Palestinian Troops Learn to Make Peace, Not War : Mideast: Former fighters are training to become the police force of self-rule. But they face opposition.

Every morning after dawn in a well-guarded compound on the outskirts of Amman, Palestinian fighters armed with M-16 assault rifles go through the basics of military training. They march, drill, salute, aim and fire.

But then the platoon of Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) fighters once sworn to the destruction of Israel trades its weapons for pencils and marches into the classroom, where Jordanian police instructors put the platoon through basic training of a far different sort: courses in criminal justice, search and seizure and civilian law enforcement.

After all, the militiamen of this Palestinian military brigade called the Badr Force are not training for war. They are preparing to enforce peace.

They are the core of the new police force that Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat will deploy to take control of the new autonomous zones of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Jericho when Israeli troops withdraw in a few months.

In an interview with The Times on Wednesday, Jordan’s King Hussein confirmed that his Royal Police Academy in Amman has been training the new Palestinian force for several months, an indication that Arafat’s PLO began taking practical steps toward self-rule while it was secretly negotiating with Israel the historic declaration signed in Washington this week.

“A few months ago, we were approached by the PLO . . . to see if we could add to the training of a PLA brigade that was here--police, security responsibilities--with the idea that sooner or later there may be the beginning of a solution to the problem,” the king said.

On Thursday, Arafat announced that Egypt also will help train Palestinian police and other professionals. “I am pleased to announce that President (Hosni) Mubarak has given orders to train here in Egypt our cadres for the self-rule (zones), and I thank him for this nice gesture,” Arafat said in Alexandria after meeting with Mubarak.

He said that training in Egypt began a few weeks ago.

King Hussein said that in addition to training the Badr Force, one of several PLA brigades that have been serving for decades under armies throughout the Arab world, his own national forces are contributing qualified officers and men of Palestinian origin to the new Palestinian police force.

“Another request that was made of us was to look at Jordanians of Palestinian origin who had served in the Jordanian forces as well, and whether they could serve in Palestine at some point,” he said.

“This needs a bit of formalization. . . . We need to take a bit of time to hear exactly what the Palestinian leadership wishes so we can respond to that. . . . But the program was started some time ago, and it is continuing.”

The future police force for the self-ruled Palestinian territories is just one key component of the enormous practical task now facing Arafat in the wake of his triumphant whirlwind tour of Washington’s power centers. But it is also among the most controversial and delicate.

The police, along with the court system, will be the cutting edge of Arafat’s effort to consolidate support and ensure security in a land that has been in open rebellion against Israeli occupation for years. And the new force will attempt that mission despite sharp opposition to the peace plan from radical Palestinian groups that have been at the vanguard of the armed struggle against the occupying Israel Defense Forces.

“No force whatsoever can impose oppression,” said radical Palestinian leader Ahmed Jibril, whose Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks on Israelis in the territories in the past several years and recently predicted the assassination of Arafat himself.

A leader of another Palestinian opposition party that has wide support in the violence-prone Gaza Strip said last week that his group’s strategy to undermine Arafat’s plan includes recruiting members of the new police force into the opposition.

The future Palestinian police force is equally controversial on the other side of the political spectrum in the occupied territories, particularly among the tens of thousands of Jewish settlers there who have vowed they will never take orders from armed Palestinians they still consider terrorists.

Even the deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces expressed deep concern on Israeli Army Radio in Jerusalem soon after the self-rule plan became public that the declaration between Israel and Arafat makes no provisions for his soldiers to pursue Palestinians who commit crimes in Israel and then flee to the autonomous territories.

When the leader of the Badr Force, Gen. Mohammed Qudsie, was asked during an interview in Amman how such a potentially explosive situation would be handled, he indicated that those policies have yet to be established.

In fact, despite the foresight that led to the formal Palestinian police training program in Amman, PLO officials conceded that they will have to work quickly to create the basic structure of the new military-turned-civilian force. As King Hussein noted during the interview, even the Badr brigade was little more than “a skeleton force” at one point, “and now we are beefing it up.”

The mere locations of the other Palestine Liberation Army brigades that the PLO has indicated are undergoing similar police training raise strong concerns in several quarters.

As Arafat’s point men try to raise a force that ultimately will include as many as 20,000 former PLA fighters, they apparently plan to draw from brigades currently serving under the armies of Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Algeria, Sudan and Syria. All but two of those nations are on the U.S. State Department list of countries that sponsor international terrorism.

Initially formed as the military wing of the PLO in 1964 with an armed strength estimated at 12,000, the brigades have served for decades under the immediate command, influence and training of their host countries. And it was unclear which, if any, of those brigades would be integrated into the new police force in Jericho and the Gaza Strip.

To illustrate the potential for conflict in the delicate task of forming this force, Palestinian sources in Damascus, Syria, and Amman pointed to the PLA’s Hittin Brigade, which serves in the army of Syrian President Hafez Assad. Sources said it is still uncertain whether the brigade’s commander, Brig. Gen. Tarik Khadra, will join forces with Arafat or switch sides to the 10 Palestinian opposition groups based in Damascus.

One critical detail in keeping the peace under self-rule, however, was set in stone in the declaration of principles that the PLO and Israel signed this week: firepower.

In a clear effort to minimize any future Palestinian military threat to Israel itself, negotiators insisted that the accord specify that Arafat’s police will not be permitted weapons more powerful than machine guns.