Israel will allow up to 600 members of a Palestinian security force trained in Jordan under a US program to be deployed in an Occupied West Bank city once considered a hotbed of militant activity, a senior Defense Ministry official said on Tuesday. The official said Israel hopes the decision, announced ahead of a weekend visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will help blunt Western and Palestinian complaints that Israel was not doing enough to bolster US-backed peace talks and a Palestinian "law and order" campaign in the occupied West Bank.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak was to discuss the specifics of the deployment Wednesday with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, part of continuing peace talks between the two sides, the official told AFP.
"Palestinian security forces have demonstrated they are capable of handling the areas in which they deploy," Fayyad told reporters in Ramallah.
In recent months Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has deployed hundreds of security forces to the northern Occupied West Bank towns of Nablus and Tulkarem in a bid to improve security as part of the revived Middle East peace process.
"The idea is to test the deployment place by place and then to go ahead with the plan," the official added on condition of anonymity.
"In Nablus it works more or less, with good results in fighting criminality in the town, but less on the security level. In Tulkarem it works well, and it had a very strong effect on auto theft," the official added.
The official said the Palestinians will decide how many troops, now on the US-funded training course in Jordan, to deploy in Jenin, also in the northern Occupied West Bank.
Fayyad said he would "wait and see" what comes out of his meeting with Barak. Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel-Razak al-Yahya told Reuters: "We will deploy those forces that are training in Jordan where our security conditions require them to be and based upon Palestinian decisions."
Fayyad and some US officials have accused Israel of undermining Palestinian Authority security efforts in Nablus by refusing to curtail army raids into the city. Israeli troops clashed with stone-throwing Palestinians in a Nablus refugee camp on Tuesday.
Israel has long seen both Jenin and Nablus as centers of militant activity, though both cities have been relatively calm in recent months.
Israel
has been under increasing US pressure to take steps to bolster Abbas,
whose authority has been restricted to the Occupied West Bank since
Hamas Islamists routed his more secular Fatah forces and seized control
of the Gaza Strip in June.
US-sponsored
peace talks, launched at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland last
November with the goal of reaching a statehood agreement before US
President George
W. Bush
leaves office next
January, have shown little sign of progress so far.
In addition to the Jenin deployment, Barak has backed easing some travel restrictions for Palestinian business owners in the Occupied West Bank. Ahead of Rice's visit, Barak voiced a willingness to take "a calculated risk" in some areas, but he has balked at removing Occupied West Bank checkpoints, citing security concerns.
"It is clear we need to exhaust every possible option - if it does not conflict with Israel's security needs - to help the chances of improving the atmosphere in the talks with the Palestinians," Barak told reporters.
Rice said neither Israel nor the Palestinians had done enough to fulfill their obligations under a long-stalled, US-backed peace "road map". Under the plan, Israel is required to halt all settlement activities and uproot Jewish outposts. The Palestinians are required to rein in militants.
Nearly 700 members of Abbas' National Security Forces crossed into Jordan in January to begin the four-month training course. A separate group from Abbas' Presidential Guard has also gone to Jordan for training.
Washington wants to train the backbone of a Palestinian gendarmerie that can both police civilians and rein in militants who could try to block any future peace deal.
Also on Tuesday, the European Commission released 300 million euros ($467 million) in aid for the Palestinian Territories Tuesday, from the 440 million euros the EU executive has pledged for this year.
Of the total, 71 million euros is earmarked to go to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), a commission spokeswoman said.
The rest is to go to a new European Union mechanism - dubbed PEGASE - intended to channel aid to help build a Palestinian state, with 176 million euros destined for supporting public services.
At the Paris donors' conference last December, Europe pledged more than half of the total $7.481 billion in aid commitments to support the Palestinian Authority and recently revived peace talks.
Last Wednesday, the US granted $150 million to Abbas' government in a first installment of the $555 million Washington pledged at the donors' conference. - AFP, Reuters