Land-locked Palestinian naval police faces new work drought

[Freddie Stubbs]

BEN LYNFIELD
IN JERICHO


THE land-locked West Bank may seem an unlikely place to situate a naval base, but for Palestinians without land for a state perhaps it is fitting to have a navy without a sea.

Only the small anchors painted in black on the stucco barracks of the Palestinian Naval Police in Jericho recall the sea. Nearby are parched Judean desert hills, including the biblical Mount of Temptation, and the oldest city in the world, sleepy Jericho, itself surrounded on all sides by the Israeli army.

Inside the cramped base, things are hardly on a war footing. An unarmed young naval policeman, wearing khaki camouflage fatigues, greets his visitor and starts preparing the obligatory watery black coffee.

In base commander Lieutenant-Colonel Hatim Hassan’s office, overseen by a framed poster of a smiling Yasser Arafat, the television is tuned to an Arabic music station.

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