The United States began providing security assistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the mid-1990s, and actively did so through the 2000s. After the Oslo Accords formed the PA, the U.S. gave aid on an ad hoc basis, often covertly at the outset. Since 2005, however, the U.S. State Department has provided direct financial and personnel assistance to Palestinian security organizations when it established the office of the United States Security Coordinator (USSC) for Israel and the Palestinian territories through the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). In 2007 the USSC team began training certain Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF) including the Palestinian National Security Forces (NSF) and the Presidential Guard with the intent to train, equip, and garrison 10 NSF battalions by the end of 2010. Over the year, U.S. security assistance to the Palestinian Authority has expanded and received praise as well as criticism from American, Palestinian, and Israeli groups.
Overview
Arafat era (1993–2000)
U.S. security sector assistance began publicly at the conclusion of the Oslo Accords, through aid to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for the Palestinian Police under the authority of PLO chairman Yasser Arafat. While Arafat requested international donor assistance for his police force in early 1993, substantial coordination did not occur before the deployment of the Palestinian Police to Gaza and Jericho in 1994. According to Norwegian scholar Brynjar Lia, in his book Building Arafat's Police: The Politics of International Police Assistance in the Palestinian Territories after the Oslo Agreement, the international community, especially the European Union (EU) and the United States, was at odds regarding the appropriate means by which to facilitate donor aid to the newly established Palestinian Authority. Additionally, though concerns about inadequate police equipment, training, and resources were paramount to the PLO and Arafat, international actors did not emphasize this component of their overall efforts to support the Oslo agreements. Lia argues that this was predominantly because many donor countries already had covert bilateral security sector assistance programs unrelated to the new international donation structures, and also because the PLO did not successfully convey their requests to Western donors who lacked confidence that the PLO would coordinate security aid to donor satisfaction.Lia (2007), pp. 33–40.
In December 1993 the first police donor conference was held in Oslo, Norway, with 14 donor countries plus the EU, U.S., World Bank, PLO, and Israel invited. Egypt and Jordan were the only Arab countries in attendance and they were already independently supporting the training of a few thousand Palestinian policemen on their soil. This conference did not produce significant security sector aid offers.Lia (2007), pp 35–36. An emergency meeting of donors to the Palestinian police on March 24, 2004, was called by Norway with only two days' notice to discuss the impending deployment of Palestinian police to Hebron, Gaza and Jericho in conjunction with a new compromise reached by the PLO and Israel. Lia posits that "the underlying cause was most probably the U.S. policy of tailoring international aid in support of the political negotiating process...."Lia (2007), p. 42. The conference included 73 official participants from 21 countries plus the UN, EU, World Bank, PLO, and Israel with a high-profile American presence including Special Envoy Dennis Ross and other top U.S. officials. Again, pledges of support were not specific.Lia (2007), p. 43.
Aside from the official police and security sector discussions, the U.S. was undertaking some independent training and equipment donations, though the programs—mainly organized by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—were not explicitly detailed to the international community. Lia writes that covert contacts and counter-terrorism collaboration between the PLO and the CIA had been ongoing in the 1970s and throughout the Lebanese Civil War in the 1980s but were not favored in the Reagan and Bush administrations. After the Oslo accords, the Clinton Administration revived covert ties and intelligence training.Lia (2007), p. 288. In January 1994 media sources reported that PLO officials and bodyguards were traveling to the U.S. to receive training as a result of an agreement between Arafat and U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher.Lia (2007), p. 37. Publicly, the U.S. was ambivalent regarding support for police and security sector activities. The Gaza–Jericho Agreement between the PLO and Israel signed on May 4, 1994, increased U.S. interest in coordinating public international efforts to fund the PLO police who were to deploy into Gaza and Jericho. The day after the treaty was signed, the U.S. announced a $5 million grant for the PLO police and they worked to encourage other nations to donate flexible funds for the same purpose.Lia (2007), p. 71.
Early U.S. concerns about the use of PA security sector funds stemming from what they perceived to be the forces' military orientation rather than civilian police and from their wariness of troop loyalty—the forces mostly consisted of Arafat's personal security detail and members of the Palestinian Liberation Army)—influenced the U.S. policy decision to mitigate early international efforts to finance PA police. Yet, a rise in violence in 1996 is believed to have precipitated the Clinton Administration's enhanced covert security funding and assistance to Arafat for combating groups such as Hamas.Zanotti (2010), p. 5. In her November 13, 2000, piece in The New York Times, Elaine Sciolino outlined four years of covert programming undertaken by the CIA from 1996 to 2000 with involvement at the most senior levels, including work by Director George Tenet. She wrote:The CIA first appeared center stage in peace efforts early in 1996, after a wave of bombings in Israel by Hamas. Mr. Tenet, then deputy director of central intelligence, met with his Israeli and Palestinian counterparts for the first time, say current and former American officials.
