The European Union and Occupied Palestinian Territories: State-Building Without a State by Dimitris Bouris

Author:Dimitris Bouris [Bouris, Dimitris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317915294
Google: U0_IAgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 20790362
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

Moreover, the context in which SSR is taking place in the OPTs should also be taken into account. Palestinians are expected to reform their security sector under continuous occupation and without having control over their borders, airspace and seaspace. Within the West Bank, Israeli restrictions such as checkpoints, travel restrictions and the Wall further complicate the situation. The best description of the nature of SSR in the Palestinian context is provided by Roland Friedrich who argues that ‘unlike in other political contexts – such as Eastern Europe or Africa – the target for SSR in the Palestinian case is not a sovereign state, but a transitional regime with contested legitimacy and a disputed territorial basis’ (Friedrich 2004). However, the central question that remains is the following: how to provide state security in the absence of a sovereign state?

The EU and Security Sector Reform in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

During the Oslo years (1993–2000) a number of interim agreements concerning security were signed between the PA and Israel. Those agreements ‘reflected Israel’s all-consuming preoccupation with anti-terrorism’ (Lia 2006: 293–294). In the beginning, donors in general did not pay much attention to the provision of police aid during the first period after Oslo,24 mainly because the issue was sensitive and had potentially serious political implications.25 With regard to EU countries in particular, ‘the near complete absence of police aid commitments was striking’ (Lia 2007: 38). The issue was put in the donor’s agenda after Arafat expressed his concerns that the Palestinian Police will probably not be ready and operative by December 1993 when the Israeli redeployment was supposed to take place (ibid.: 29). A number of international actors thus started getting involved, though with a high degree of secrecy. EU countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands, fearing that there was a US–Israeli effort to exclude them from the ‘high politics’ of the discussions, asked for more coordination to take place although they did not want this to be under Norwegian or US auspices (ibid.: 38).

The EU soon became the largest donor in the police sector, covering a third of total donor funding for police costs in the period 1994–1995 (ibid.: 147).26 The idea of stronger EU involvement in the field of police aid was put forward by Germany and an ‘Assistance Programme to support the Palestinian Authority in its efforts to counter terrorist activities emanating from the territories under its control’ was adopted by the Council of the European Union in 1997 (Council of the European Union 1997). The programme had a budget of ECU3.6 million for a period of three years and identified three main areas of engagement, namely: improved organisational capacity, improved operational capacity and post-incident management. Its main objective was to:

support the PA’s capacity to counter terrorism and help sustain the Middle East Peace Process and to provide the relevant security and police services with a comprehensive understanding of the principles of human rights in the implementation of their activities in the territories under the control of the PA.

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