MIDDLE EAST: The European Union plans to announce today that it will send security advisers to the region to help Palestinians build an effective police force as part of a three-year programme to improve law and order in the West Bank and Gaza.
Seven EU advisers work with the Palestinian police forces in the territories and they will be joined by a further 26 law enforcement advisers in January. While they will provide instruction on how to build a police force, they will not be involved in actual law enforcement.
The programme, which has been approved by Israel, will initially focus on beefing up security in Gaza City and Ramallah, and will then be extended to other major Palestinian cities.
The Palestinian Authority security forces remain weak and have been unable to enforce law and order in large areas of Gaza and the West Bank, where armed groups often dispense their own form of vigilante justice.
On another front, however, the Israeli cabinet yesterday put off approving an agreement on opening a border crossing between Gaza and Egypt because of a dispute with the EU. When Israel withdrew from Gaza in September, it agreed to let Palestinians travel via the Rafah border terminal with Egypt, but insisted on foreign supervision, in the form of EU monitors.
Israeli officials say the EU has refused to accept their demand that the monitors arrest anyone suspected of smuggling arms through the border crossing into Gaza. The EU's Middle East envoy, Marc Otte, said yesterday that Israel and the Palestinians had to agree on terms for reopening the crossing before the EU's role could be negotiated.
"Obviously what we will not be doing is taking the place of the Palestinian customs and security officials," he said. "In the end the Palestinian Authority will be in charge of its borders."