West Bank stint OKd for Palestinian troops

Israel said Tuesday that it would allow as many as 600 members of a Palestinian security force trained in Jordan under a U.S. program to be deployed in a West Bank city once considered a hotbed of militant activity.

Israel hopes the Defense Ministry decision, announced days before a weekend visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will help blunt Western and Palestinian complaints that it is not doing enough to bolster U.S.-backed peace talks and a Palestinian “law-and-order” campaign in the West Bank.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was to inform Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad of the decision at a meeting today.

A defense official said the Palestinians would decide how many troops, now in a U.S.-funded training course in Jordan, to deploy in Jenin in the northern West Bank.

Fayyad said he would “wait and see” what comes out of his meeting with Barak, adding that the Palestinians already had forces in Jenin and other West Bank cities.

“The Palestinian Authority is capable of achieving security,” he said.

Palestinian forces began patrolling West Bank and Gaza Strip towns under the 1993 Oslo peace deal but were forced off the streets after the start of the uprising in 2000 when Israeli troops retook security control of the cities.

In November, Palestinian forces deployed in the larger West Bank city of Nablus as part of Fayyad’s law-and-order campaign.

The Jewish state has long seen Jenin and Nablus as centers of anti-Israeli militant activity, though both have been relatively calm in recent months.