Palestinian police stuck in difficult role
JENIN, West Bank — What wounded Maj. Zahi Jamhour most, he said, wasn’t that the Palestinians he had sworn to protect threw stones at him. It wasn’t even the bullet shot through his leg by an Israeli soldier — “a mistake,” he was told later — after his Palestinian police squad had risked their lives to rescue a Jew from an attempted lynching.
What stings to this day is how the Arab doctors and nurses at an East Jerusalem hospital reacted when he told them how he had been shot.
“They laughed at me,” Jamhour, 50, recalled ruefully. “They said, ‘You deserved it.’ ”
The scorn heaped upon house, and you see the without police protection. Palestinian Authority secuwhole thing collapse,” said a The security forces have rity officers for cooperating senior intelligence officer in long played a complicated with Israel, some officers Jenin, speaking on condirole. They have become say, was the bitter price of tion of anonymity because more professional in recent jobs with significant benhe was not authorized to be years but remain an instruefits: salaries, pensions and, interviewed. ment of political control as for some, cars, training In rare interviews, Palwell as security. abroad and proximity to estinian officers in the West Scarred by losing Gaza to power. Bank candidly described a Hamas in a 2007 civil war,
Neighbors called them law enforcement system the forces have been crucial collaborators, doing the that is fraying, inviting viin keeping Fatah in power in dirty work for Israel’s occuolence and chaos. the West Bank, aggressively pation. Relatives quesIn protest of Israel’s quashing more militant factioned their self-respect. Isplanned annexation, the tions. They have tortured raeli counterparts, they Pa l e st i n i a n Au t h o r i t y some of the authority’s critsaid, routinely treated them halted security cooperation ics, human rights groups with highhandednesssay.andwithIsrael,impairingpodisdain. lice and intelligence work Still, polls show Palestin
And yet, in their colorful that benefited both sides. ians trust the security forces uniforms, the security The authority also stopped more than the authority’s forces are a conspicuous accepting taxes collected on leaders. Buf if the dream of embodiment of the incipiits behalf by Israel, and in statehood is dashed, the ent state they hoped they the resulting budget crisis, officers who have risked were building. most officers are receiving their lives and reputations
Now that Israel’s threat only partial pay; some are for it have much to lose. to annex parts of the West already skipping work. “You say, ‘State, state, Bank has thrown that naMany of those still restate,’ and now the other tional project into doubt, porting for duty sip coffee in side is saying, ‘You won’t get many officers question their stations rather than one,’ ” said Akram Rajoub, a whether the cost to them responding to calls and risklongtime commander in was worth it. ing detention by Israeli Preventive Security, a do
“It’s as if you’re building a forces, leaving large areas mestic intelligence agency, who is now the governor of Jenin, in the West Bank. “Where have all these statebuilding efforts gone? Where has all this investment gone? What are we going to tell our children?”
a boy in the village of Al Qubeiba, Col. Saed Zahran said, when he first grasped how little Israelis cared about crime among Palestinians. Two children were killed. Israeli detectives arrived, scribbled a few notes and left. The crime remains unsolved.
He said the memory inspired him to join the police force when it was established in the 1990s, believing that Palestinians had to rely on themselves for law and order. Yet even as commander of the Nablus police district, Zahran, 51, has only limited ability to deliver protection and justice.
Security cooperation with Israel, Palestinians say, was not as mutual as the
He was just
term suggests.
The West Bank is ruled under Israeli military law. And while Israeli forces go anywhere at will, Palestinian forces needed permission to enter places where Israel has jurisdiction. When Israeli forces entered a Palestinian area, Palestinian officers were warned to clear out — to avoid potential friction or the embarrassment of being seen alongside the Israelis.
Palestinian officers insist that they raced to comply with Israeli requests for assistance, while urgent Palestinian requests for help too often languished unanswered.
“We often have disputes between families,” Zahran said, in which the police are called to intervene. But these frequently occur in places the police cannot go without Israeli approval.
In a typical case last year, the police were called to defuse a violent dispute in the village of Haris but waited hours for approval. Zahran said he gave up and drove there in civilian clothes, in an unmarked car, without his sidearm.
Nowhere is the asymmetry more frustrating, he said, than when his officers refer cases to Israel for prosecution, only to see them dropped.
Last August, an officer investigating the destruction of a shop in Azun Atma was run down by two Israelis accused of the crime. Video of the hit-and-run shows the officer thrown into the air. Zahran said he turned over “a complete file” to Israeli authorities, who arrested the two but released them days later without explanation.
“What about the Palestinian police officer who was almost killed?” he said.
In April, he said, an Israeli citizen was caught in Qalqilya with 11⁄ pounds of
2 hashish. Under the Oslo Accords, Israeli citizens must be turned over to Israel. But the Israeli authorities set the man free after an hour, sparking outrage in Qalqilya — at Zahran and his men.
“Honestly, how am I supposed to defend what we did?” he said.
Israeli officials did not respond to Zahran’s specific accusations. But they acknowledge that West Bank cases are often dropped when the victims are Palestinian. Broadly speaking, they say, Israel prioritizes counterterrorism over crime-fighting.
The Israeli police “prefer to deal with issues inside Israel” and crimes involving Israeli victims, said Dov Sedaka, a former head of Israel’s civil administration of the West Bank. “The issue isn’t our ability to collect evidence. It’s how much effort do we want to put in?”
All of which leaves officials like Zahran feeling pained and powerless.
“Palestinian citizens feel I’m not able to protect them,” he said.