Interesting that the one recorded think-tank in Washington where US general Keith Dayton, who’s been training the PA’s armed forces for the past 2.5 years, goes to speak is the AIPAC spin-off shop, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Robert Dreyfuss has a good little report of the discussion (HT: Mondoweiss).
Anyway, Dreyfuss was there for The Nation.
He tells us that Dayton reassured his audience that,
- Each recruit is vetted by US security forces (i.e, the CIA), then vetted by Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence arm of Israel, and then by Jordan’s super-efficient intelligence service, before they begin their training in Jordan. Dayton made it quite clear that the Palestinian units thus trained are primarily deployed against two targets in the West Bank: against criminal gangs, and against Hamas.
Dayton bragged about how effective his forces had been at keeping the West Bank quiet during Israel’s turn-of-year assault on Gaza. (Oh dear. He somehow forgot to mention that this had been achieved in good part by the PA’s forces undertaking widespread arrests and leaving many of those arrested imprisoned for long periods without trial.)
Then, interestingly, this:
- Dayton warned the 500 or so WINEP listeners that the troops can only be strung along for just so long. “With big expectations, come big risks,” said Dayton. “There is perhaps a two-year shelf life on being told that you’re creating a state, when you’re not.” To my ears, at least, his subtle warning is that if concrete progress isn’t made toward a Palestinian state, the very troops Dayton is assembling could rebel.
Dayton was responding to a question from Paul Wolfowitz, the neoconservative former deputy secretary of defense, who now hangs his hat at the neocon-dominated American Enterprise Institute. “How many Palestinians see your people as collaborators?” Wolfowitz asked. In answering Wolfowitz, the general acknowledged that Hamas and its sympathizers accuse the Palestinian battalions of being “enforcers of the Israeli occuption.” But he stressed that each one of them believes that he is fighting for an independent Palestine. The unstated message: the United States and Israel had better deliver. Thus the two year warning. Which, to me, sounds spot on with the Obama administration’s timetable.
I am fascinated by Dayton’s assessment of the motivation and aspirations of his (Shin Bet-vetted) recruits.
When I was in Palestine earlier this year, Mustapha Barghouthi and others told me that the Ramallastan forces had recently been subjected to an extremely broad (anti-)ideological purge, in which just about all the “old PLO fighters” who had come back in to the West Bank with Arafat and Co. in 1994 had been pensioned off; and the only new recruits being allowed into the forces were youngsters who had failed their tawjihi school-leaving exam.
Dayton reportedly claimed that his trainers were capable of creating “new men”. (That does sound eerily Maoist, doesn’t it?) But even with that intensive training, I imagine many of the recruits would still, over time, be subject to the nationalist sentiments of their friends and families all around them.
So Dayton would need a body capable of identifying and stamping hard on any signs of ideological dissidence– or even just any hint of nationalism or any other ideology– in his force’s ranks, wouldn’t he?
I guess that was why, back in March, we saw this amazing piece of news. It told us that, “The Jericho School of Military Intelligence graduated its first class of recruits on Wednesday.”
Everywhere in the Arab world, the first task of so-called “military” intelligence is to identify and brutally suppress any hints of dissidence in the military’s own ranks.
And so, between the “security” (insecurity) forces, the lengthy terms of incarceration without trial, and the creation of an upgraded “military intel” branch, the Ramallastan statelet is rapidly acquiring many of the most notable attributes of other dictatorships around the world…
Um, but without even having any national sovereignty.
Back to Dayton, though.
He started his job under Bush. The idea behind it was, I think, twofold. First to create a force that could undermine, combat, and hopefully suppress Hamas– which became more especially urgent after Hamas won the elections in 2006.
Dayton worked with Dahlan for 18 months. But Dahlan completely flubbed his job of wresting Gaza away from the control of the elected government.
The other part of Dayton’s job was to use the building of a pro-US internal-security force as a building-block on the (very long) road to a possible Palestinian independence.
Actually, under Bush and his dreadful sidekick Tony Blair, all these “capacity-building” projects in the West bank were used as a substitute for any US/western pressure on Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, so the Palestinians could exercise their national independence there.
It was always an approach that was not only patronizing in the extreme, but also mendacious. Patronizing, because Palestinians have founded states and established and run well-functioning state bodies in many countries up and down the Gulf. They have the expertise and know-how how to do this– and could certainly teach the Americans a thing or two, if asked.
Mendacious, because it was a substitute for the diplomatic activism that has always been needed.
So now, Dayton is still doing his job. He personally seems convinced that he can’t maintain the “deliberate time-wasting” aspect of it up forever.
I wonder how he would react if Fateh and Hamas succeed in achieving national reconciliation and a new national unity government gives his forces different ROE?
As of now, Dayton reports to Mitchell– one of four people who does so directly. That is, on balance, good, because it underlines the subservience in a democracy of the military to the civilian leaders.
One problem with him being a prominent deputy on the Mitchell team, though, is that he is the one there with the most extensive experience of the situation on the ground… And his perspective on matters there is necessarily skewed, by the nature of the task he is doing.
How much does he really understand about the (largely pro-Hamas) political dynamics of the place he is working in?
It would be a LOT better if the Mitchell team had other people on it who know a lot more about Palestinian politics, who could complement the outlook of this manipulative, Maoist-style “man remaker.”
The trouble is that 16 years of ideological purging within the US State Department, carried out at the instigation of WINEP’s founder Martin Indyk and his many well-connected allies, has really reduced the numbers of people in there who are at a pay-grade anywhere close to Dayton’s, who have the intellectual freedom and experience to be able to supplement his assessments.
