Lessons From Hizbollah Are Being Learned In The West Bank Too

Noah Pollak notes at Contentions:

Nablus has been since late 2007 a test case for the PA security effort, and what appears to be happening there is similar to the longstanding relationship between UNIFIL and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon — a tacit agreement between terrorists and western-backed security forces not to create problems for each other. From an LA Times story on two brothers from Nablus, we learn that

There is another explanation for the calm [in Nablus], according to Palestinians informed about security matters: a quiet understanding that police will not pursue militant groups that pose a threat to Israel as long as they lie low and do not challenge the Palestinian Authority.

And when such "militant groups" decide to put on a show of arms, the PA seems helpless to stop them. After a group of Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades gunmen battled the PA police two weeks ago, they "held a parade in Nablus in which they carried weapons, promised not to give in to the PA and vowed to continue to fight the Israeli occupation."

Pollak applies Max Weber's definition of a state that it must have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

Donald Sensing discusses this idea more fully, writing that the ability to implement that rule lies at the difference between Abbas and David Ben-Gurion.

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