Sep
24
EU mission supports Palestinian police
Filed Under Ramallah
Around eight months ago something strange happened at an Israeli checkpoint outside the city of Beit El on the West Bank. A Palestinian man jumped out of a car in a long queue of vehicles. He screamed at the Israeli soldiers and ran towards them. Fearing a suicide attack the Israelis opened fire. The man was killed instantly. Later it emerged that he was being transported to prison by Palestinian police. In the queue for the checkpoint, he managed to escape.
The incident is typical of the problems faced by the Palestinian police force. Israel does not allow Palestinian police officers to cross their checkpoints in uniform or carrying weapons. The arrestee was not wearing handcuffs, because there are only 70 pairs of handcuffs available to 7,000 Palestinian police officers.
Chaos
With insufficient equipment and poorly trained staff, the Palestinian police are trying to maintain law and order in the chaos of the West Bank. The police are only allowed to operate in certain parts of the region, and when it comes down to it the Israeli army is ultimately the boss. Naturally, this undermines the authority of the police among the Palestinian people.
This is the police force which is supposed to take over, should Israel ever decide to withdraw from the Palestinian territories. To help it prepare, the European Union has set aside around 150 million euro’s to build up the Palestinian police force. The money has been used to set up the mission EU Pol Copps (EU Police Co-ordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support). More than 50 police officers from 18 different EU countries have been given the task of preparing the Palestinian police to stand on their own two feet.
Optimism
Briton Colin Smith heads the EU mission. He is proud of what his men have a achieved up to now. “We moved on quite a bit compared to six months ago,” he says from his crammed EU mission headquarters in Ramallah. Mr Smith used to be responsible for building up the Iraqi and Afghan police forces and puts his current optimism down to his previous experiences: “After what I had to deal with in Baghdad, you just have to be optimistic here.”
He says security on the streets has improved drastically in the last two years. Nevertheless, a lot goes wrong on the West Bank. Israel holds back supplies of police equipment, and in spite of all the money that has been promised, only a fraction has got through to the region. The money is urgently needed, mainly for more police stations. During the Second Intifada, the Israeli Airforce shot 46 police posts to pieces. In addition, there is a lack of cars, telephones, faxes and radios.
Recruits
One of the EU mission’s main tasks is the training of new Palestinian recruits. Mr Smith says around 2,000 extra police officers are needed to properly police the 2.5 million Palestinians on the West Bank. The recruits are trained by European experts in the police academy in Jericho. The courses are taken straight from European police handbooks.
The EU mission is currently reviewing the whole legal system on the West Bank. It has also started setting up a forensic department.
“The Palestinians capacity to investigate crime is minimal at the moment,” says Lucien Vermeir from Belgium, the EU mission’s second-in-command. He expects the Palestinian police force to operate at a reasonable level within a year. Mr Vermeir doubts whether Israel will ever withdraw from the West Bank. “The country is strongly anchored in the region. I don’t think that will change, or that anyone is working towards it.”
Keeping the peace
At the Palestinian police headquarters in Ramallah, police commissioner Yousef Asrel has plenty to complain about: “Twenty-eight European member states each have their own view on how to help, which slows the process down considerably. I’m still waiting for more police cars. There are only 50 and we need 150 in Ramallah alone.”
Naturally Mr Asrel says his men can keep the peace on the West Bank, if Israel were to withdraw.
“We have been ready for years, but they aren’t going to leave. There is nothing to say they will.”
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