RAMALLAH: Many Palestinian security men doubled as militants against Israel before President Mahmoud Abbas declared a ceasefire. Now they feel short-changed by Abbas, and pose trouble for his peace agenda.
Militants in Abbas’s Fatah party ran amok last week over his demand that they lay down arms and what they called a failed promise to raise their meagre pay and protect comrades from Israeli arrest in return for shelving violence.
With a spree of gunfire and assault on Abbas’s doorstep in Ramallah, militants made a mockery of his law and order drive and put him on the spot to crack down fast or lose any chance of statehood talks with Israel favoured by most Palestinians.
Stung by the rampage, the habitually cautious Abbas showed grit for the first time on Sunday when he ordered 530 militants wanted by Israel to be disarmed to deter any arrest raids.
He also ordered the arrest of the Ramallah rioters, mostly men wanted by Israel, and ejected 26 militants who had been sheltered for years by Abbas’s late predecessor, Yasser Arafat, in the presidential compound.
But the Fatah militants vowed on Monday not to yield their weapons and warned Abbas not to do Israel’s bidding by trying to round them up if he wanted to save the ceasefire.
The faction-ridden Palestinian security services from which many of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades gunmen sprang were making no moves to disarm or arrest anyone.
“We decided to take matters into our own hands,” said a Brigades commander in Ramallah who did not want his name used.
Brigades gunmen trashed a string of Ramallah shops and restaurants patronised by the Fatah elite, beat up people inside and also fired at Abbas’s Muqata headquarters. The president, 69, was inside the compound at the time but unharmed.
ARAFAT’S LEGACY: The disorder confronting Abbas is the legacy of a “divide and rule” system of competing armed factions inherited from guerrilla patriarch Arafat. It remains unclear whether Abbas will be able to enforce his will to make democratic reforms.
“If Abbas doesn’t make immediate reforms in his security apparatus, chaos will boil over, he will lose the ceasefire and his credibility,” said a reformist security official.
Ordinary Palestinians yearn for Abbas to impose order, overhaul policing and purge corruption to spur Israel to pull back its forces allowing the Palestinian economy to revive and statehood negotiations get under way.
“The pressing issue of the gunmen has not been resolved and people are fed up with those groups taking the law into their hands and imposing their will on society,” said Mahmoud, a shopkeeper in Gaza City.
Abbas won a landslide election on Jan 9 but many Palestinians still regard him as indecisive.
“Abbas enjoys the legitimacy of his people and the acceptance of the world, yet he has been hesitant in taking speedy reform steps,” said an aide.
“People are frustrated and exhausted and need to feel swift changes on the ground. But Abbas is seen as taking his time.”
He has begun by sacking 50 advisers and 20 senior security officials from a bloated apparatus built up by Arafat.
Aides said Abbas was also implementing a retirement law for the first time, pensioning off more than elderly 1,000 security officers to make way for new blood.
A senior Palestinian official close to Abbas said his drive to overhaul chaotic, overlapping security agencies was being stymied by some veteran security chiefs wielding control over many of the Fatah militants.
These security bosses were bent on protecting lucrative “privileges” granted by Arafat to secure their loyalty, he said.
“Some are virtual warlords who manipulate militants to wage their internal battles for them. Other security chiefs cave in to young gunmen now acting as gangsters. Others are simply too old to function and should be retired by now,” he told Reuters.
The Brigades, along with rival Islamist militants, gained a repute among Palestinians as freedom fighters for their revolt of ambush attacks and suicide bombings launched in Israeli-occupied territories and inside Israel in 2000.—Reuters
