Abbas seeks NATO force in future Palestine

PA Head Mahmoud Abbas has said he proposed to the US Secretary of State John Kerry a U.S.-led NATO force patrol a future Palestinian state indefinitely.

The proposed independent Palestine alongside Israel would have no army of its own, only a police force, Abbas said in an interview with The New York Times at his headquarters in Ramallah.

As such the NATO forces would be in charge of ending weapons smuggling and quashing terrorism, major Israeli concerns, he said.

The NATO troops could stay in the West Bank “for a long time, and wherever they want, not only on the eastern borders, but also on the western borders, everywhere,” Abbas said.

“The third party can stay. They can stay to reassure the Israelis, and to protect us,” he said.

“We will be demilitarized. Do you think we have any illusion that we can have any security if the Israelis do not feel they have security?”

About the struggling Israeli-PA talks, Abbas also said Israeli soldiers could remain in the West Bank for up to five years—not the three years he earlier proposed—and said he envisioned Israeli settlements being phased out of the new Palestinian state during those five years.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declined to respond directly to Abbas’ NATO proposal.

"Our attitude toward international forces is skeptical in the extreme," a senior Israeli official told the Times. Netanyahu has often said Israel would rely on its own military and no other.

Illustrating that point, Abbas told the Times he once suggested to Netanyahu a U.S.-led force including Jordan could patrol the West Bank. The suggestion came a few years ago at Netanyahu’s home in a meeting with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he said.

“I told him: ‘If you will not trust your allies, so whom do you trust? I am not bringing for you Turkey and Indonesia,’” Abbas recalled saying to Netanyahu.

“He said, ‘I trust my army only,’” Abbas said.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told the Times in an email, “There are many ideas being proposed from both the Israelis and the PA, but it is premature to make any predictions about the final contents of a framework.”

Kerry is preparing to present what the US calls a framework of core principles for a 'peace' deal. The framework is expected to include a security plan, an Israeli-Palestinian border roughly along the 1967 lines, Palestinian recognition of Israel as a 'Jewish state' and 'Jerusalem' (occupied al-Quds) as a shared capital.