BRITISH INTELLIGENCE helped draw up a secret plan for a wide-ranging crackdown on the Islamist movement Hamas which became a security blueprint for the Palestinian Authority (PA), leaked documents reveal.
The plan asked for the internment of leaders and activists, the closure of radio stations and replacement of imams in mosques.
The disclosure of the British plan, drawn up by the intelligence service in conjunction with Whitehall officials in 2004, and passed by a Jerusalem-based MI6 officer to the senior PA security official at the time, Jibril Rajoub, is contained in the cache of confidential documents obtained by al-Jazeera TV and shared with the Guardian.
The documents also highlight the intimate level of military and security co-operation between Palestinian and Israeli forces.
The bulk of the British plan has since been carried out by the West Bank-based PA security apparatus, which is increasingly criticised for authoritarianism and human rights abuses, detention without trial and torture.
The British documents included detailed proposals for a security taskforce based on the UK’s “trusted” PA contacts, outside the control of “traditional security chiefs”, with “direct lines” to Israel intelligence. It lists suicide bombers and rockets as issues that need urgent attention.
Under the heading “Degrading the capabilities of the rejectionists”, the MI6 Palestinian Security Plan recommends “the detention of key middle-ranking officers” of Hamas and other armed groups, adding: “We could also explore the temporary internment of leading Hamas and PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] figures, making sure they are well-treated, with EU funding.”
The latest leaks come as US state department spokesman Philip Crowley said they would “at least for a time, make the situation more difficult”, while senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha’ath acknowledged the documents were genuine and Palestinian groups in Latin America reacted with shock to the revelation that former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice had privately suggested Palestinian refugees be settled in Chile or Argentina.
Among the newly released documents is an extraordinary account of a 2005 meeting between Israel’s then defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, and the PA’s interior minister, Nasser Youssef. Referring to Hassan al-Madhoun, a commander in the armed Fatah-linked al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades who was held responsible by Israel for a suicide attack the previous year, Mofaz asked Yousef: “We know his address . . . why don’t you kill him?” Yousef replied: “The environment is not easy, our capabilities are limited.” Israel killed Madhoun a few months later in a drone missile attack on his car.
The PLO’s chief spokesman, Saeb Erekat, is recorded as telling senior US official David Hale in 2009: “We have had to kill Palestinians to establish one authority, one gun and the rule of law . . . we have even killed our own people to maintain order and the rule of law.”
Mr Erekat also complained to US envoy George Mitchell in 2009 that not enough was being done to seal off tunnels from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, the documents reveal, undermining the siege of the Hamas-controlled territory, and urged that more be done by Israel and Egypt to prevent the smuggling of goods and weapons.
The papers highlight the far-reaching official British involvement in building up the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatus in the West Bank where control has become harsher and more extensive since the takeover of Gaza by Hamas in the summer of 2007. – (Guardian service)