•
EYEWEAR ■ CONTACT LENSES ■ DESIGNER FRAMES
Have Only Uniforms
Changed In Gaza?
A year after Israeli troops pulled out, those in the Gaza
Strip are facing rising oppression from Palestinian police.
INA FRIEDMAN ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
A
year after the withdrawal
of the last Israeli troops
from the autonomous ar-
eas of Gaza, many things
have changed — not all of them
for the better.
The first difference is felt at
the Erez border point, which re-
cently has been converted to a
Checkpoint Charlie arrange-
ment: Israeli and Palestinian
guard posts sit at opposite ends
of a quarter-mile stretch that
must be traversed on foot by the
Palestinian workers allowed into
Israel and the odd Israeli whom
Israel allows into Gaza.
In the morning, much of this
road is covered with a line of
Palestinian trucks waiting (some
up to three days) for the stringent
security check that vehicles and
their cargo must now undergo.
By late afternoon, the road is
blocked by a jam of cars carrying
impatient Palestinian workers
back home. At neither time is the
lonely trek between guard posts
a particularly pleasant one.
Gaza, too, seems changed a bit
on each successive visit. Heaps
of garbage are still a common
sight — though one brand new
sanitation truck was spotted at
work in town — and a huge pud-
dle of raw sewage filled an inter-
section of the main north-south
thoroughfare. On the other hand,
many of the cars plying the dusty
streets today have been upgrad-
ed to the Mercedes, Pontiac and
Subaru class — most sporting
new Palestinian license plates,
some driven by Palestinian po-
licemen and other officials, all
stolen in Israel. (The Palestinian
Authority began registering
stolen cars after Israel deducted
their value from monies owed to
the PA to compensate Israeli in-
surance companies.)
And, of course, the streets are
filled with uniformed Palestini-
ans. Estimates have it that as
many as 18,000 to 20,000 police
and other security personnel cur-
rently draw a salary from the PA
(the Gaza-Jericho agreement al-
lows for up to 9,000). "We've been
training people to police the West
Bank once Israel redeploys
there," explains Gen. Abdel Razak
al-Yihiya, the chief Palestinian
delegate to the Joint Security Co-
ordination and Cooperation Com-
mittee, who was a founder and for
many years the commander of the
Palestinian Liberation Army.
"That's why you're hearing about
higher numbers."
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Yet many Palestinians (and
some Israelis) have been voicing
concerns about the burgeoning
Palestinian security apparatus
and its implications for the fu-
ture of Palestinian society. For
much of the past year, the Israeli
government has, of course, been
pressing the PA to crack down on
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.
Recently, it even complimented
PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat for
acting more aggressively against
them, even as he has tried to ob-
tain their agreement to a mora-
torium on terrorism against
Israelis.
In the past few months, how-
ever, it has been not just mem-
bers of the armed opposition to
the Gaza-Jericho agreement but
Palestinian journalists and hu-
man rights activists who have
been called in for questioning
and even ended up behind bars.
"The preferred method is to in-
vite people in for a cup of coffee,
an 'invitation' that is often ex-
tended in the middle of the
night," reports Mazen Shakura
of the Gaza Center for Rights and
Law, the leading human rights
organization in the Strip.
One prominent activist who
received such an "invitation" was
the director of the Gaza Center,
Raji Sourani, after he spoke out
against the workings of the State
Security Court (a special military
court whose sessions are held in
secret and whose rulings cannot
be appealed). Mr. Sourani was
released after 16 hours and sub-
sequently received the explana-
tion that his arrest was due to a
misinterpretation of orders. But
soon thereafter he was "relieved
of his responsibilities" by the cen-
ter's board of directors (who in-
sist that he was fired due to a
dispute over administrative is-
sues), and 11 of the center's 15-
member staff were placed on
extended leave.
Sa'id Abu Masamah, the edi-
tor of the Hamas weekly al-
Watan, suffered a harsher fate.
Arrested after publishing ac-
counts of the torture of Hamas
and Islamic Jihad detainees, Mr.
Masamah was promptly tried
and sentenced by the State Se-
curity Court to two years' im-
prisonment. The result has been
fears that by taking its preroga-
tives too far, the regime is mock-
ing its own aim of building a
"civil, democratic society in Pales-
tine."
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