Palestinian Police

GAZA, Gaza Strip -- They made a marijuana bust but can't make it stick. No crime lab to test the drugs.They nabbed a rape suspect but don't know his criminal past. No records.They chase thieves but sometimes lose them. No wheels.They have emergencies, but haven't yet issued an all-points bulletin. No radios.You might call them the detectives without a clue, these investigators of the Palestinian police force."We are starting from zero," says a sighing Lt. Col. Hamdi Rifi, chief of criminal investigations.

J -The Israeli government adds two culturally rich, millennium-old historic sites to a list of national treasures, and riots break out, followed by international condemnation. Yet, it is precisely this cynical, predictable response that demonstrates why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was right to add the Tomb of Rachel and the Cave of the Patriarchs to Israel's National Heritage Sites. There is no nation with firmer roots in a land than the Jewish people in the greater land of Israel.

GAZA, Gaza Strip -- Hani Abed has disappeared, last seen in the hands of the Palestinian police.Mr. Abed, a 31-year-old university teacher, may be the first secret arrest -- and perhaps first political arrest -- by the new Palestinian authority in the Gaza Strip, who took over from Israel two weeks ago."If the police do things like this, for sure there will be a revolution," said his angry sister, Atimad Abed.Mr. Abed is a man with the wrong kind of friends: certainly opponents to the peace process, and maybe -- or maybe not -- murderers from the Muslim group Islamic Jihad.

JERUSALEM -- Israel said yesterday it has authorized a shipment of 25 armored vehicles and 1,000 rifles to bolster a promised Palestinian police crackdown on armed militants in the West Bank. Approval of the shipment, which had been proposed by Russia two years ago but stalled by Israeli opposition, was aimed at building trust with the Palestinian Authority's leaders as Israel prepares to restart formal peace negotiations with them. Israel also will allow the Gaza Strip to resume strawberry and flower exports that have been blocked since September.

*TC JERUSALEM -- The Palestine Liberation Organization struck back yesterday at Hamas, the Islamic extremist group that has endangered the PLO's self-government agreement with Israel by carrying out shooting attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers.PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat ordered Palestinian police to arrest Hamas activists after the group claimed responsibility for killing an 18-year-old Israeli and wounding six others in the attacks in Gaza on Sunday.The crackdown won immediate praise from Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who warned before the arrests were announced that Hamas' attacks jeopardized Israel's negotiations with the PLO on extending self-government throughout the West Bank.

NABLUS, West Bank -- In the span of a single day last week, Israeli soldiers guarding a Jewish shrine in Nablus worked peacefully alongside Palestinian police, exchanged gunfire with them and then found themselves under the policemen's protection.On that Thursday, stone-throwing Palestinians had converged on Joseph's Tomb, a small, white-domed building that tradition says contains Joseph's remains. Palestinian police tried to hold back the crowd. When Israeli soldiers fired to protect themselves, the police fired back at the Israelis.

JERUSALEM - Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said yesterday that Israel's decision to let Palestinian police officers in the West Bank carry weapons again would help Palestinian authorities maintain law and order. Israel agreed Thursday to a request by beleaguered Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia to allow the use of guns on a provisional basis. "It will shore up the positive forces that want there to be order and who want to prevent anarchy in these places," Mofaz said during an interview on Israel Radio.

JERUSALEM -- Israel said yesterday it has authorized a shipment of 25 armored vehicles and 1,000 rifles to bolster a promised Palestinian police crackdown on armed militants in the West Bank. Approval of the shipment, which had been proposed by Russia two years ago but stalled by Israeli opposition, was aimed at building trust with the Palestinian Authority's leaders as Israel prepares to restart formal peace negotiations with them. Israel also will allow the Gaza Strip to resume strawberry and flower exports that have been blocked since September.

JERUSALEM -- A tense quiet settled over the West Bank and Gaza Strip yesterday as the Palestinian police sought to prevent new fighting and U.S. mediators pursued intensive efforts to arrange a meeting between the leaders of Israel and the Palestinians.For the moment, both sides were reported locked over whether the meeting should just be between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat, as Israel wanted, or also with Egyptian and U.S. participation, as the Palestinians insisted.

JERUSALEM -- Mahmoud Jumayal lay broken and burned in a hospital bed, a victim of a beating so brutal it left him without thought, without speech, without any semblance of brain function. And then, last night, he died.Until last weekend the 26-year-old Palestinian had been confined to a jail cell, detained since December when he was questioned about his involvement in a military wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.His interrogators? Members of a Palestinian police force, say human rights activists.

