The Middle East Newsline has confirmed that the Bush administration, driven by a 2009 deadline for an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, has been transferring millions of dollars in cash to Palestinian Authority (PA) military commanders. "Every major operation is preceded and concluded by cash transfers to Palestinian commanders at a variety of levels," a PA security source said. "Some of these commanders have already become rich just over the last six months alone."PA commanders have quietly acknowledged that their forces were unprepared to battle dissidents of the Fatah movement as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. But they said that U.S. security coordinator Lt. Gen Keith Dayton has been pressuring the PA to demonstrate its ability to take over security responsibility from Israel throughout Judea and Samaria. The result, the sources said, have been several well-publicized PA troop deployments in Jenin and Nablus over the last six months. In each case, the PA undertook one or two operations, attended by the Israeli and foreign media, to tout Palestinian security capabilities. "When the cameras left, the security situation returned to what it had been before," another security source said. "But the PA commanders received envelopes full of U.S. dollars."
In Nablus, the sources said, discipline has declined as officers outnumber soldiers. They said 300 officers and 200 soldiers have been deployed in Nablus since late 2007. In Jenin, the PA deployed 600 National Security Force and Presidential Guard troops under the command of Maj. Gen. Suleiman Umran. The troops, the sources said, were rushed from a training program in Jordan to battle suspected Palestinian insurgents and, in their first operations, began shooting civilians. "It was chaos," a PA security officer recalled. "At one point, field officers called the commander and said one of the shot civilians was dying. The commander said 'Let him die. I don't care.' Another officer with the commander learned that this man was his cousin and began shouting at the commander to take the injured man to the hospital."
The PA has replaced most of its command structure with those loyal to Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. They said this has alienated many veteran commanders who have resisted Mr. Fayyad's authority. "Dayton has helped install a whole new set of commanders who are loyal to the United States and by extension Fayyad," a PA security source said. "The old guys are gone and the new commanders get paid for each operation that satisfies Dayton." British and French intelligence agencies have also been helping in the effort to enhance PA security forces.
What this means is that there are entrenched, Western-trained Palestinian troops in the hills overlooking Israel's population centers, from Netanya to Tel Aviv on the coastal plain to Jerusalem itself. The latent and unexpressed fear in Israel is that Netanya, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem will soon feel the brunt of light artillery attacks from Judea and Samaria, much the way that Sderot and Ashkelon have suffered from Gaza-based artillery attacks.