Palestinian security forces have drafted a plan to assume control of Israeli settlements and military installations in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli pullout, a senior Palestinian security commander said.
"We have prepared our forces for such a day, a day we view as a victory for...the Palestinian people," Major-General Abdel-Razek al-Majaydeh, the Palestinian public security chief, told Reuters in an interview.
Israeli political sources have voiced fears that militant groups could take over abandoned buildings in settlements or give them to families of suicide bombers.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to "disengage" from the Palestinians envisages the removal of all 21 Gaza settlements and four of the 120 Israel has built in the West Bank since capturing both areas in the 1967 Middle East war.
Under the plan, settlers' homes and "sensitive buildings", including synagogues, would be razed, but some infrastructure could remain.
Majaydeh said Palestinian security forces would allow Gazans to enter the vacated settlements to celebrate the Israeli withdrawal, but would prevent chaos.
"We have drawn up maps and a written plan, and orders have been given to the commanders of the forces that would take over settlements after the departure of the occupation army," he added, pointing at locations on a map in his office.
"People should realise that we would enter these settlements to preserve their land and components for the sake of the Palestinian people," Majaydeh said, without mentioning Israel's plans to destroy settlers' homes.
Approving Sharon's plan in principle two weeks ago, Israel's cabinet decided to hold a further vote in nine months' time on whether to begin the four-stage settlement evacuation.
Majaydeh, whose security service is the largest in the Palestinian Authority, also called on Israel to couple a pullout with an agreement on a cease-fire and an end to its assassinations of Palestinian militants.
He said in return for a full withdrawal - including from a Gaza-Egypt border strip known as the Philadelphi corridor - the Palestinian Authority would work with Egyptian forces to stop weapons smuggling to militants via tunnels under the frontier.
They would also "prevent any individual or a group from launching attacks against Israeli territory from Gaza".
Egypt is trying to reach agreement with the Palestinian Authority and militant groups for the dispatch of Egyptian security experts to train and revamp the security services in Gaza to keep the peace after an Israeli withdrawal.
Majaydeh said Israel's repeated incursions and attacks in Gaza to fight militants had damaged the operational capabilities of the security forces and destroyed many of their installations.
But he said, "we are not going to say we are unable" to act although the security agencies needed to replace vehicles and communications equipment and repair wrecked headquarters.
Comments
Comments are closed.