By decree, Abbas overhauls his security forces

RAMALLAH, West Bank-Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is pushing through an overhaul of his security forces by decree, retiring old-guard commanders and giving broad law enforcement powers to a secretive special unit.
Several thousand top officers who rose through the ranks under the iconic late guerrilla leader Yasser Arafat have so far given up command with Abbas offering pre-retirement promotions and pensions equal to their full wages, according to interviews and presidential orders seen by Reuters.The U.S.-backed overhaul, which envisages shedding about 30,000 security jobs and building a more streamlined gendarmerie as part of Washington's drive for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, has picked up pace in recent months, following Abbas's loss of the Gaza Strip to Hamas Islamists a year ago.But some of the changes have stoked tensions between Abbas's prime minister, Western-backed economist Salam Fayyad, and the old guard of Abbas's Fatah faction, a group accustomed to power that cut its teeth in decades of struggle with Israel.
While many Arafat-era security chiefs took early retirement willingly, some veteran commanders, like Abu Ali Turki, say the golden parachute was little consolation: "They are trying to throw us out," Turki, who is in his early 50s, lamented.An Interior Ministry official denied commanders were being pushed out against their will: "It was an offer. Some took it and others didn't," the official said. "There were many officers and commanders doing nothing for the past three years."They were getting paid while they were at home."Western officials note that many of the changes have been carried out with little public accountability.
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As in the days of Noah....