Israelis Fear Domino Effect : Both Sides Suffer Loss as Arab Police Resign

No Israeli officer can do the things that occupied most of Capt. Ahmed Saned’s time during 20 years as a policeman in nearby Bethlehem.

They might be as good at tracking down burglars or murderers as he was--though that’s far from certain, given the Palestinian officer’s much more intimate knowledge of the town and its people. But in his specialty, it would be no contest.

Saned is a master of the sulhah-- the traditional meeting of reconciliation that, if all goes well, resolves disputes between bickering Arab husbands and wives, or between whole extended families with grudges against one another.

“Hundreds of reconciliations were made in this very room,” Saned, 43, said Sunday during an interview in the comfortable sitting room of his home in this picturesque hillside village just south of the town revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus.

Saned and his talent for the sulhah became victims of a sort this weekend of the unrest that has been rocking the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip for more than three months. He is one of a reported 450 Palestinian policemen from the occupied territories who, as of Sunday night, had resigned in response to a directive last Thursday by the so-called Unified National Leadership for the Uprising in the Occupied Territories.

The directive came in the latest of 10 communiques issued by the underground group, which identifies strongly with the Palestine Liberation Organization and which has played an increasingly important role in promoting new forms of anti-Israeli protest.

Saned, who was promoted to captain earlier this month in recognition of his skills and his 20 years on the force, turned in his uniform Sunday along with about 60 other Arab policemen from Bethlehem. But he clearly did so with mixed feelings.

“The final word is that of the PLO,” he said, “because the PLO in the final analysis is the representative of the Palestinian people.” However, he added, he’s worried that the unintended victims of the resignation campaign will be Palestinian residents suddenly deprived of their police.

“I urge the PLO--not for our sake, but for the sake of the people we lived with for all these years--to reconsider their decision,” Saned said.

The resignations, which already involve almost half of the estimated 1,000 Palestinian police officers on the West Bank and Gaza Strip and which are still being handed in, have been termed by Israeli security sources a “grave” threat to the 20-year-old system under which Jerusalem administers the territories captured during the 1967 Six-Day War.

The Arab policemen are among about 20,000 Palestinians who work under Israeli army and police supervision to provide services to the 1.4 million Palestinian residents of the occupied territories. The majority of those work in the educational system as teachers, clerks and administrators, but others handle a full range of government functions from garbage collection to tax accounting.

The Israelis are worried that the police resignations might trigger a domino effect that could bring the entire administrative system to the verge of collapse.

Even though the latest underground directive said specifically that the call to resign “was meant for the police department only,” it has many Palestinian employees of the civil administration nervous. On Sunday, for example, a schoolteacher here asked a visiting Arab journalist apprehensively if he should quit as well.

Graffiti painted on the home of Artas’ mukhtar, the Israeli-appointed village headman, urges him to turn in his official seal. Other graffiti praised the police “for implementing the decision of the PLO” and promised, “We will deal with traitors in the nearest future.”

A week ago, the stabbed and beaten body of a Palestinian policeman, bound hand and foot, was discovered in a refugee camp near Jericho, and Israel Radio reported Sunday that many of the policemen who handed in their resignations had done so under threats to themselves or their families.

However, Saned insisted that he, personally, had not been threatened. Nor was he influenced by the fate of the Jericho man, he said, calling the latter “different” and alluding to reports that the slain officer had been a “collaborator.”

Saned defined a collaborator as “anyone who deals with the Shabak (Israeli security police) and who informs the Israelis about Palestinians--that they’re members of the PLO, or have weapons--and those who sell their property to the Israelis.”

Saned added: “There is no question that there are some collaborators everywhere--in the police, in schools, in the streets, everywhere.” However, he said, most of the Palestinian policemen see themselves as working on behalf of their own people, not for the Israelis. He added that the Israelis “never asked me for information, and they know I would never do such a thing.”

Surprised at Suggestion

Saned said that when it was first hinted in underground leaflet No. 9 that the police should resign, “we were surprised, because we did not believe that our job was against the people’s welfare.” But when the call was repeated in specific terms in leaflet No. 10, he and his fellow Arab officers acted.

While they may work under an Israeli government ministry, he said, “we are part of the Palestinian people, and we operated as policemen in accordance with the will of our people. Since our people asked us to resign, we had to adhere to their will.”

Arab policemen in the occupied territories have always been in “a difficult position,” Saned said.

He was one of those who had served on the force when the West Bank was under Jordanian rule, before the 1967 war. Afterwards, those officers were specifically advised by the Jordanian government to return to their jobs despite the Israeli occupation. Until 1971, they even collected two pay envelopes--one from Jordan, one from the Israeli occupation authorities.

The Israelis want Arab policemen to handle routine police work in the territories so that Israeli officers can concentrate on security matters and have as little potentially inflammatory contact with the local Palestinians as possible.

“They’re irreplaceable,” a senior Israeli police official commented Sunday. “They’ve worked there for 20 years, and they know the area. The people who will suffer most (from their resignations) will be the Arabs.”

Asked what the government will do about the development, Israeli Police Minister Chaim Bar-Lev told reporters as he emerged from Sunday’s regular Cabinet meeting that Israeli police will take over some duties while soldiers will protect police stations.

“The people will receive less police service,” he added. “The thieves will celebrate. The traffic offenders will celebrate. That’s what it means.”

In Bethlehem, Saned said, the 60 Arab officers dealt with 1,000 to 1,200 civilian criminal cases each year. He said that 15 homicides occurred there last year and about 300 robberies. Ten Israeli officers, Saned added, handle “all kinds of security cases” in the town. There are separate Arab and Israeli chief investigators.

Saned said the two groups of officers got along well, even though Arab officers make only about half the salary of their Israeli counterparts. Israeli sources, who confirmed the pay discrepancy, said the difference is related to Jordanian salary scales. They conceded that the resigning Arab policemen had been offered more pay in an unsuccessful attempt to change their minds.

Saned, who wore a stylish gray suit, dress shirt, and sweater during the interview, said he was one of the highest paid Palestinian policemen in the territories, with a salary equivalent to about $550 a month. Khalil Khalawi, a police corporal with five years’ experience, said he earned the equivalent of $345 monthly.

‘Mutual Respect’

“There was mutual respect,” Saned said of the Arab policemen’s relations with their Israeli counterparts. “Each group knew the limits of their authority and responsibility.”

Arab officers neither want nor are expected to play any role in quelling political demonstrations. After the widespread unrest began last Dec. 9, “we used to drive around or walk around, passing through the middle of demonstrations, and no one would pay any attention,” Saned said. “People would even remove stone barricades to let us by.”

Several police stations have been stoned by Palestinian protesters, the former police officer said, but those actions were aimed at a symbol of Israeli sovereignty rather than at the Arab policemen inside.

Saned said that while none of the police resignations have been formally accepted by the Israelis as yet, none of the Arab officers will return to the job unless specifically asked to do so in a new underground leaflet.

It’s a loss to the police department, said a senior Israeli police source familiar with Saned’s record. He called him “very responsible and talented, one of the best officers in all the country.”

It’s a loss to Saned, who supports an extended family of 20 and who has known no other work since he was 18 years old but the police force.

And in the short run, at least, it appears to be a loss to the citizens of Bethlehem. “Those people who are used to calling the police with this problem or that problem--who’s going to help them now?” Saned asked rhetorically.