The plan to issue permits to certain Palestinian policemen to carry weapons in the West Bank now appears to be consigned to the deep freeze. Last Thursday it was an instruction of Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, but is now to be reviewed as the enthusiasm of all involved has slumped.
A right-wing ruckus has paid off and the deliberate confusion it created between guns the Palestinians already have that need only Israeli agreement to wear in public, and the rifles the Rabin government allowed for the Palestinian forces, succeeded.
What happened in the matter of the handguns in the last few days makes tangible the winding, often uneducated, decision making process in the political and defense establishments on relations with the Palestinian Authority.
The proposal to allow the PA police, and only them, to carry handguns in the centers of West Bank cities, was raised by Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon in January. It was not implemented at the time because of obstacles created by the PA Chairman Yasser Arafat.
Mofaz pulled the proposal out of mothballs, apparently without full coordination with the army, and hastily made his decision known.
It's possible the background to the decision was criticism being heard in Washington - and in the prime minister's bureau in Jerusalem - about Mofaz's announcement on the housing starts in Ma'aleh Adumim, generating a small and not very harmful gesture toward the PA and the Americans.
After the decision was made, the professionals in the Shin Bet and the army's Central Command were asked to present the ramifications. Meanwhile, Mofaz was surprised by the vituperative criticism from the right against a very cautious move, and was forced to clarify that the details had not been worked out.
At Sunday's cabinet meeting, the assaults by right-wing ministers continued, while Sharon locked Mofaz into a surprising statement that the plan would be brought for a coming government session. That gave what was a basically tactical recommendation a suddenly inflated dramatic significance.
The IDF idea, as described by Ya'alon this week, was to clear Israel of accusations that it was helping the fawda - the chaos in the territories. Israel is very worried about the fragile internal situation in the PA and how the instability serves the PA security forces by giving them an excuse to avoid even the most minimum restraint of terror organizations.
A cartoon this week in a Palestinian press summed it up, showing a PA security officer chasing a Tanzim activist, trying to hit him with a radio antenna. The disbursement of guns was supposed to help undermine the argument that the security forces don't have the means to deal with the armed gangs.
The Central Command, asked by Mofaz for its opinion, raised detailed proposals for implementation. Each area would have 100-150 "blue" civilian police allowed to carry handguns. There would be a coordinated system by which those armed Palestinians would quickly take shelter in predetermined places when the IDF was operating in their city.
The PA would agree not to place police barricades at the entrance to the cities. Carrying a weapon would only be allowed when the policeman was in full uniform, to avoid mistaken identity, and IDF division commanders would decide where exactly the armed policemen would be allowed to patrol in each city. But meanwhile the recommendations are only on paper.
