Hurt but unbowed, the police chief between Israel and the militias
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Your support makes all the difference.Nothing about Colonel Mohammed Issa's appearance reveals the pressures and perils of his job. The gold badge on his chest proclaiming his status as deputy commander of Bethlehem district police glows impressively.
His toothbrush moustache is as perfectly clipped as a hedge at Hampton Court Palace; his beret sits on his grizzled head with the kind of authoritative paramilitary angle that befits a man who has spent more than three decades living amid conflict. He is calmly smoking a Marlboro through an ornate cigarette holder, sitting in front of an empty, glass-topped desk.
Yet the 51-year-old policeman, an Arafat loyalist who fought with him against Israel in Lebanon in 1982 and returned with him from exile in Tunis, has the alert air of someone who is ready for action and who has armed himself accordingly. He has four pens, two in the breast pocket of his freshly pressed uniform and two tucked in soldierly pouches just below the shoulder, and a pistol on his hip.
For 61 days, the same uniform remained hidden in his wardrobe. The colonel did not venture out in it on the streets of Bethlehem because of the risk of being arrested or shot by the occupying Israeli army, whose tanks and troops had taken over the town.
Now he is back in blue, playing a leading role in a limited, precarious and, in the eyes of many Palestinians, divisive agreement struck by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) to gradually disentangle step-by-step.
Under the so-called Gaza and Bethlehem First "understanding" (it is unwritten), Israel last week pulled its forces from Bethlehem, although they continue to block the entrances. The town's Palestinian security forces, with the colonel and his fellow policemen at the fore, are in charge of providing the quid pro quo.
This means stopping the local militia groups – Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – from launching attacks against Israelis. "We have a dialogue with them [the militias]," Col Issa says. "In the end, we are going to reach an understanding with them to stop the attacks." It is his job, he says, to convince them.
This is difficult. The Palestinian militia groups dislike the deal. For the PA, it is a strategic attempt to show the world, especially President George Bush, who has made a change in leadership a condition of statehood, and the moribund Israeli left that it is able to govern and willing to seek peace. But many Palestinians see it as a one-way agreement in which the Israelis get security and a "de facto" end to the intifada but do nothing in return to solve the core problem: the 35-year illegal occupation of east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has scoffed at the Bethlehem withdrawal, saying it involved only moving a "couple of Jeeps". Less than a day after leaving town, an undercover Israeli army unit killed the brother of the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Ramallah. This has fanned suspicions that Israel was acting in bad faith, and was covertly trying to encourage violence to show that the PA was incapable of controlling it, taking another step in a campaign to get rid of the Palestinian leadership. The PFLP is strong in parts of Bethlehem. Israel has not withdrawn in Gaza.
Yet, in Bethlehem, the agreement has limped along for a week. This is despite the beating police took from the Israelis. Five officers were killed, and 15 wounded. Half of their buildings were destroyed. Three-quarters of their vehicles were wrecked or confiscated. Most of their radios were taken, leaving them only easily monitored mobile phones. Ironically, the only thing going for them is that the Israelis have depleted the militias with mass arrests, assassinations and deportations.
Col Issa's Land Rover, donated by the British Government, has been impounded by Israel. He shows us around his newly returned territory in a blue Toyota Corolla, an ageing vehicle which symbolises his career nosedive since the days when he oversaw the Pope's millennium visit to Bethlehem.
We drive to the Church of the Nativity, the supposed birthplace of Christ and scene of this spring's long siege. Policemen and policewomen lounged at corners. There is, the colonel says, one weapon for every 10 of them. He refuses to be deterred: "We are determined to control things," he says. His sincerity feels real. His chances of success are a different matter.
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