Word: palestinians
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...When Palestinian security forces moved into the lawless West Bank towns of Jenin and Nablus, all they had to worry about were the armed criminal gangs who had been shaking down shopkeepers and stealing cars - it didn't take long to wrest control from the thugs. But Hebron, where 600 Palestinian forces rolled up over the weekend in shiny new white pick-up trucks, is far more dangerous, because it is a stronghold of Hamas and also the base of an extremist Jewish settler community. The Islamists see the new paramilitary unit as a U.S.- and Israeli-built proxy force...
...theory behind the new Palestinian security force - whose months of training by Jordanian police was supported and funded by the U.S. State Department, with a U.S. security coordinator, General Keith Dayton, acting as adviser to the Palestinians - is to persuade skeptical Israelis that Palestinians can ensure security inside the West Bank, a first step in building trust that would allow Israel to turn over control to the Palestinian Authority as part of any peace agreement. So far, the plan has succeeded: The streets are safer for ordinary Palestinians, and Israelis have more confidence in their Palestinian security counterparts...
...ancient city of 170,000 Palestinians is a tinder box of religious passions. It is the site of the Patriarchs' Cave, revered by Muslims, Jews and Christians as the tomb of Abraham and his wife, Sarah. And nearly 700 Jewish settlers are squatting near the tomb, protected by hundreds more Israeli soldiers whose security barriers and checkpoints have paralyzed the heart of this Palestinian city. The effect of the settler presence, with its attendant security measures, has been to radicalize the city's Palestinian population...
...Many Hebronites now support the armed resistance preached by Islamic militants, and although Hamas has been driven underground by Israeli raids and arrests, it remains a powerful force in the city. Hebron sources told TIME that Hamas will try to sabotage the deployment of the new Palestinian security forces by staging attacks on the Israeli settlers or military, which could lead to a backlash against the U.S.-sponsored security force. Says a Hamas spokesman: "We are opposed to the Palestinian security apparatus. Its aim is to serve Israeli interests by arresting Hamas activists." But with Israeli forces raiding suspected Hamas...
...arriving Palestinian commanders got a foretaste of Hebron's explosive nature on Saturday night when Jewish settlers went on a rampage after Israeli police, backed by the Israel Defense Forces, destroyed houses erected by several militant Jewish settlers inside a Palestinian-owned olive grove. The settlers, many of them armed, swarmed into a Palestinian neighborhood, smashing cars and vandalizing a Muslim cemetery...