JERICHO, West Bank -- Israeli forces using tanks, bulldozers and helicopters besieged a Palestinian jail for nearly 10 hours yesterday and seized inmates involved in the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister in 2001, unleashing a wave of retaliatory attacks by Palestinians. Outraged by the raid, which left three Palestinians dead at the jail, Palestinian gunmen kidnapped 10 foreigners in the West Bank and Gaza, including an American University professor, a Red Cross worker, two South Korean journalists and two Australian teachers at an American school.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Gaza's director of tourism, Moain Sadeq, still recalls the last tourists to visit the Gaza Strip. It was September 2000, and a group of 30 Israeli scholars had come to see Gaza's archaeological sites, including the remains of an early Bronze Age walled city near Gaza's commercial center. Sadeq, an archaeologist by profession, guided the curious, somewhat nervous visitors through the excavations of mud brick walls, giving him hope that someday the site would be added to the list of must-sees for travelers to the Holy Land.

Jerusalem -- More than 30 Palestinian policemen charged onto the grounds of the Palestinian parliament in Gaza City yesterday and fired weapons into the air, demanding more government support in a growing confrontation with the militant Islamic faction Hamas. Less than an hour later, lawmakers endorsed a plan calling on Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, to form a new Cabinet within two weeks. If he fails to do so, the government of the prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, could face a no-confidence vote.

JERUSALEM - Palestinian militants and security forces exchanged fire for three hours before dawn yesterday in Gaza, the second day in a row of armed clashes. The house of the Gaza commander of preventive security, Gen. Rashid Abu Shbak, was shot up by the militants, who also fired a rocket-propelled grenade at it, witnesses said. Witnesses said at least three people suffered injuries, but officially none were reported, and no arrests have been made. Militants have staged demonstrations and clashed with security forces because they say they are being denied jobs in the Palestinian security services and because they are angry at being asked to stop displaying their guns in public.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip - For the past four years, Palestinian police Lt. Saifaldeen al-Saidy has retained most of the tools of his trade. He kept his olive-green uniform, floppy green beret and Kalashnikov assault rifle. What he lacked was authority to arrest anyone. For all of that time, the Palestinian government virtually disappeared, in effect giving the gunmen of Hamas and other militant groups immunity for their actions. Militants who claimed that Israel was their target became neighborhood warlords, deciding for themselves what law and justice meant.

JERUSALEM - The Palestinian Authority issued a ban yesterday on civilians openly carrying unlicensed weapons, while Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon offered rare high praise of recent Palestinian actions to rein in militants - two more significant signs of the growing momentum for peace talks. In a speech last night in Tel Aviv, Sharon said he felt mediators for the two sides were making great strides. "I believe that the conditions are now ripe to allow us and the Palestinians to reach a historic breakthrough in the relations between us," he said.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Facing criticism from the United States, Palestinian authorities arrested several suspects yesterday in the bombing of a U.S. diplomatic convoy that killed three American security workers in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian police traded gunfire with militants during an overnight raid into the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, near the site of Wednesday's bombing, according to Palestinian security officials and residents in the area. At least six suspects were taken into custody, the officials said.

BEIT JALA, West Bank - It happened on a quiet weekday evening. Two masked Palestinians jumped from a stolen car, took cover in an olive grove and fired shots across the valley at apartments in a Jerusalem neighborhood. This used to be an everyday occurrence. But a strange thing happened on this recent night in this village near Bethlehem. Palestinians upset with the shooting picked up the phone and called police. And Palestinian police actually responded and arrested the gunmen. The quick action not only prevented yet another retaliation by the Israeli army, it offered evidence of a change of heart in a city long ruled by militants.

JERUSALEM - Senior Israeli and Palestinian officials ended a diplomatic freeze yesterday by resuming public, high-level contacts, as Israel announced it had suspended targeted killings of Palestinian militants and was preparing to withdraw troops from four West Bank cities. Yesterday's talks between aides to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas were part of the preparations for a meeting between the two leaders, possibly as early as next month. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, meanwhile, arrived here for talks with both sides about a formal cease-fire.

JERUSALEM - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday he was close to persuading Palestinian militant groups to stop their attacks on Israelis, while Israel suggested it would curtail military operations in the Gaza Strip if militants held their fire. Abbas said in an interview on Palestinian television that he expected to have a truce in hand "very soon," after days of recent meetings with militant groups in the Gaza Strip. "We can say that there has been significant progress in the talks.