Weekly Commentary: Time to set benchmarks for Palestinian compliance

Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 24 April 2014

Here’s a snapshot of the situation today:

#1. The Palestinians have many thousands of rockets and missiles in the Gaza
Strip. Every Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip, including the ruling
Hamas, has its own stocks of these weapons.

#2. The Ramallah-based PA to date has not argued that Palestinian forces
have the right to possess such rockets and missiles.

#3. These rockets and missiles also don’t jibe with the kind of weapons one
would expect to be deployed in the Palestinians state that Ramallah based
Palestinian officials describe as their goal.

"Palestine will be a state with limited arms. This means it will have a
strong security force with appropriate arms to carry out needed functions,
on the basis of international best practice.

These functions are:
1. To protect national security interests based on a defensive security
strategy;
2. To maintain and uphold internal law and order and carry out law
enforcement duties pursuant to the rule of law;
3. To protect international borders from aggression, infiltration and
smuggling; and
4. To fight crime and terrorism."
The PLO Negotiations Affairs Department - May 2010

4. While the Gaza - West Bank unity deal announced today declines to address
the disposition of these weapons, the absence of a clear stand in no way
releases the "Unity PA" from the obligation to address the presence of these
rockets and missiles in the Gaza Strip.

If the Cabinet concludes that the prudent response to the unity deal is to
"take back the keys" and send Mahmoud Abbas packing that's fantastic. We
can deal with the municipal level leadership, leaving lightly armed local
Palestinian cops deployed while clearing out the other various Palestinian
armed forces.

But if such bold moves aren't in the offing, it is critical to set and
announce performance benchmarks for the Palestinian unity government.

Not the vague expectation that they "seize illegal weapons” but instead
serious numerical performance benchmarks and timetables.

We should go another step, describing what mechanisms should be employed to
either verify the destruction of illegal weapons or to receive the weapons
and remove them from the area.

And of course, just a critical: we must prepare a program of sanctions and
other measures that will be imposed in the event that the Palestinians fail
to meet the goals and then actually impose them.

If we fail to act now there is every reason to expect that in short order
the world will insist that the presence of these dangerous weapons be
ignored and that Israel continue with its "silence for silence" policy
according to which the Palestinians can deploy basically any weapons system
in unlimited quantities as long as they don't use them - for the time being.

A policy that with the Palestinian unity government threatens more than ever
to spread like a cancer into the West Bank.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il Website: http://www.imra.org.il