PLO to send 3,000 West Bank policemen to Gaza

The committee formed to follow up the latest decisions of the PLO’s Central Council has recommended the despatch of 3,000 policemen from the occupied West Bank to the Gaza Strip, Alarab.qa reported on Monday.

Wasel Abu Yousef, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, said that the officers would run the police stations in the Gaza Strip. He noted that members of the Presidential Guard would be sent to Gaza soon to run the border crossings.

Hamas and Fatah reached a reconciliation deal, brokered by Egypt, in October last year. According to the deal, 3,000 Palestinian Authority policemen who have just sat at home in Gaza since 2007 should have gone back to work, but this has not happened.

Read: Egypt working to revive internal Palestinian reconciliation

The PLO committee was also tasked to find mechanisms for the PA’s disengagement from the Israeli occupation authorities, which was announced by the Central Council last month. Abu Yousef explained that he is not sure whether PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who is also the chairman of the PLO and Fatah, would accept the Council’s recommendations. Hamas and the other Palestinian factions have not yet commented on them.

Abu Yousef pointed out that the committee has asked Naser Al-Qidwa, the former PA representative to the UN, to make some suggestions about seeking international protection for the Palestinians and get full UN membership. He added that the committee made another recommendation to go to the International Criminal Court to decide on the issues of Israel’s illegal settlements and military offensives against the Gaza Strip.