Soon afterward, Mr. Clinton signed a presidential order creating a covert program to provide tens of millions of dollars to increase the professionalism of the Palestinian security services and help combat terrorism, the officials said.
The CIA sent operatives to train the Palestinians in interrogation techniques and to organize their files. The Palestinians were showered with advanced radio communications and X-ray equipment, bomb detection scanners, computers, vehicles and other equipment.
Also according to Sciolino, the CIA's involvement in the peace process increased under the October 23, 1998 Wye River Memorandum only to be sidelined by the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000. She mentions in the same article that Tenet was asked to make a direct plea to Arafat to encourage the PA president to accept the terms of the July 2000 Camp David Summit but he was unsuccessful.Sciolino, "Violence Thwarts CIA."
Second Intifada (2000–2004) In September 2000 the Second Intifada broke out after the Camp David Summit peace talks failed. A sharp rise in violence involving PA security forces and Israeli soldiers and civilians during this time, whether considered acts of resistance or of militancy, contributed to a cessation of security cooperation between Israel and Palestine though the U.S. attempted to restore ties.Zanotti (2010), p. 6. Israeli troops reoccupied areas formerly under PA rule and added hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints throughout the territories and began the construction of a controversial barrier along the entire length of the West Bank, which was justified by Israel as a necessary security measure but described by Palestinians as an effort to take away their land.GAO (2010), p. 8. Additionally during the course of the Intifada, Israel destroyed most of the PA security infrastructure including ministry buildings, barracks, and other facilities. U.S. covert assistance to Palestinian intelligence agencies for counter-terrorism work is reported to have continued throughout the Intifada, even though all public international security assistance was withheld from the PA during the course of the fighting.
Roadmap agreement (2004–2006) Following the Roadmap for Peace Agreement (Roadmap) arranged by President George W. Bush's administration, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice oversaw the creation of the United States Security Coordinator (USSC) team with the intent to assist the new PA President Mahmoud Abbas in reforming the Palestinian security sector. In March 2005, the Ward Mission was dispatched, headed by Lieutenant General (Lt. Gen.) Kip Ward, to Tel Aviv. This new agency was tasked with supervising and advising the Palestinian security sector and the USSC stated that the U.S. would regard the USSC as the only channel for international security assistance to the PA. The USSC chose to conduct a needs assessment with the help of a third party American NGO, known as the Strategic Assessments Initiative. The Initiative then created the International Transition Assistance Group (ITAG) to oversee the assessment. ITAG was run by Jarat Choprasee his biography here: http://www.watsoninstitute.org/contacts_detail.cfm?id=21 and had several international consultants with significant experience with the Palestinian government and the PLO.Hussein (2008), p. 42. A Palestinian–International Transitional Security Planning Team (TSPT) was formed in April 2005 as a joint effort between the PA Minister of the Interior General Nasser Youssef, and Lt. Gen. Kip Ward. The Palestinian side was led by Major General Jamal Abu Zayed who was at the time the Assistant Minister of the Interior. Most of the international experts were also part of the ITAG. The primary purpose of the TSPT was to concentrate on the Israeli unilateral disengagement plan from Gaza, working to assess the ability of PA forces to take over security tasks in Gaza and to coordinate security issues with Israel.Hussein (2008), p. 43. There were ten meetings held in mid-2005, however there was a major rift in July 2005 after the Security Assessment Initiative's report on the findings of the ISAG assessment was leaked and then formally published. This report: "Planning Considerations for International Involvement in the Palestinian Security Sector" was embarrassing to Palestinian representatives of the TSPT because of its criticism of General Youssef and its emphasis on the corruption and lack of reform in the Palestinian security sector. Ultimately, Lt. Gen. Ward ended ties with the Strategic Assessments Initiative and the ITAG after Israel's disengagement.
Fatah–Hamas conflict (2006–2007) Not long after the U.S. re-established public security assistance to the PA, Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton was appointed to take over the USSC mission, and in January 2006, PA parliamentary elections gave Hamas a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), which had previously been dominated by the Fatah party. Because Hamas is considered by the U.S. government to be a Foreign Terrorist Organization, it is illegal for U.S. funds to be used to support them even as part of a broader organization like the PA.Thrall (2010). Though the elections were originally supported by the U.S. government, the U.S. encouraged President Abbas to retain control over the government by consolidating his power. The U.S. contributed to this by transferring money for security assistance directly to Abbas and Fatah rather than through the PA. The Presidential Guard, the security forces for protecting President Abbas, were the primary recipients of the U.S. support.
The move to support one faction in the Palestinian Authority was controversial. A news article from The Christian Science Monitor in May 2007 described the tension like this: