Emni

The Emni was formed in 1967 shortly after the Six-Day War, by merging several separate security and intelligence agencies under Minister of Defence or Minister of Interior jurisdiction into a single streamlined apparatus. As a state committee, it acts on an inter-agency level, and thus retains a degree of jurisdiction over government ministries and subordinate agencies as far as national security is concerned, including oversight of police, corrections, and customs and border security activities, regularly taking the lead in law enforcement operations with a national scope nominally under Ministry of Interior jurisdiction. Its foreign intelligence operations involve setting up clandestine espionage residencies in target countries, and recruiting sources working in sensitive positions in the government or military. The agency also places agents in Palestinian embassies and consulates, who work under official cover and are protected by diplomatic immunity. Operatives typically engage in gathering political, economic, and military-strategic information as well as planting disinformation. The agency is also responsible for combatting internal subversion within the country as well as the international Ba'athist movement, maintaining complex public surveillance operations including a vast network of confidential informants at home and abroad. It is active against the Zionist Resistance Front and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The incumbent Chairman of the Joint Security Committee is Ilyas Mosa, in office since 2010. The committee is headquartered next to the Ministry of Interior in the Jerusalem borough of Sheikh Jarrah.

Name
Upon its establishment, the Joint Security Committee was named as such and referred to exclusively by this name, with staff for the first few years simply referring to it as "the committee" (اللجنة al-lajnah) when not using the official full name; this usage was mostly unambiguous given the context of the agency's work, with other state committees responsible for matters quite separate from intelligence and state security, and thus remains a common colloquialism amongst committee staff.

The name "Emni" in reference to the Joint Security Committee is attested to as early as August 1968, in literature published by the Independence Party criticising the then-ruling Palestine Arab Party's policies in regards to state security activities. However, it wasn't until early 1970 that the name began to be used regularly by the media, reflecting its use as a colloquialism by the general public which would have only recently fell into vogue. The colloquialism comes from the second word in the agency's official Arabic name, which is "security" (أمن amn); "Emni" is a derivative of this word which more specifically conveys a sense of security deriving from secrecy and awareness. Given the agency's central role in upholding the integrity and hegemony of the Palestinian state following the Six-Day War, the name's effective representation of this function saw it fall quickly into mainstream use, which has lasted to the present day and long ago eclipsed the official agency title.

History
After the Six-Day War of June 1967, the territory occupied by the All-Palestine Army and its allies was annexed into the Republic of Palestine, with the State of Israel proclaimed dissolved and its citizens made subjects of the Palestinian state; this was celebrated in the context of Palestinian reunification by Palestinians and the wider Arab world, but for the large Jewish population meant the end of their national independence and sovereignty as a Jewish state. Following these events, the physical remnants of much of the dissolved Israeli state institutions went underground, such as hidden elements of the Israel Defence Forces, the Israel Police, and the Mossad, ultimately coalescing around the Zionist Resistance Front (ZRF) which immediately took up arms against the Palestinian state in what would become a prolonged insurgency lasting to the present day. As the official Israeli government immediately went into exile in London following the Six-Day War, those Jews refusing to recognise the legitimacy of Palestinian hegemony who desired to take action were left with little alternative to the ZRF.

The threat presented to the Palestinian government immediately following reunification by the ZRF's effective and lethal activities, which included over 20 bombings of Palestinian government buildings in and around Jerusalem by the end of 1968, was the direct catalyst for the creation of an efficient state security machine independent of the traditional ministerial executive apparatus. Following the creation of the Joint Security Committee, and especially after its taking over a number of political and military intelligence directorates under the Minister of Defence or Interior in early 1968, the exponential growth of ZRF insurgency activities began to slow and a significant amount of conspiracies foiled, giving the beleaguered Palestinian government some breathing room in the new territories under its control. Until the end of 1968, it appeared that the Zionist insurgency might well soon evolve into a conventional war, which the country was not prepared for in the midst of the immediate aftermath of the hard-won victory of 1967; the Emni's creation, therefore, averted the deterioration of the situation beyond what the newly reunited Palestinian state could withstand.

Following the success of the repression of the Zionist insurgency, which would continue indefinitely as a low-level guerrilla war despite peaking before the start of 1970, the Joint Security Committee turned its attention to the unfolding political crisis in the military. Since before the Six-Day War, the officer corps of the Palestinian Army had become dominated by partisans of the Palestinian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, which was allied with the Syrian-led Ba'athist movement. The Ba'athist officers had long disapproved of the policies of the Palestine Arab Party government, which was seen as elitist. However, the Joint Security Committee, being officially a military service, was not immune from these intrigues; following the prosecution of Emni Chairman Heitham el-Abdi for corruption including embezzlement of public funds, Deputy-Chairman Rostem Ghazali, a secret Ba'athist, was put in charge of the Emni.

