U.S. Security Assistance to the Palestinian Authority

Jim Zanotti
Analyst in Middle Eastern Affairs


Since shortly after the establishment of limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the mid-1990s, the United States has periodically provided assistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA) for civil security and counterterrorism purposes. Following the death of Yasser Arafat in late 2004 and the election of Mahmoud Abbas as his successor as PA President in early 2005, then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice created the office of U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC) for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to help reform, train, and equip PA security forces which had been personally beholden to Arafat and his political allies. Previous Israeli-Palestinian efforts at security cooperation collapsed during the second Palestinian intifada that took place earlier this decade. 

Since Hamas gained control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, head of the USSC since November 2005, and the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) have helped with the "gendarmerie-style" training of West Bank-based PA security personnel. As of June 2009, approximately 400 Presidential Guardsmen and 2,200 National Security Forces troops have been trained at the Jordan International Police Training Center (JIPTC) near Amman. All troops, new or already serving, are vetted for terrorist links, human rights violations, and/or criminal records by the State Department, Israel, Jordan, and the PA before they are admitted to U.S.-sponsored training courses at JIPTC. Approximately $395 million in U.S. funds have been reprogrammed or appropriated through the International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) account for training, non-lethal equipment, facilities, and strategic planning assistance for the PA forces, and for PA criminal justice sector reform projects, including $100 million for FY2010 pursuant to the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010 (P.L. 111-117). 

The performance of the U.S.-sponsored forces in law-and-order operations—including crowd control assignments during the December 2008-January 2009 Gaza conflict between Israel and Hamas—and in some operations aimed at countering militant and/or terror organizations has appeared to produce some positive results. Yet questions regarding the USSC/INL mission persist. How might short-term operational success translate into (1) a general pattern of sustained success in countering and dismantling militant and terrorist networks in the West Bank and (2) permanent consolidation of competent, defactionalized civilian control over the PA forces and the broader criminal justice sector? Can this occur in a complex political environment featuring the continuing presence of Israeli occupying forces and settlers, as well as other overt and/or possible covert PA security assistance from, among others, Arab states, Russia, the United States, and Europe? If it can, what are the long-term implications vis-à-vis Hamas-controlled Gaza? There could be calls for Congress to take into account how U.S. security assistance might lead to progress on (1) the Israeli-Palestinian political track, (2) Palestinian civil society, governance, and economic development, and (3) efforts to end geographical and factional divisions between Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza. Some argue that the USSC's staff should be increased and that movement restrictions on U.S. members of the USSC staff should be lifted. Some maintain that the U.S. mandate in security assistance matters should be expanded to give the USSC across-the-board authority to train and outfit PA security organizations, including for counterterrorism operations, and perhaps also to give INL an enhanced role in criminal justice sector reform. Others support a more modest U.S. "footprint" in the region, or question the advisability of U.S. security assistance altogether—preferring either to have the PA depend on itself or third parties for assistance or to transfer primary security responsibility in the West Bank to an international peacekeeping force.


Date of Report: January 8, 2010
Number of Pages: 44
Order Number: R40664
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