Fatah has been linked to extortion of businesses and individuals
throughout the West Bank. On March 9, the luxury car of a senior PA
official, Sports Ministry director-general Fathi Khader, was torched in his
village near Nablus.
In 2008, the United States, under Dayton's supervision, trained more
than 1,200 NSF and Presidential Guard officers at the International Police
Facility in Jordan. The four-month training course included
counter-insurgency, anti-crime and anti-riot instruction.
The PA has formed a SWAT team from new and veteran members of the
security forces, the sources said. They said the team, which contained fewer
than 100 members, was trained at a U.S.-financed facility in eastern Jordan
near the Iraqi border and returned to the West Bank in March 2009.
"This is an elite squad that has been trained by the Jordanians to
conduct missions beyond the current capabilities of PA forces," the source
said. "They could be used against top criminals, Hamas squads and for
hostage situations."
The SWAT team was said to have been sent to Jordan twice over the last
six months for increasingly challenging instruction in weapons use and
maintenance. They said the team was also trained to help protect the PA from
any threat by Hamas.
In March, the PA launched a crackdown on both Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Both groups said a total of 70 members were arrested in the cities of
Bethlehem, Hebron, Jenin, Kalkilya, Ramallah and Tulkarm, many of them
released recently by Israel. On March 12, 30 Hamas prisoners were released
by the PA.
The SWAT team has also responded to organized crime, some of whose
members had been officers in PA security forces. The sources said the team
raided a criminal safe house 48 hours after $50,000 was robbed from a bank
in Bethlehem. The money was recovered.
The sources said Fayyad wants Palestinians to begin cooperating with PA
security forces. They acknowledged that for years, PA police refused to
respond to calls for help unless they were from prominent Palestinians.