GAZA CITY — Abu Salim, an earnest, cleanshaven young Palestinian police sergeant, says he joined the force to protect and serve his people. His elder brother shares those goals, he says.
But his brother is a fugitive member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a Palestinian militant group responsible for hundreds of deadly attacks against Israelis. And Abu Salim says that if he were called upon to arrest his sibling or other wanted men, he would refuse.
The 35,000-strong Palestinian security forces are supposed to be the centerpiece of a bold attempt by the new Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, to quell attacks by groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which for more than four years have waged a relentless war on Israel.
Although violence ebbed after Abbas sent his officers into the streets last week, enormous obstacles stand in the way of his plan to harness a security force that has little real sense of its priorities, let alone its loyalties.
Made up of no fewer than 13 branches, the Palestinian security services are riddled with internal rivalries and beset by disorganization. They are short on weapons and equipment, with ranks thinned, bases destroyed and morale sapped by a conflict in which many find themselves unwitting combatants.
Like Abu Salim, who did not want his full name used, many members of the security services feel a kinship with the militants, regardless of whether they are literally family. The Palestinian security forces, created under the Oslo interim peace accords of the early 1990s, were conceived as a means of providing respectable employment to young street fighters who had cut their teeth in the first Palestinian uprising, from 1987 to 1993.
From the earliest months of the current conflict, Israeli troops regarded any armed Palestinian as a threat, even uniformed police officers.
"We were a target, and an easy one," said Capt. Mohammed, an 11-year veteran of the Palestinian preventive intelligence service. Like other low- to mid-ranking officers interviewed, he did not want his name used because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.
The captain said two fellow officers were killed and more than a dozen injured in 2002 when his post in downtown Gaza was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. Later, he lost three fingers when he and his men were caught in an exchange of fire between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants.
