Even saucier

Consider this a follow-up to the post a couple down where I said that other than a few individuals (and, I'll add here, groups) I could not find any white hats in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I'll go beyond that to asserting, as I have several times before, that the government of Israel does not want peace.

The latest evidence of that comes from Saturday's Washington Post, which reports on a multi-million dollar program funded by the US to train Palestinian security personnel for the specific purpose of improving the ability of the Palestinian Authority to control outbreaks of violence in the West Bank, thus strengthening the position of the US- (and, allegedly, Israeli-) supported government of Mahmoud Abbas.

The first class is now deploying to Jenin, a focus of discontent and a site of fierce fighting during the last intifada. And they are doing it without uniforms, body armor, helmets, flashlights, or even first-aid kits - because Israel blocked delivery of the equipment.

A Western security official familiar with the aid program said the list was submitted months ago and included only nonlethal items,

including, besides the above, such things as tarps, canteens, socks, boots, and vehicles. In fact, the deployment of 300 personnel is being carried out using only 10 unarmed Volkswagen vans, each of which seats only 10 people.

Much of the training equipment - including vehicles, two-way radios, dummy pistols, rifles and batons - arrived after the first training sessions had begun. Israel also placed restrictions on the kind of equipment and curriculum available to the Palestinian trainees. ...

Steve Smith, a veteran of international police training programs, resigned from this one in protest over what he said was inadequate training, equipment and curriculum being provided to the Palestinians.

In a letter to Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), Smith said the students received "communication training with no radios, drivers training with no vehicles, mounted patrol tactics without vehicles, no course handouts or student manuals."

The result is under-supplied, under-protected, unprepared people trying to act as a security force. Then consider just one other point:

Israel has frequently criticized the Palestinian Authority, run by the relatively moderate Fatah party, for not doing enough to combat armed groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad that have pledged to eradicate Israel. Israeli officials said their military forces cannot withdraw from the West Bank - occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war - until the Palestinian Authority proves it can take control.

That is, as a precondition for withdrawal, the Israelis are demanding that the Palestinians do what its own military has been unable to do in decades of trying - stamp out opposition - while at the same time actively hindering the Palestinian government's ability to do so.

The words of the Israeli government speak of peace. It's actions speak of occupation, dominance, and conflict.

Footnote: In November 2004, commenting on the death of Yasser Arafat, I mentioned the talk of "change" and "new openings" his death would supposedly provide.

I fear it will change nothing, open nothing. And soon enough the "new leadership" will be denounced in the same terms that Arafat was, as obstacles to peace and as proof that Israel must continue on its "unilateral separation," involving turning Gaza into a gulag and clamping a tighter hold on significant portions of the West Bank, while putting even more restrictions on Palestinians in the rest of the occupied territories.

Just two months later, I was able to note that

Mahmoud Abbas hasn't even been elected yet and already Israeli officials are "cast[ing] doubt on the ability of Mr. Abbas to reach a peace deal with Israel"

and those officials were demanding a "crackdown" as a precondition for any progress, even as they knew that the Palestinian Authority had

neither the people nor the arms to overcome radical groups and prevent violence against Israel and Israelis by force.

More than three years later, the Israelis continue to sing the same song: "You must do what we could not do and we know you cannot do, even as we keep you from doing it - and until you do, we need do nothing." It certainly appears my fear of "no change" was well-founded.