News Analysis: Halting security coordination with Israel endangers PNA presence

Palestinian and Israeli observers agreed that the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) threats to halt security coordination with Israel, the only remaining link between the two sides, may lead to new waves of conflicts that have been going on for so many decades.

Israel had repeatedly admitted that security coordination with the Palestinians had reached its highest levels especially after 2007. The issues of security coordination in this respect included 13 major provisions, according to Palestinian officials.

Ahmed Majdalani, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee member, told Xinhua that any decision related to halting security coordination with Israel "wouldn't include all the 13 security provisions, because security coordination has different levels, and there are some issues that are hard to be halted."

"Security coordination with Israel has three levels. Civil affairs coordination such as registration of populations, identity cards and birth certificates, then the second is military coordination through joint liaison offices and the third level is the security coordination that our side talks about," he clarified.

The civil affairs coordination is hard to be halted, according to Majdalani, who added that the assigned committee is working on defining the types of the allowed coordination and the non-allowed coordination that harms the Palestinians interests in the current time.

PALESTINIAN ATTITUDE

PLO executive committee which convened in Ramallah on Wednesday assigned a committee to put a plan for halting security coordination with Israel in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's policy.

The committee, which comprises political leaders and heads of security apparatuses, is expected to finalize the plan within the coming two weeks. The plan would then be sent back to the PLO executive committee for approval, while security officials expressed readiness to implement the plan.

Adnan Damiri, spokesman of the Palestinian security apparatuses, told Xinhua that all security apparatuses "are willing to implement the plan as soon as the political leadership approves it," adding "the stalled Middle East peace had negatively influenced the bilateral security ties with Israel."

Security coordination between Israel and the Palestinians is one of the most significant understandings reached between the two sides after both signed Oslo peace accords in 1993. According to the understandings, the Palestinians, through security coordination, "must fight terrorism."

With the second Palestinian Intifada, or Uprising, which broke out in late September 2000, security coordination between the two sides collapsed. However, the international Quartet for Middle East Peace helped the two sides through negotiations resume the coordination.

Palestinian officials had repeatedly threatened to halt security coordination with Israel, mainly after the serious stalemate in the Middle East peace process. The U.S.-sponsored direct peace talks had stopped in April last year due to deep differences on issues related to settlements, borders and security.

Hani al-Masri, head of the Ramallah-based Badil center for researches, told Xinhua that the idea of halting security coordination with Israel "can be the most important step the Palestinians would be able to carry out in response to the endless Israeli policies and measures against the Palestinians."

He also said that it would be meaningless "to speak about confronting the Israeli occupation and its measures of settlement expansion by peaceful means and by diplomacy and at the same time keep security coordination with Israel. It is really very difficult and will be very complicated."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had earlier refused recommendations of various Palestinian political powers and factions, mainly Islamic Hamas movement, to halt security coordination with Israel. Abbas had said at that time that "it jointly serves both Israeli and Palestinian interests."

Supporters of keeping security coordination with Israel consider halting it unilaterally would cause harm to the Palestinians and their cause, and that halting it would give Israel a free hand to expand more settlements and tighten its security measures imposed on the Palestinians.

Salah al-Bardaweel, a senior Hamas leader from Gaza, told Xinhua that security coordination with Israel "is basically targeting the armed resistance against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank," adding "Hamas movement can never accept any justification for keeping it going on."

He stressed that his movement's strategy or any other Palestinian strategy "should be based on a real effort to achieve a real and workable internal Palestinian reconciliation," adding "halting security coordination would certainly create a good atmosphere for unity."

EXPENSIVE CHALLENGES

Mahdi Abdul Hadi, chairman of the Palestinian Academic Center for International Affairs (PACIA), told Xinhua that President Abbas is not in a hurry to halt security coordination with Israel "simply because such a step will have a very high price for the Palestinians."

He sees that what is needed from the Palestinians "is to reject the Israeli philosophy of keeping them in the big prison," adding "the Palestinians should be ready for the big and expensive challenge and go for escalation with Israel even if such an action would lead to the collapse of the Palestinian (National) Authority."

"Unfortunately, the Palestinian (National) Authority was recently kept without any power or authority and remained as an institution that provides services and makes security coordination with a state that never stops expanding settlement, confiscating lands and carry out tight measures against (Palestinian) people."

Tzi Bar'el, the Israeli analyst specialized in Middle East affairs in the Israeli Haaretz daily, told Xinhua that the PNA doesn't have the ability to make such a serious decision.

"Israel can impose sanctions on the Palestinian Authority with or without a justification and halting security coordination would give a free hand to the Israeli army to storm populated areas under the Palestinian security control," said Bar'el.

He noted that Israel can accommodate with halting security coordination with the Palestinians and can be directly responsible for ruling the Palestinians daily affairs although it is expensive, "but the ones who will suffer much are the Palestinians because they will give Israel the chance to control the West Bank." Endit