It’s not what Israeli leaders and their Arab partners had in mind when they met at a summit last week in a Cairo palace. The leaders of Israel, Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinians managed to issue a tepid protocol condemning terrorism and reaffirming a desire to make peace. But as the mess in Gaza demonstrates, Israeli-Palestinian cooperation is virtually at a standstill. Israeli police spokesman Eric Bar-Chen notes ruefully, “Everybody says that if we have the cooperation in peace that we have in crime, everything would be fine.”
Peace didn’t create the hot-auto racket, but it helped to grease the wheels. Israeli police now have no authority in Gaza, and the new Palestinian police often seem to make up the rules as they go along. Even Israeli soldiers have gotten involved; two were formally charged last month with smuggling scores of cars into Gaza. But not everyone can get away with cruising around in one of these bargain-basement beauties. “If you want to drive a stolen car, you need wasta [connections],” said a plainclothes policeman in Gaza who drives a stolen 1992 Subaru. Better yet: a Palestinian National Authority card, identifying you as a member of the autonomy government.
Indeed, it’s sometimes hard to tell where the car-theft rings end and Palestinian bureaucracy begins. Gaza Deputy Police Chief Mahmoud Asfour frankly admits that most of the Gaza police force’s ears, now painted sky blue, were originally stolen from Israel. But when Yasir Arafat’s men took over the police stations last year, Asfour says, they had no ears and no money to buy them. “Which is better,” he asks rhetorically, “to have the stolen car in the hands of the people – or in the hands of the police, to control [the people]?” And, for that matter, he adds: “The people consider these ears their right – because the Israelis stole everything from our people!” Asfour claims that the police could round up every one of the stolen cars if they were given the order, but they haven’t been. Palestinian police offer the feeble excuse that the Israelis have not handed over documents showing the cars were stolen. Meanwhile, the Palestinian government is cruising in some nice foreign cars.
Chief Superintendent Yossi Rosenberg, a burly man who runs the car-theft-investigation unit of the Israeli police, says cooperation between Palestinian police and Israeli police is “almost zero.” Of the 24,000 cars stolen every year in Israel, he says, 52 percent are never recovered. Many are chopped up for spare parts, but many also end up in Gaza. With little hope left that the Palestinian National Authority will help, Rosenberg is banking on the same strategy the Israeli government has devised to contain Gaza-based terrorist cells: a fence. “We are really trying to close the border tightly,” he says. “It’s our problem. We have to solve it.” As long as people on both sides see each other as enemies, criminals will find room to cooperate. So far, their bridges are stronger than the official ones.
