Israel opposes, because the Palestinians did not get their security act together to deal with the vacuum created by Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Bush's disengagement would, once again, leave the Israelis free to continue with their effort to transform the West Bank into walled Israeli and Palestinian enclaves, which would prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state except, perhaps, in Israeli abandoned Gaza.

Therefore, a chaotic "disengagement" could be used in an unexpected way to strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank and boost Israel's argument that the Palestinian Authority is not a capable and credible partner to engage in negotiations. Bush would go along with this line of reasoning because he continues to eschew involvement in Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking.

Those who want the Israeli "disengagement" and the assumption of control by the Palestinians to proceed smoothly have been urging Israel to closely coordinate the operation with the Palestinian security apparatus. But Israel, which insists on maintaining its unilateralist approach, refused to discuss its operation with the Palestinians until this week. To make matters worse, the US, which assumed the job of facilitating the evacuation, has already begun to pull out of the process and revert to Bush's original policy of refusing to engage seriously with the Palestinians.

Bush's disengagement began last week when General Ward, appointed coordinator of the Israeli withdrawal, was promoted and reassigned to Europe. He is scheduled to depart in September and no one was named to replace him although the post-withdrawal period will determine if the moribund "peace process" has any future. The determining factor is security. If the Palestinian security services put in a credible performance during the evacuation and are able to impose order in its aftermath this will constitute a considerable victory for the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas.

But his security agencies require major reform if they are to regain the competence, confidence and effectiveness they exhibited until Israel demolished the Palestinian security infrastructure after the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000, particularly during its reinvasion of the West Bank and Gaza in 2002 and 2003. Having deprived the Palestinian Authority of the "monopoly of force" all states require to function, Israel does not want Abbas to reassert this function. Israel revealed its attitude when it refused to permit the Palestinian security services from buying enough new weapons, ammunition and vehicles to challenge Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and gangs of common criminals who are operating in some localities in the West Bank.

Last week the international press played right into the hands of Sharon and Bush by picking up all the negative points in a leaked study of the Palestinian security apparatus carried out by the Strategic Assessments Initiative, a Canadian and Dutch funded non-governmental organisation which has worked in Kosovo and East Timor. The survey, the first to be conducted by an independent team with the cooperation of the Palestinian ministry of interior and in coordination with General Ward, reached some unflattering conclusions about the Palestinian security services. The report said they had been established on "an ad hoc non-statutory basis," suffered from the personalised control of Yasser Arafat, and have not yet been able to institutionalise their functions and create effective command and control mechanisms. Attempts to consolidate the agencies under the ministry of interior have largely failed although there has been some recent rationalisation and unification of the multiplicity of services, which Arafat created to play one off against another to maintain control over them.

In spite of these fundamental problems and deficiencies, the report also shows that the Palestinian civil police, Preventive Security Organisation, National Security Forces, Military Intelligence, Special Forces, and Presidential Guard (Force 17) exhibit moderate to strong as well as weak capacities in various operational areas. Generally speaking, these forces are more effective in Gaza, which the Israelis divided into three blocs, than in the West Bank which has been fractured into many unconnected enclaves by Israeli closures, checkpoints, walls and fences.

Although the Palestinian services can boast credible performances in some areas, the report warns that they might be unable to manage threats to the "disengagement" process posed by rocket and bomb attacks mounted by militants, civilian looting of settlements and infrastructure, interference from local armed militias and gangs, the move into the security vacuum once the Israeli army departs, and post-withdrawal violence that could lead to renewed attacks on Gaza by the Israeli army.

With the aim of meeting the disengagement challenge, the Palestinian Authority has, over the past three months, attempted to rationalise upgrade and unify its security services. A 5,000-man "disengagement" force made up of experienced officers from various services has been established and trained. The authority has striven mightily to convince Hamas, the opposition party with the largest and best armed militia, to maintain the current ceasefire during the withdrawal. Fateh, which has called up 1,500 volunteers, and local clan networks, have been persuaded to assist the security services.

According to Jarat Chopra, the head of the team, which drew up the report, "real changes have been made but they are overshadowed by the prospective messiness of the disengagement process." He said there has been progress in the unification of the services and elimination of overstaffing through the retirement and pensioning off of long serving officers. The most significant advance is the establishment of a National Security Planning Team to carry on the reform and restructuring process after Israeli "disengagement." Although the reassignment of General Ward and the clear lack of interest in or outright opposition to reform in Washington and Tel Aviv could discourage the Palestinian Authority from carrying through with essential changes, the study's recommendations and proposed framework for reform could, in the view of Chopra, be the basis for a long term programme which could be used by European donors and Arab allies like Jordan and Egypt to ensure that the Palestinians carry out thoroughgoing security reform and regain control of Palestinian-held Gaza and enclaves in the West Bank. Of course, these donors and allies will have to be prepared to challenge Bush and Sharon - who seem to prefer chaos to control - on this issue.

This article was published in the Thursday, August 4, 2005 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.