Table of Contents                Back to Home Page 
             
Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center
at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S)
 

The Palestinian Authority Decision to
Institutionalize the Local Militias in 2001
   
    Executive Summary
1. Documents captured in Ramallah shed light on the PA’s crucial decision in early 2001 to institutionalize the local militias of the Fatah/Tanzim, so as to enable them to play a leading role in the confrontation with Israel (as in fact happened). During the late 1990s, approximately 130 activists, most of them from Fatah and some from other organizations, were “attached” from the PA National Security Apparatus and incorporated into Fatah/Tanzim local branches in the West Bank, i.e., they are on the staff of the PA and are on its payroll, but in practice they were posted with the local militias.
     
2. For years the PA has enabled Fatah field activists to incorporate into all its security apparatuses, including the General Intelligence and Preventive Intelligence, and the instructions to integrate them were personally signed by Arafat. However, the process uncovered in the National Security Apparatus has special significance. The National Security Apparatus is an official police force (from the PA’s point of view this is a semi military force) concerned with routine security tasks. It comprises about 8,500 men and is the second largest force in the PA after the Palestinian Police.
   
3. Posting 100 National Security Apparatus men in Fatah/Tanzim branches in Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron is completely contrary to the Israel-PA interim agreement signed in 1995. The agreement defined the official police and security forces, as well as the obligation to subordinate them to one integral unit controlled by the PA council and to a single command in each district.
   
4. The documents reveal that in January 2001 the PA decided to return the attached personnel to the National Security Apparatus. However, “field” elements opposed this step and approached Arafat, noting that “in this period, the Tanzim desperately needs these men and even additional reinforcements”. The documents indicate that the majority of the attached men remained in the local militias during 2001. It is very likely that the final decision in this matter was made by Yasser Arafat.
   
5. At the same time, in 2001 hundreds of Fatah activists were integrated into the “Special Forces”, another PA security apparatus set up (anew) in 2001. In these two parallel processes, some 500-800 Fatah militia activists were officially placed on the PA payroll.
   
6. The documents and interrogation of detainees captured in Operation Defensive Shield uncover a systematic policy for integrating activists involved in the confrontation with Israel and in terrorism into the PA official security apparatuses. This, even when their involvement in terrorism is known to senior PA officials and to Arafat himself. Nasser Aweis, for example, the commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank (arrested in April 2002), was a captain in the National Security Apparatus and received his salary from the PA. Aweis is responsible for terror attacks in which 17 Israelis were killed. Two activists attached to Fatah/Tanzim in Ramallah killed the Israeli teenager Ophir Rahum in January 2001, after he had been lured to a meeting with a Palestinian woman in Jerusalem via the internet.
   
7. Arafat operates in this pattern vis-a-vis most of the organizations operating in the framework of the PLO. In addition to Fatah, 30 activists from other organizations were attached to local branches. In 2001, Arafat approved the transfer of 45 small arms to the Popular Struggle Front (PSF), and payments to tens of activists of the Palestinian Liberation Front/Abu Al Abbas, who were involved in the confrontation with Israel.
   
8. Disbanding “local militias” and integrating them in the security forces is a decision of cardinal importance which any national leadership must make on the road to becoming a legitimate political entity. The documents demonstrate that the PA decided to take the opposite course at the beginning of 2001.
   
9. The rest is known: the Tanzim, which was institutionalized as the military arm of the Fatah, began to perpetrate terrorist attacks under the name “Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades”. Its activists launched a series of murderous suicide attacks inside Israel, in which women terrorists also took part later.
   
10. The Tanzim’s armed militias became “war lords” and they spread fear in the Palestinian street, as revealed by the documents and from testimonies of detainees from Bethlehem. They pose a threat to future arrangements for stabilizing the situation in the PA, and endanger also international relief and supervision elements.
   
   
Table of Contents
The PA Decision to Institutionalize the Local Militias in 2001
Appendix A (pdf format - 2mb)

14 Captured Documents Regarding the Activists Attached from the National Security Apparatus to
Elements in the West Bank
Appendices B-C (pdf format - 93k)

B - Activists of the National Security Apparatus Activists Attached to the Local Militias in the West Bank

C - The “General Security Apparatus” and the “National Security Apparatus” and their Involvement in the
Confrontation with Israel
     
   
Back to Top                       back to Home Page