In Hebron, Arab Good Cop and Bad Cop Are Same Man

During 17 years in Israeli jails, Jibril Rajoub learned fluent Hebrew. He studied the history of the Jewish state and the subtleties of his enemy’s mind.

Some people suggest that he may have taken a few pointers from Israel’s more unsavory police agents too.

Today, Rajoub is chief of the Palestinians’ Preventive Security force in the West Bank and the man whom Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are counting on to keep the peace in the city of Hebron--at least from the Arab side.

Drawing on the reservoir of respect and fear that he commands, from his experience in the guerrilla underground and an extensive network of plainclothes police agents, Rajoub is doing the job. Three weeks after Israeli soldiers handed over four-fifths of Hebron to Rajoub, the flash point city is quiet.

So far, so good.

Rajoub is at once realistic and confident about this calm in a divided city where 450 radical Jewish settlers and a strong Islamic opposition exist alongside about 100,000 Palestinians. It is a fragile peace that he describes as a bridge held up by two rocks.

“We have to keep our rock stable, and the other side has to do the same,” Rajoub said. “Then, God forbid, he who lets the river take his rock will be blamed by the international community.”

Rajoub clearly does not plan to be the one swept off course by Hebron, any more than he was by jail, exile or negotiations with the Israelis. “In my personal record, there is no failure. Failure has no place. I am an optimist and have been all my life,” the West Bank police chief said in an interview.

Bald, with a furrowed brow and distrustful black eyes, the 43-year-old Rajoub receives visitors with an arctic handshake and indiscreet glance at his watch. He does not bother to introduce the man sitting by his side, silently fingering prayer beads and apparently taking mental notes.

Rajoub’s latest office in the hilltop fortress that Israeli troops occupied for three decades is a few paces from the cell where he says Israeli agents once tortured him and where he undertook a 33-day hunger strike.

“I was very glad to come back here as commander of the Palestinian police in the region. I felt at last there was fruit of the suffering, of the arduous road for me personally and the nation,” he said in careful English.

A native of the village of Dura, near Hebron, and member of Arafat’s Fatah organization in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Rajoub was jailed as a teenager for throwing a grenade at an Israeli army jeep. In prison, he dedicated himself to his studies and rose through the ranks of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement. Eventually, he was teaching inmates about Israel and negotiating with his jailers during hunger strikes.

Rajoub was released in the mid-1980s in a prisoner exchange and three years later was deported by Israel. He went to the PLO’s headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia, where he helped bring the intifada, the rebellion against Israeli rule, under Arafat’s control. He funneled money to Fatah youth in the West Bank, coordinated their activities and won Arafat’s confidence.

He declines to discuss other PLO activities he reportedly engaged in, such as recruiting an Israeli to kill top Israeli government officials, a plot that was discovered before it could be carried out.

Recruited Intifada Fighters

Rajoub returned to the West Bank town of Jericho with Arafat in 1994 to set up the Preventive Security apparatus, the Palestinians’ first intelligence-gathering and police force on the ground. He recruited many of the former street fighters he had once coordinated in the intifada--tough young men who had proved their loyalty and knew the lay of the land.

Preventive Security is one of several distinct security and police forces now operating in the West Bank, but it is generally considered to have become the most powerful over the past 2 1/2 years. Rajoub is referred to by friend and foe as a “strongman.”

He refuses to say how many agents he has under his control and defends his human rights record against charges that his forces have been responsible for arbitrary arrests, torture and at least two of the 12 recorded deaths of prisoners in Palestinian custody.

Rajoub rejected charges laid out in an August 1995 report from the Israeli independent human rights group B’Tselem that his Preventive Security force had adopted some of the worst techniques “used in Israeli General Security Service interrogation facilities,” such as tying up suspects, beating them, depriving them of sleep, threatening them and humiliating them.

“I was tortured for the sake of my people’s liberation,” Rajoub said. “As a matter of principle, no way will I cause the suffering of my people.”

Either way, Rajoub has earned a reputation as a hard and effective cop, and Arafat ordered him to move to Hebron after the Israeli troop redeployment to keep a lid on the city with a long history of Arab-Jewish violence.

