Jibril Rajoub
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Jibril Rajub
(Jibril Rajoub): Yasir Arafat's National Security Advisor, with the rank of
Brigadier-General; former head of the Palestinian Preventive Security Force in
the West Bank; member of the Fatah-Revolutionary Council. Regarded as a
political moderate, with longstanding close ties to American (CIA) and Israeli
security officials. Widely seen as one of the leading contenders to succeed
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, because of his military base in the West Bank
PSF. Married with three children. A younger brother, Sheikh Naif Rajoub,
is an imam and Hamas organizer in Hebron. A cousin, Musa Rajoub,
was executed as a collaborator by the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, 23 Apr 2002.
More feared than
popular on the Palestinian street, where he has used the PSF to quash dissent
and harass political opponents (including the use of torture)
critical of the Arafat
and the PA. His organization has become the largest and most effective
secret police apparatus in the West Bank (Shin Bet reported its use of
unexpectedly sophisticated
espionage techniques against Israel), but has little influence in Gaza,
where the PSF is controlled by Mohammed Dahlan. Rajoub has a longstanding rivalry with
Dahlan for control of PA security forces, and was appointed Arafat's
National Security Advisor in Sept 2003 largely as a way for Arafat to
counterbalance the Abbas-Dahlan partnership.
Rajoub is viewed as
a pragmatist concerning relations with Israel, advocating a two-state solution
and peaceful coexistence. Has been deeply distrusted by Hamas, which accuses
him of handing over to Israel some of their militants held in his Bitouniya HQ
during Operation Defensive Shield. Clamped down hard on Hamas and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad in 1996-7, to keep them from undermining the influence of PA
institutions, and because of his opposition to their attacks on Israeli
civilians, which he believes undermine rather than strengthen the Palestinian
national cause. Quote: "I spent 18 years in Israeli jail, for fighting the
Israeli occupation, but never would I have aimed purposefully an attack against
civilians." Quote: "Suicide bombs and violence will not serve the
Palestinian cause...Resistance against the occupation is one thing, and using
pernicious means to kill people just because they are people is something
else."
During the Oslo
years, he publicly criticized the rising influence of religious
fundamentalism in Palestinian society and schools (quote: "No one has
a right to dictate their crazy vision to our children"), and has provided
muscle to some of the moderate civilian leadership who lack a military base,
e.g. Sari
Nusseibeh, Abu Mazen, Saeb
Erekat.
Born 1953 into a
prominent farming family in Dura, nr Hebron, which remains the geographical
base of his support. Jailed
for life at fifteen for throwing a grenade at an IDF convoy; spent 17 years
in Israeli prison (1968-85), where he learned fluent Hebrew and passable
English, and translated
into Arabic former PM Menachem Begin's "The Revolt". Released as
part of a prisoner exchange in 1985, but expelled from West Bank to Lebanon in
1988, during the first intifada. Relocated to Tunis, where he served as Fatah
deputy leader Khalil
al-Wazir's advisor on the intifada. After al-Wazir's assassination, became
a close lieutenant of Arafat and spent seven years in exile with him. He was
allegedly behind a 1992 plot to have an Israeli turncoat, Raphael Avraham, assassinate
Ariel Sharon (at that time Israel's Housing Minister).
Returned to the
West Bank in 1994, following the signing of the Oslo Accords. Appointed West
Bank Preventative Security Chief for the Palestinian Authority on May 18, 1994,
based in newly-autonomous Jericho. PSF was funded and trained by the CIA, and
worked in close security cooperation with Shin Bet. Rajoub kept his preventive
force out of anti-Israeli activity, used it generally as a tool for building up
the PA and defending its institutions from the growing influence of the
Islamists.
He soon shifted
away from the older generation of "Tunisian" leadership, developing
his own power base and becoming more closely allied with Fatah leaders in the
territories. e.g. in the mid-90's he cultivated close ties with the West Bank Tanzim chief
Marwan Barghouti (with whom he once shared a prison cell in Beer Sheva jail),
and the WSJ (22 Jan 98) reported that he was firmly allied with Saeb Erekat. Nov 97, Rajoub was the subject of intense rumours
that he was planning to take control of the West Bank in the event of Arafat's
health failing. (Some reports suggest that he was actually arrested and detained for
five days by Arafat's Presidential Guard on suspicion of planning a coup with
the support of Shin Bet and the approval of the CIA). He was suspended the
following month from the Fatah Central Committee for unclear reasons. He was
also criticized in a 1997 PLC report on corruption, for profiting from the PA's
oil-importation monopoly in the West Bank.
When the Al Aqsa intifada
began, Rajoub kept the PSF out of attacks on Israeli targets. It was therefore
a cause of some surprise when he was wounded in an IDF tank and helicopter
attack on his home (below, left) on 20 May 2001. The Israeli government offered
conflicting explanations
for the attack, which was widely regarded as a shift in Israeli policy, a sign
that Israel would not talk to anyone in the PA - regardless of their past
cooperation - but was now intent on undermining it. e.g. CSM report:
To some Israelis, a
burly Palestinian police commander named Jibril Rajoub represents their best
hope for a peaceful future. Long committed to peace negotiations, he has worked
for years to prevent militant Palestinians from attacking Israel. Late Sunday
afternoon, Israeli forces fired shells at his house from a tank and a
helicopter. If Mr. Rajoub hadn't been walking between rooms to get better
reception on his cellphone, he later said, he might have been killed.
