Biden Administration’s Delusional Plan to Combat Palestinian Terrorism

by Bassam Tawil, GATESTONE  •  March 16, 2023

• [T]he Biden Administration officials recently proposed a plan “to provide 5,000 Palestinians with commando training in Jordan” and then deploy them to areas under the control of the PA. The 5,000 officers will bring with them 5,000 rifles to Palestinian cities and towns — where almost every Palestinian already has a weapon.
• Any time the US has funded, armed and trained Palestinian militias, the target has invariably ended up not terrorist groups but Israelis. Why is there any reason to think that this time will be different?

• In addition, the plan would require Israel “to sharply curtail IDF counterterror operations.” The Biden administration, in other words, wants Israel to stop defending itself and rely on the Palestinian leadership and the new Palestinian “commandos” to go after the terrorists. Palestinian officials, meanwhile, are busy glorifying terrorism and paying visits to the families of terrorists.
• This would leave the Israelis with the rights to neither self-defense nor hot-pursuit. Terrorists will be able strike inside Israel, then run back to the Palestinian areas where they will be “home free;” instead of being arrested, they will be celebrated.
• The Biden plan also reportedly “foresees the deployment of foreign forces, including U.S. military forces, on the ground.”
• Israel, roughly the size of New Jersey, would have on its border a Palestinian terrorist army, well-trained, well-funded, and “protected” by a superpower.
• [The Israelis] would find themselves in the impossible position of risking harming the Europeans and Americans forces stationed there. These troops, mingled among the Palestinians, would essentially be “human shields,” deliberately placed in harm’s way to prevent Israel from taking any action.
• What, then, is the Biden Administration really doing?
• An international military presence to help the Palestinians in the West Bank would handcuff the Israelis. This appears to be the real plan.
• Worse, if “foreign countries” were allowed into the West Bank to work with the new US-trained Palestinian militias, who would get to decide which foreign countries?
• Or perhaps the US will try to persuade the Palestinians to reintegrate Gaza, run by Hamas, an Iranian proxy, into the West Bank, as the US Department of State’s new Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs, Hady Amr, recommended in his Brookings report?
• It would be suicidal for Israel to permit “foreign forces,” who any day could be hostile, on border of Jerusalem. Why would, or should, any country, especially such a small one, place its border security in the less-than-reliable hands of someone else? Would Germany? Would France?
• All that is needed is for Abbas to order his security forces to go after the armed groups, in accordance with the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement (Oslo II) of 1995.
• Abbas, however, has so far refused to issue such an order. He is most probably afraid that if he does so, his people, who view the terrorists as “heroes,” would revolt against him, denounce him as a “traitor” a “collaborator” with Israel, and kill him, as happened to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat after he signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
• The Palestinian Authority is not prepared to send its forces to arrest Palestinian terrorists so long as they do not pose a threat to Abbas or his associates.
• Abbas’s security forces proved that they can be tough, but only against human rights activists, not terrorists.
• If the Biden Administration were serious about the Palestinian Authority reining in its terrorists, it could simply demand that the Palestinians honor Article XIV of the Oslo II agreement, which states that, “except for the Palestinian Police and the Israeli military forces, no other armed forces shall be established or operate in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”
• The Biden Administration could also remind the Palestinians of Article XV of the same agreement that states that “both sides shall take all measures necessary in order to prevent acts of terrorism, crimes and hostilities directed against each other…”
• Above all, the Biden Administration needs to keep all foreign troops out of the area. They are simply decoys — to protect the terrorists from counterattacks.

The Biden administration is fooling itself into believing that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the PA leadership will suddenly change their policy towards the terrorists just because they are getting an additional 5,000 “commandos.” These “commandos” will simply join the tens of thousands of Palestinian security officers who are doing nothing to enforce law and order or prevent terrorism. Pictured: Terrorists from the Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades march in Nablus on March 14, 2023, to show support for Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli custody. (Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images)

The Biden administration believes that the best way to de-escalate tensions between Israel and the Palestinians is by allowing the Palestinian Authority (PA) to recruit more officers to the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank.

According to reports, the Biden Administration officials recently proposed a plan “to provide 5,000 Palestinians with commando training in Jordan” and then deploy them to areas under the control of the PA. The 5,000 officers will bring with them 5,000 rifles to Palestinian cities and towns — where almost every Palestinian already has a weapon.

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