The security chief, who has the rank of colonel, understands as well as anyone that a new explosion of violence in Hebron--particularly one that originated with the Palestinians or could be blamed on them--could derail the peace process, as nearly happened in September when armed clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian police left 75 people dead and more than 1,000 wounded.

Rajoub was key to bringing an end to the confrontations in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Nablus, according to a U.S. official present at negotiations to separate the forces and end the fighting.

The security chief also was called upon, along with Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordecai, to ensure calm after an off-duty Israeli soldier opened fire on the Arab market in Hebron on New Year’s Day, wounding five Palestinians. A few stone throwers responded to the shooting, but there were no mass riots.

By all accounts, Rajoub is a pragmatist with a keen sense of planning and organization. He carefully balances the coordination with Israeli security officials that is required of him by the peace agreements and his broader, nationalistic goals. He sees himself as cooperating to keep Israeli security for the sake of peace, not “collaborating” or doing the Israelis’ dirty work.

“I am a freedom fighter who fought against Israelis. I didn’t fight for the sake of fighting, but to live in peace and security in an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. For this I spent 17 years in an Israeli jail, suffered exile, and for this I support the peace process,” he said.

In that framework, Rajoub tries to rein in Islamic extremist groups such as Hamas, to which two of his brothers belong. He says the groups have every right to oppose the peace process politically but no right to oppose it violently, as they did a year ago with a series of suicide bombings in Israel.

While confronting Hamas, Rajoub also has taken apart the Israelis’ network of Palestinian informants that was put together during the occupation of the West Bank. Several of the alleged torture cases by Preventive Security have reportedly involved such collaborators; other informants reportedly have received threats from Preventive Security authorities to cease their work with the Israelis.

As a result, Israeli security forces have found themselves much more dependent on Rajoub than they would like to be. He trades information with them, and they are forced to take his word at face value, without independent verification from their own people. That makes them nervous.

Unnamed security officials frequently are quoted in the Israeli media complaining that the army and Shin Bet security service are too tied to Rajoub. “He cons them whenever he wishes and plays a double game, and we just take everything,” one officer was quoted as saying in the daily newspaper Maariv.

Israeli military and security officials berated Rajoub when, shortly after the redeployment, he publicly stated that Hebron settlers were like “millstones hanging from our necks.” Rajoub responded by appearing with descendants of the original Jewish families of Hebron to say that he did not mean all Jews should leave Hebron, just those who oppose Palestinian rule.

Puts Israelis at Ease

Israeli political leaders, by contrast, are comfortable dealing with Rajoub because he speaks their language and seems to understand their needs.

“We know he runs his security service like in harsher Arab countries,” said one Israeli official. “At the same time, because he knows Hebrew, he is able to penetrate the Israeli mentality. . . . We are able to come to practical deals.”

Rajoub was one of the Palestinians’ negotiators on the details of the Hebron redeployment. An Israeli army officer close to those talks said the Palestinian security chief is “familiar with Israeli life and the history of the Jewish people. He doesn’t deny it. He knows the background of the establishment of the state of Israel and understands the Israeli side.”

The officer added that Rajoub has proved himself at the table and on the ground in Hebron to be “a man you can rely on. He keeps his word.”

Still, others counter that Rajoub has not kept his word when it comes to Jerusalem, where his forces have been exposed for operating in violation of peace accords.

Arafat’s trust in Rajoub remains high, despite an apparent run-in between them last March, after which it was leaked that Arafat would replace Rajoub with Hussein Sheikh of Ramallah. Sheikh publicly “accepted” the job, but prematurely. Rajoub stayed on amid debates as to whether Arafat was unable to oust him without a confrontation between security forces or whether Arafat had meant only to send a warning to the police chief that he should not get too big for his britches.

More recently, Arafat has promoted Rajoub and his counterpart in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, to the Fatah organization’s 150-member Revolutionary Council.

This and Rajoub’s high profile in Hebron have fed discussions about the extent of his political ambitions. Some say they believe he sees himself as a possible successor to Arafat. Others say he is not in the top league and knows it.

Rajoub, the Palestinians’ good cop and their bad cop, isn’t saying.

“Now I am chief of Preventive Security in the West Bank, representing my people, achieving security and peace within the Palestinian community,” he said. “When I feel they don’t need me anymore in this job, there is no reason for me not to do any other job in another field.”