The Biden administration is currently training and arming several thousand Palestinian Authority troops, commentator Carolyn Glick has recently denounced.
As reported in The Media Line, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and Axios, a recent joint security summit included the Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization Hussein al-Sheikh; the head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service, Majed Faraj; and the diplomatic advisor to President Mahmoud Abbas, Majdi Al-Khalidi. From the Israeli side, Israel’s National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and Shin Bet intelligence service chief Ronen Bar attended. Also in attendance were the heads of intelligence of Jordan and Egypt. The negotiations were overseen by the US Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf and coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa in the Biden administration, Brett McGurk.
The stated goal of the summit was to boost Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation and solidify understandings that already have been reached regarding the steps that the two sides would take to de-escalate tensions.
According to Glick, the training, outlined by Lieutenant General Michael R. Fenzel, US security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, provides for the military training of 5,000 Palestinians in counterterrorism and commando tactics. At the end of the training, the Palestinian officers will bring with them 5,000 rifles and additional “anti-terror equipment” to Palestinian cities and towns inside Samaria and in the areas surrounding Hebron. The plan, also “foresees the deployment of foreign forces, including U.S. military forces, on the ground.”
The program, originally set up by President George W. Bush, has already trained several thousand Palestinians in four-month courses at a facility in Jordan already used by US-backed Iraqi forces. The program aims at establishing a force of nearly 50,000 trained Palestinian soldiers. None of the instructors will be U.S. government personnel. The program requires detailed background checks for each recruit and Israel has a veto over who participates because it has to permit them to travel to Jordan.
Unlike the program being initiated by the Biden administration, the original program, supervised by U.S. Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, was explicitly designed to train Palestinian troops in riot control and other police methods to control civilians—not counterterrorism. As Dayton put it at the time, “we don’t give out any guns or bullets.”
The new program proposed by the Biden administration is distinctly unlike the original plan in that explicitly provides “guns and bullets” and the training to use them, creating a special force of armed PA security forces.
For its part, the PA agreed to stop its efforts to bring forward a draft resolution in the United Nations Security Council condemning Israel’s decision to build and legalize more settlements.
In the article in JNS, Glick cited a report by Israel’s Channel 14 as outlining the US plan to train PA security forces in Jordan. Glick pointed out the fatal flaw in the plan; the direct involvement of PA security personnel in terrorist attacks targeting Israelis.
“During the course of the Palestinian terror war 20 years ago, U.S.-trained P.A. forces murdered 26 IDF soldiers in 2002 alone,” Glick wrote. “The Palestinians learned how to use cell phones as remote detonation devices from their American trainers. Over the years, they have put that knowledge to use not to fight terror but to kill Israelis in terrorist attacks.
“The P.A., whose forces the U.S. seeks to “empower,” is controlled by the Fatah terror group. P.A. chairman Mahmoud Abbas is the chairman of Fatah. Fatah terrorists carried out most of the murderous terror attacks in 2021-2022. Several of those attacks were carried out by P.A. security officers.”
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