Coming on top of other actions that Israeli leaders have come publicly to regret, Palestinians are wondering what is going on. Either the most sophisticated military in the Middle East is mistakenly striking at the very Palestinian leaders who have eschewed violence and maintained a willingness to negotiate with Israel - or there is no mistake at all.
Attack on Rajoub
condemned as mistake by the US (which - acc. to JPost - may have approached him
in Jan 2002 with a proposal that he should replace Arafat).
e.g. US Ambassador to Israel Martin
Indyk: "Those who would stop the violence, the Palestinian police or
the head of the Palestinian security organization in the West Bank, Jibril
Rajoub, are now being hit by the Israeli Defense Forces. Maybe the strategy is
to encourage them to act against their own people. But I don't imagine that
there is an example in history where this strategy has succeeded."
His relationship
with Arafat deteriorated Feb 2002 when, in an argument
ostensibly over Rajoub's failure to secure Hebron central jail, Arafat
reportedly accused him of being an Israeli spy and
CIA agent, who was seeking
to replace him. Also criticised by Arafat when, following a 3 April 2002 attack
by the IDF on his HQ in Beitunya, Rajoub himself escaped but surrendered up
to 50 Islamists inside to Israel in a CIA-brokered deal. Lost face for saving
himself by "betraying" others, and widely condemned for it, e.g. by
Hamas and Dahlan's
Gang
of Five.
In May 2002, U.S.
officials urged Arafat to unify the various Palestinan Authority security agencies
into a single organisation, under the control of Rajoub. Arafat responded by firing
Rajoub (2 July 2002), who did not go quietly. He refused to
go for two days, and protests were organized
in his support in Hebron, but he eventually accepted the decision.
He was restored
to power in August 2003, when Arafat named him National Security Advisor
with the rank of Brig-Gen, and head of the new National Palestinian Security
Council on which all the Palestinian security and intelligence chiefs were
given seats - all as a counterweight to attempts
by Abu Mazen to consolidate control
of the security apparatus in the hands of then PA-Security Minister
Mohammed Dahlan. Dahlan was publicly the American choice to hold the security
reins, but the US may have privately
acquiesced in the return of their former protégé.
Rajoub was quickly
effective in restoring some order to the armed factions in the PA areas. He
reactivated his armed supporters in the PSF (possibly as many as 20,000 men) and
won back most of the West
Bank Fatah and Tanzim members who deserted Arafat during the period of the
Abu Mazen government. He has also had some success in healing his long-standing
rift with Hamas, and now apparently favors bringing them into the
political process, instead of allowing them to operate outside of PA
authority, where they can be restrained only by the use of force.
Rajoub is very
opposed to Jordanian influence in Palestinian affairs, but liases closely with
the Egyptians, the one party that maintains contacts with all Palestinian
groups, including the Oslo rejectionists. He believes that with Egypt's support,
Hamas, PIJ and the left-wing paramilitaries can be brought aboard on the Road
Map, but only if they are convinced that Israel is serious about following the
Road Map to a negotiated settlement and will allow international monitors to
supervise progress. (Hamas and PIJ were badly burned during the first hudna,
when they found their ceasefire unreciprocated by the IDF, and will not enter a
unilateral ceasefire again).
He remains sure
that a negotiated
two-state solution is the only practical outcome: "Prime Minister
Sharon can do whatever he wants by force - build fences and settlements, bomb,
destroy and try to dictate borders. But he cannot beat us by force, and cannot
give Israel security by force". Asked what choice Israel has, as long as
the Palestinians don't dismantle Hamas, Rajoub maintains: "Hamas and Jihad
will be part of the Palestinian political system, just as the extremists in
Israel are part of the Israeli political system. Look at what the settlers are
doing, and what Avigdor Lieberman and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef say about the Arabs.
Only by presenting a political solution enabling a Palestinian state will it be
possible to restrain the extremists."
Similarly,
"Hamas is a party of the Palestinian people. Those who belong to Hamas are
not our enemies. Hamas is beginning to behave like a
pragmatic movement. It's our job - and the job of the international
community - to 
promote this
pragmatic line within this fundamentalist organization, to ensure that the
members of Hamas understand that the goal of their struggle is to have a
Palestinian state" [1]. And, "It's not fair to say that our
negotiations were only about a ceasefire. There was a national dialogue to
agree a political plan and political objectives. The discussions are ongoing,
and I'm sure that we will arrive at a single political plan that will be
accepted by all the Palestinian factions. Sooner or later, we will have a
single authority. The decision is theirs (i.e. Hamas'). If they recognize a
centralized Palestinian authority, if they recognize that the goal of the
Palestinian struggle is to end the Israeli occupation and establish an
independent Palestinian state in conformity with international law, then their
participation will suit me and suit everyone." ([1]. Emphasis mine; Attribution).
Left - Rajoub was
Arafat's representative at the signing of the Geneva Accords, 1 December 2003.
Pictured here with Yasser Abed Rabbo, head of the Geneva negotiating team for
the Palestinian side.
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Last Update:
27 July 2004
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