Trump halts US funding of Palestinian police – report

The cut in funding is part of the Trump administration’s overall freeze on international aid.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The U.S. has frozen funding for the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) security forces as part of the Trump administration’s overall freeze on international aid, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

In Trump’s first stint as president, he stopped direct aid to the PA but continued funding the training of its security forces, which is implemented through the U.S. Security Coordinator’s Office (USSC) in Jerusalem.

The paper cited an anonymous former Israeli official as saying that the USSC “was not significantly affected” by the cut, as “other donors have committed to make up the shortfall.”

Palestinian sources say that there have been immediate ramifications due to the freeze.

A colonel in the PA’s Central Training Institute told the Post that as a result of the freeze, it had to stop construction of a virtual shooting range, although it was nearly complete.

The security forces officially learn to shoot this way due to security concerns. Israel forbids the importation of real bullets to the PA.

The tens of thousands of men dispersed among the various branches of the Palestinian Security Services are well-armed, however, as evidenced by the recent deadly clashes in Jenin, when the PA failed in its attempt to take control of the city that is a hotbed of terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, that want to overthrow the Authority.

Another Palestinian official said that a meeting that had been organized between PA and American security forces to assess the PA’s performance in Jenin was indefinitely postponed.

The USSC has been providing direct financial and personnel assistance to Palestinian security organizations since 2005 and training them since 2007.

According to the State Department, besides upgrading the Palestinians’ military abilities to “assist in ending violence” internally, another major part of its mission is to “facilitat[e] security cooperation” with Israel and “setting security conditions for a peace agreement.”

One of its original aims was also to “allay Israeli fears about the nature and capabilities of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF),” in the words of Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, who led the Office for its first five years.

While top Israeli military and intelligence officials have considered security coordination with the PA as vital to the IDF’s anti-terror efforts in Judea and Samaria throughout the years, the government also sees the PASF as a danger.

Although potential recruits are officially extensively vetted by the U.S. for any affiliation with a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization and for human rights violations, Palestinian security personnel have been responsible for hundreds of terror attacks on Israeli civilians over the past two decades.