Palestinian police will expand their patrols to three towns near Jerusalem for the first time after an agreement was reached with Israel, Reuters reported Wednesday.
Louy Izriqat, spokesman for Palestinian police, said 90 officers had deployed in Abu Dis, A-Ram and Biddu, towns that had been largely under Israeli security control since a 1993 interim peace accord.
Subsequent negotiations between the two sides have failed to secure a lasting deal, but minor advancements were made on the sidelines of now-defunct US-brokered talks, including one to expand the authority of Palestinian police in some areas.
“An old agreement is being implemented today,” Izriqat told Reuters, adding that the officers, armed with rifles and pistols, would mainly be responsible for fighting crime.
Late last month, the Palestinian Authority threatened to cut off security cooperation with Israel.
In What Will Happen if the Palestinians Really End Security Cooperation?, which was published in the April 2015 issue of The Tower Magazine, Neri Zilber wrote that despite the PA’s periodic threats to end security cooperation with Israel, a Palestinian security official acknowledged that the program serves the interests of both sides.
[H]e spoke openly about the longstanding security relationship between Israel and the PA “that continues and is ongoing.” He added, even more candidly, “From a security perspective there is not much difference of opinion with the Israelis.…We share the same interests.” Operationally, he said, coordination between Israel and the PA hinges on “daily and weekly contacts, and meetings on all levels”—from lieutenants in the field to service chiefs like him—regarding “security hazards and changes which threaten the stable security situation on both sides.”
These shared interests and security hazards entail many things, but none are as important as the threat of a Hamas takeover of the West Bank. “Just as we liberated Gaza…just as we established a victorious army in it,” Hamas founder Mahmoud al-Zahar declared in December, “we will make the same effort in the West Bank as we prepare to extend our presence to all of Palestine,” i.e., to the entirety of pre-1967 Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of precisely this when he publicly blasted the PA’s recent moves at the United Nations, saying, “Abbas thinks that by taking unilateral steps he threatens us; he doesn’t understand that their result will be Hamas taking over the West Bank.”
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