Israel and the Palestinians have been discussing an almost complete transfer of security responsibility to the Palestinian Authority security forces in order to turn the area into a "model region" - where Israeli presence is almost non-existent.
Sources in the Defense Ministry on Tuesday confirmed that talks on the new security arrangements were underway with American mediation and that of Quartet representative Tony Blair.
On Tuesday Blair presented several measures to ease life for the Palestinians in the West Bank, to which Israel and the PA had agreed ahead of the visit of U.S. President George W. Bush, who arrives in Israel Wednesday.
Advertisement
According to the arrangements being formulated, which are to be implemented in the coming months, the PA will be responsible for security in the area north and east of Tul Karm, including Jenin, an area equal in size to the Gaza Strip. The plan calls for full Palestinian control from 6 A.M. to midnight and joint control with the Israelis during the night.
Israel will still be able to enter Jenin and its environs to act against "ticking bombs," that is, someone who has knowledge of a terror attack to be carried out. In other cases, Israel will transfer the names of wanted men to the PA security forces, and if the PA forces do not arrest those wanted, the IDF will be able to do so.
In talks with the Palestinians, Blair and the American generals made clear that the PA would have to operate not only against Hamas, but also against all terrorists, including those who are part of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades of the Fatah movement.
The Palestinian force in the northern West Bank will include more than 1,000 police personnel, most of who were trained by the U.S. in Jordan. More than 600 personnel are due to arrive in July, to join the more than 500 men who were recently stationed in Jenin and its environs.
New prison, new court To strengthen the PA, Israel has agreed to the construction of a new prison in Jenin to replace the one Israel destroyed in the second intifada. Israel also approved four new police stations for the area. The PA will also open a new court in Jenin. Israel has also agreed to remove roadblocks in the northern West Bank to ease the movement of Palestinian vehicles into Jenin and to Nablus and the Jordan Valley, in keeping with security considerations.
On the economic front, Blair announced at a press conference Tuesday in Jerusalem that Israel has agreed to allocate a frequency range that would enable a second Palestinian cell-phone operator. Blair said the range would be 2.4 Megahertz for now, but that Israel was going to commit in writing within six to eight months to double the frequency range.
Israel had delayed its approval of the frequency range for some time, among other reasons, because of objections from the Shin Bet security service and the army. Blair said the move would contribute to the improvement of the Palestinian economy, as the PA stood to earn more than $350 million from license fees. He also said the cellular operator would be investing more than $700 million over the next 10 years, creating some 750 new jobs.
A new industrial area is also to be built by the end of the year at Jalameh, north of Jenin, which is to be funded by the German government.
Israel also agreed to give work permits to about 1,000 laborers and some 300 merchants from Jenin.
Reevaluating demolition orders Israel will also be reevaluating about 1,000 demolition orders for illegally built Palestinian homes, and will allow Palestinian customs officers to be stationed at the Allenby Bridge as a prelude to the establishment of a Palestinian border administration.
The commander of the Palestinian security forces in the Jenin area, Brigadier General Suleiman Imran, on Tuesday said that his forces are already operating against armed men in the area, including villages under Israeli security control. "There will be no weapons in this sector that do not belong to the PA. Only the law will rule," he said.
Imran said his men were operating in the area from Jalameh in the north, down to but not including Nablus in the south, and to the Green Line in the west. He said the coming days would see a widening of the operation to the Far'a refugee camp in the east, near the Jordan Valley. However, he added, so far no agreement had been reached that Israel would stop making arrests in the area. "The matter of security responsibility is in the hands of Israel for the present, but the parties are discussing it," Imran said.
People in Jenin said the PA forces in Jenin had been able recently to reduce crime in the city, and that armed men are now rarely seen there or the surrounding villages.
Blair initially raised the idea to make the Jenin area a model for PA security control a few months ago, in an attempt to show the residents of the West Bank a meaningful change on the ground. In his talks with the Israelis and the Palestinians, Blair said only such a move would significantly move ahead negotiations on the core issues of the final-status agreement. Blair initially proposed the arrangement for Hebron, but given the tensions and sensitivities in that city, Israel suggested Jenin instead.
Blair discussed the initiative in a series of meetings with the U.S. mediators, generals James Jones and Keith Dayton, with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, as well as at a number of three-way meetings. As far as is known, Barak and the IDF brass have expressed their support for the plan now being formulated.
Discussions on the new arrangements are taking into consideration lessons learned from the previous transfer of security responsibility to the Palestinians, in Nablus a few months ago. One of the conclusions was that the Nablus transfer was not particularly successful because clear and agreed-on rules of coordination between the IDF and the Palestinian security forces were not set.
