Discovering Oslo 2 Diary
19 May 1996
Preventative Security Service Graduation Ceremony
Spring joggers outside my house
On 4 May 1996, I was slightly concerned to see these guys, pictured right, running around the streets of Ramallah outside my house, dressed up in balaclavas. Obviously an arm of the Palestinian security forces, but who? A chilling sight after a long da y at work just 300 yards from Ramallah town center.
On 19 May, it was announced that there was a graduation ceremony for a special unit of the Preventative Security Service (PSS). Attended by Minister of Civil Affa irs Jamil Tarifi, Minister of Local Affairs Saeb Erekat, and West Bank PSS head Jibril Rajoub (from left to right), the baffling ceremony at the Ramallah Friends School Football Field began with the aforementioned balaclava-ed indivuduals running onto the field as pictured above.
On one level these sorts of events are a frightening 1984-esque glimpse into the future of life in the future Palestinian state. On another level, the obvious pride as these men attend their first graduation ceremony for anything in their lives is something not to be mocked. Right: Ramallah's population and the families of the PSS special unit members look on as the graduates stand to attention before the Palestinian f lag.
Duties of the special unit
The duties of the PSS special unit would seem to be similar to the British SAS's or U.S. Navy Seals' anti-terrorist activities. The demonstrations offered of their talents included the storming of a hijacked bus and the interception of assassins. This would seem to be rather an odd set of duties for a preventative force. Call me a nitpicker, but it would be rather more appropriate for the bus not to have been hijacked in the first place and the PSS to concentrate on working out there was to be a n assassination attempt before the fact, not afterwards. I must point out that I left the ceremony feeling uncomfortable well before these fireworks but was told about them later by a Palestinian friend who, although of a cynical mould, described t hem as "Great!", on the level that, "Hey, after all, Ramallah doesn't have a cinema".
The PSS is well known to be an intellegence-type force, as apparent in their manifestations in the pre-Oslo 2 days. For the text of an article I wrote for Middle East International (1 March 1996) about the PSS, check out this link to another dia ry entry - The hand-over of human rights violations".
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Photos: © Nigel Parry. All available in glorious technicolour.