The trouble is that 16 years of ideological purging within the US State Department, carried out at the instigation of WINEP’s founder Martin Indyk and his many well-connected allies, has really reduced the numbers of people in there who are at a pay-grade anywhere close to Dayton’s, who have the intellectual freedom and experience to be able to supplement his assessments.
State works for the Israel Lobby. That’s not news. This Contra in Chief knows that he’s there for show, and is trying to reduce expectations of the losers he’s training.
Three of “Mitchell’s” four deputies are military and the other is an American Jewess who was probably not chosen for her opposition to the Israel Lobby’s plans for the region. This thing is structured to fail. Obama is not an honest broker between the American people and the Palestinians, let alone between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
These endless essays trying to re-inflate the Obama balloon are as successful as Obama’s own “endless” attempts to re-inflate the toxic assets on Wall Street or to re-inflate the American imperial forays into Afghanistan and Pakistan.
I put the endlessness of his attempts in quotes because they will not be without end. When he completely bankrupts the nation the end will be sure and swift. And at that point Abrams’/Dayton’s Contras will be forgotten, Israel and Palestine will be forgotten, as the real weeping and gnashing of teeth begins.
Does anyone know where the odious Elliot Abrams is these days?
Could you please explain to me more about the fact that “Palestinians have founded states” ?
“Patronizing, because Palestinians have founded states and established and run well-functioning state bodies in many countries up and down the Gulf. They have the expertise and know-how how to do this– and could certainly teach the Americans a thing or two, if asked.”
Helena … could you please amplify this fascinating tidbit with some substance? Especially the “founding states” bit. Also, the Palestinians who established and are running state bodies in the Gulf – are they descendants of refugees from ’48 or did they leave Palestine after Oslo or both?
btw – doesn’t a commenter using the term “American Jewess” make you feel a little uncomfortable?
Is being a Jewess something to be ashamed of?
We all come from somewhere.
My point is that an American Jewess is unlikely to have been appointed to this commission because of her sympathies with the Palestinian cause.
Doesn’t the constant need to fall back on reflexive claims of “anti-semitism” make you fell a little uncomfortable?
I’d be disappointed if Helena agrees with you, JFL. It’s a term that carries a whiff ….
… like using term “American negress”.
Not nice in my view. In fact, highly objectionable. But maybe am wrong about HC.
As a former “trainer” of the impoverished and dragooned “military forces” of the now-defunct Republic of South Vietnam, I have to wince whenever I hear of the American miliary “training” the indigenous Palestinians to fight, incarcerate, and kill other indigenous Palestinians so that apartheid zionist predators and their gullible American sponsors won’t have to do quite so much of the dirty work themselves. I find this sordid situation especially galling, though, when recalling something that Ehud Barak, the current A.Z.E. “defense” minister and former “prime minister,” once arrogantly proclaimed to ace reporter Seymour Hersch about the American military “training” Iraqis do fight, incarcerate, and kill other Iraqis so that …
Said General Barak: “The only thing the Americans can train the Iraqis to do is how to kill Americans. How stupid can they be?” What a “friend” of America! What a “stalwart ally,” as President Barack Obama keeps stupidly mumbling about a transient crusading interloper with whom America has no ratified treaty of alliance. The somnolent masses of America really have no idea how abysmally dumb (although pathetically useful) the apartheid zionists consider them.
A few years after I returned from my eighteen months of “Vietnamizing” the Vietnamese, I had the unsurprising opportunity to witness our “trainees” throw down their weapons, take off their trousers, and run off in their underpants when the real (i.e., independent) Vietnamese showed up to reclaim their country for themselves. Someday the worm will turn and the real Palestinians will return to do the same. By that time, though, America will have so bankrupted itself trying to subsidize its pathological parasitic pet, the Apartheid Zionist Entity, that history will have little to do but ask in genuine perplexity: “Why would so many Americans throw away everything for so few Jewish foreigners who consider goyim Americans nothing but useful idiots?”
“Each recruit is vetted by US security forces (i.e, the CIA), then vetted by Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence arm of Israel, and then by Jordan’s super-efficient intelligence service, before they begin their training in Jordan.”
Why don’t they at least be minimally honest enough to call it what it actually is – a proxy Israeli occupation force?
“‘How many Palestinians see your people as collaborators?’ Wolfowitz asked.”
In other words, how many Palestinians see your people as what they are.
“the general acknowledged that Hamas and its sympathizers accuse the Palestinian battalions of being ‘enforcers of the Israeli occuption.’”
But isn’t that precisely what they are, and precisely what they are intended to be?
“he stressed that each one of them believes that he is fighting for an independent Palestine.”
LOOL! Yes, and an American military officer I communicated with regularly for a couple of years really, really sincerely believed that the Iraqi soldiers he was working with loved him and the rest of the U.S. military soooooo much that they would throw themselves on a hand grenade to protect him. He actually told me that kind of thing happened all the time. Yeah right!
Self deception is a wondrous thing.
BB, I too was offended by John Francis Lee’s use of the term “Jewess”. For me, it also brought to mind user of the term “Negress”, which, in turn suggested the “female of the species”. However, don’t expect a response any time soon from Helena, unless the term were somehow patronizing to Palestinians.
I’d also like to join in with you and Yann in asking Helena to explain what she meant about Palestinians founding states up and down the Gulf.
Regarding arrests for long periods and without trial, I think that Hamas has also participated in the practice (except when summery execution has replace both the incarceration and the trial), and I’m sure that they have a flourishing mukhabarat.
And even closer to Helena’s home, even President Obama is mulling tossing out habeas corpus on US soil:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124223286506515765.html
Well, what do you expect from someone whose turning out to be a walking public service announcement going on television to tell the people of the greatest nation on earth to wash their hands to prevent the spread of Swine Flu. What a joke!