In Septmeber 1971, President Ahmad Shukeiri ordered the Emni to raid the 11th Regional Congress of the Palestinian Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party and arrest its membership. The Military Committee of the Palestinian Regional Branch's Regional Command had been planning for some time to take control of the government, and were in the process of arguing in favour of a military coup at the 11th Congress to a civilian party leadership which was unsure of the idea. Upon hearing the Emni had been given the order to arrest the Congress and was expected shortly to make good on it, the civilian Regional Commamd unanimously endorsed a coup in a resolution which was passed by the 11th Congress. On the same day, Ghazali, who was a member of the Military Committee and thus aware of the plan prior to its endorsement by the civilian Ba'athists, sent a contingent of apolitical or loyalist Emni agents to purportedly arrest the 11th Congress, which had already adjourned to a new, secret location prior to their arrival on Ghazali's instructions.

At the same time, Emni agents under the command of the Ba'athists arrested President Shukeiri, as well as loyalist members of the Republican Guard, the Palestinian Army's officer corps, the Palestine National Police's leadership, and the Emni. The coup would also not have been possible without the support of the Communist Party of Palestine, which maintained a significantly higher level of support than the Ba'athists within the Army's enlisted corps and the National Police. Within a month, elections were called to the Palestine Arab Congress for the first time in over a decade, in which the Ba'athists won a majority of seats as part of the National Progressive Front coalition with the communists and other leftists. The Emni subsequently underwent a major reorganisation, which involved the creation of directorates responsible for combatting political subversion within the Palestinian government itself as well as the military. As the 1971 coup brought to power the radical middle class which sought significant social change through economics, a large portion of the Palestinian economy was nationalised, which naturally involved the the dispossession of businessmen, landlords and bankers who's resistance the Emni was naturally responsible for repressing. Similarly, those people who benefited less from Ba'athist policy than ordinary workers, and who often had several connections in the upper echelons of society which had been stripped of their power, would attempt to conspire against the new government often with the help and funding of foreign imperialist governments; this too the Emni became responsible for combatting.

Directorates

 * "A" Directorate: The premier foreign intelligence service, responsible for HUMINT operations involving foreign intelligence-gathering and planting strategic disinformation; maintains foreign safe houses and espionage residencies in target countries.
 * "B" Directorate: Upholds political security, combats internal subversion, and monitors political activity across society including within the government and armed forces; also responsible for domestic intelligence operations.
 * "T" Directorate: Handles criminal intelligence, investigation of major crimes like serial or spree murder, child kidnapping and human trafficking, infiltration of organised criminal networks, and professional forensic pathology and behaviour analysis.
 * "Th" Directorate: Each civilian government agency, committee, or ministry has a department (called an "A" Department) which is responsible for physical and informational security in its assigned agency; they answer to "Th" Directorate, which also assigns security details to senior civilian government personnel.
 * "H" Directorate: Responsible for public surveillance and maintaining the database used by the National Police and other Ministry of Interior agencies.
 * "Kh" Directorate: Handles secure government communications, cryptology, and cyber-security.
 * "D" Directorate: Responsible for detaining and transporting felons and other serious civilian or military convicts like terrorists, as well as operating the national witness protection program.
 * "Dh" (Anti-Corruption) Directorate: Investigates allegations of professional misconduct, corruption or criminality of government and military personnel.
 * "R" Directorate: Responsible for domestic counterintelligence operations.
 * "Z" Directorate: Responsible for censorship, propaganda and information warfare.
 * Joint Military Intelligence Directorate: Responsible for military counterintelligence operations and supervising and supporting the military intelligence directorates under the Ministry of Defence.
 * Special Operations & Counterterrorism Directorate: The paramilitary division of the Joint Security Committee, responsible for counterterrorism and other serious operations.

Other departments

 * Human Resources Department: Recruits, trains and compensates all committee personnel.
 * IT Department: Responsible for supplying and maintaining all technical equipment.
 * Finance Department: Responsible for the budget and funding operations.
 * Legal Department: Handles all legal matters for the committee.
 * Research & Development Department: Responsible for scientific research and the development of technologies relevant to state security and intelligence operations, from pinhole cameras to drugs and poisons.