MIDDLE EAST:The Palestinian Authority expects Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank to proceed reasonably peacefully.Ziad Abu Amr, a legislator and member of the committee mediating between the ruling al-Fatah movement and the Islamist Hamas, told The Irish Times that they have "agreed to let the withdrawal take place quietly, writes Michael Jansen in Gaza City
No one should try to take over the settlements [ once the Israelis have pulled out] and there should be no factional confrontations".
However, he said, "there could be accidents".
President Mahmoud Abbas is here and is asserting his authority, Dr Abu Amr said.
Therefore, "the internal front is marginally better. Thousands of police, national security officers, and intelligence are in place. There is a plan for the takeover and there is co-ordination with the Israelis".
However, a source involved in the reform and restructuring of the Palestinian security services said during a background briefing that the plan drawn up by the interior minister, Nasser Yusif, in consultation with Lieut Gen William Ward, the US co-ordinator, and the Egyptians, was scrapped.
Furthermore, Gen Yusif's power over the Palestinian agencies has been undermined by "external forces" and the long-term programme for rationalising, consolidating and institutionalising competing security agencies has been "hung out to dry".
The effort to initiate reform made by the Ministry of Interior over the past few months and the millions of dollars invested by the US in this process has been "wiped out".
Washington, which along with Israel has been demanding reform, has "reverted to backing personalities. Gen Ward is departing in September and no new co-ordinator has been appointed by the US to take his place".
The CIA, which, the source said, was "always suspicious of Ward" has joined with Egyptian intelligence to ensure that Egypt will play a leading role in Gaza after the Israelis depart.
The source acknowledged that the Egyptians have genuine interests in Gaza. Their troops and police are set to assume control over the border between Egypt and Gaza, so they want stability and law and order. They do not want unrest to spill over into Egypt.
They also do not want Gaza to become an Islamic state ruled by Hamas because this would encourage its parent organisation, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, to try to reassert itself on the Egyptian political scene.
The informant said: "The agency and the Egyptians have made a deal with Dahlan and the Preventive Security Organisation which will put security reform back five to 10 years."
Muhammad Dahlan, now minister for civil affairs, was formerly head of Preventive Security in Gaza.
"Washington has gone back to backing personalities and contracting out responsibility to the Egyptians," he said. "Cairo is behaving as if the US gave it a royal charter to establish an East Gaza company" comparable to Britain's East India company, which ran India before it formally became part of the empire.
Egypt was the power in Gaza before Israel captured it in 1967 and will, on Israel's evacuation, become the "shadow power".
"How can European donor governments discuss security reform when institutions have been discarded in favour of personalities?" he asked.
In his view, Jordan will become the "shadow power in an increasingly fragmented West Bank. There will be long-term status quo while Israel continues to build settlements and steps up its land grab."
"The international community was fooled for a few months that things were different after [ former President Yasser] Arafat's death. But nothing is different.
"In fact, the situation is worse. There is no national figurehead to unite the people and parties. Fatah is divided and cannot get its act together."
Its congress, scheduled for August, has been postponed until March at the earliest, although Palestinian legislative elections are set to take place in January.