Palestinian Authority police chief Hazem Attallah revealed that security coordination with Israel, that was suspended some three months ago, has resumed in the West Bank. In a press conference to international journalists in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian police chief further noted that meetings between Palestinian security officials and their counterparts resumed to normal. He said, “We do meet, normally. Things are normal now. Yes. (Question: Cooperation?) It’s back,” the PA Police chief noted.
The resumption of security coordination, which was hailed by both Israeli and Palestinian security officials as a key element to maintaining the quiet across the West Bank, was suspended in July after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of violating the sanctity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which is located on the Temple Mount, that after Israel installed metal detectors at the entrance to the site in response to a fatal terror attack that claimed the lives of two Israeli police officers.
Meanwhile, with regard to the Palestinian reconciliation agreement, Mahmoud Abbas’ police chief stressed that the Palestinian Authority seeks to assert full security control over the Gaza Strip, where the Islamist Hamas organization’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, remains the dominant force. Chief Hazem emphasized, “We are talking about one authority, one law and one gun, he said.”
The remarks, by the Palestinian police chief left open the question of how Abbas might bring his former rivals in Hamas to heel given their refusal to disarm as demanded by the United States and Israel.
The Egyptian-brokered reconciliation deal last month formally restored Abbas’s administrative control of Gaza after a 10-year rift with Hamas, though the details of implementation have yet to be worked out fully. Palestinians hope the pact will ease Gaza’s economic challenges and help present a united front in their statehood drive. The vision includes the West Bank, where Palestinian security forces have tried to tamp down violence, often sharing intelligence and cooperating across jurisdictions with Israel, despite a three-year impasse in diplomacy between the sides.