The American military now openly admits providing military training to Palestinian military forces.

A U.S. military official, Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, assigned by the United States to be a “security coordinator,” has been appointed to train 1,500 Palestinian military personnel. They will be available for “immediate deployment” in the area between Jenin and Nablus, less than an hour from Israel’s populated coastal plain.

He discussed his mission at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies last week.

Lt. Gen. Dayton said: “We also have something in our pocket called the West Bank Training Initiative where we have plans to continue a series of courses in the West Bank on logistics, leadership, first aid, maintenance, English language, battalion staff training and driver education. These are led by our British and Turkish officers with an eye to eventually turning this over to the Palestinians themselves.”

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The premise behind American military aid to the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) military forces is the hope the American-trained Palestinian personnel will fight Hamas.

However, the training of Palestinian military units by U.S. advisers is taking place at the same time the PA is negotiating to join forces with the Hamas terrorist organization, which rules Gaza.

All indications show the PA is making every effort to co-opt and include Hamas in its military forces for joint operations against Israel.

Were that to happen, American military advisers and their Palestinian trainees would be placed into direct confrontation with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and with the Israeli population.

Despite assurances to the contrary, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the parent organization of the PA, remains in a state of war with Israel.

To reassure the Washington Institute, Lt. Gen. Dayton downplayed the dangers of the training that the Americans are providing the Palestinians, by saying that “Our equipping is all nonlethal…”

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

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David Bedein
David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.

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