The Palestinian Authority is building a force of some 25,000 soldiers and police and as many as 30,000 Fatah militiamen to help secure Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in two weeks, according to Palestinian government officials and military officers.

That Gaza-based force – the largest assembled in Palestinian history, according to PA Cabinet Secretary Samir Huleile – is charged with thwarting the launch of rockets and mortars at the departing troops and settlers. They are also tasked with preventing a flood of looters and "souvenir seekers," from surging towards the settlements.

Israeli officials are "satisfied," with the constellation of Palestinian forces to be arrayed in the Gaza Strip, but remain skeptical that official PA policy will trickle down to rank and file security officials in Gaza. Palestinian rocket attacks will be met by "a massive Israeli assault from land, sea and air," that could stall the disengagement, said Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim in a telephone interview last week.

Israeli military sources say that the IDF plans to deploy about 55,000 troops in and around Gaza in addition to 11,000 police officers.

The bulk of the better-trained Palestinian forces, under the command of Col. Jamal Kayed, commander of the National Security Forces in the southern half of the Strip, will be deployed beyond a 200-800 meter buffer zone from the settlements, said Col. Kayed in an interview in his Khan Yunis offices.

"The goal is to stay out of sight from the settlers and soldiers," explained Kayed, who will command 5500 of the NSF troops on the Gush Katif settlement bloc boundary.

The 7500-strong front-line Palestinian force, thousands of which are still in training primarily in Gaza City, will include Kayed's NSF, Special Forces, intelligence units, police and even a unit of sappers. Behind them, about 20,000 Palestinian police officers are set to cordon-off Palestinians moving towards the settlements, a PA Interior Ministry spokesman responded in an email Thursday.

Kayed, a barrel-chested man with the NSF's green beret pulled low on his head, is convinced that "there will be many unexploded ordinances on the ground after [Israel's redeployment]. I have also heard that the settlers intend to lay mines."

The IDF says it "plans to leave no ordinances of any kind behind," according to an officer in the Southern Command.

The Palestinians have complained that Israel has not shared its operational plans with them, limiting their ability to coordinate. However the IDF and the Palestinians plan to set up three joint command posts to minimize friction between the two massive forces during the pullout, say IDF and Palestinian officials.

Yet with a little over a week before pullout's starting gun, the PA is feverishly training new and old troops for the task. And it is not clear they're ready for what Col. Mahmud Rawala, charged with training one of the Brigades, admits is a "complex training for a military and civilian operation." At a parade ground near the Ansar base where his men are billeted, a battalion of cadets, some with bellies protruding from their military tunics, others looking too old or frail for warfare, practice hand to hand combat and marching in step. Their officers watch the developing Palestinian army with pride tinged with dismay.

The barracks are tin sheds littered with mattresses and soldiers grab any space available to catch some shut-eye. On Monday morning one took up a position on the barracks' kitchen counter.

Still, Rawala proclaimed his men "quite ready for service."

That may be, said the Israeli officer in the Southern Command, but "the fact is in the weeks leading up to the disengagement, "there is a lot of fire coming from their side. We want to give them a chance, but right now it does not look good."

"Despite the chronic lack of equipment," continued Rawala, "our morale remains high." He said the PA would have a hard time fulfilling its duties when men had to share guns and target practice is oddly silent - there is not enough ammunition to spare, said Rawala.

The EU has pledged 200 police vehicles and two mobile command units for the PA's cause, as well as field communications equipment, according to a Palestinian source present at meetings with EU Foreign Minister Javier Solana last week. Aside from a consignment of some 20 police cars, the equipment has yet to reach troops.

Israel, said Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim in a telephone conversation this week, would "consider their [the PA's] request for ammunition." But more pressing, said Boim, is the Palestinian's will to fight terrorists. "I am not sure Abu Mazen's policy will trickle down to the troops," he said.

Indeed while the PA's orders from on high are to thwart any attacks that could precipitate "a land sea and air response," as Boim put it, effecting those instructions is a different matter. Col. Kayed in Khan Yunis said he has ordered his men to fire, "only if fired upon, and then in the air first." The last thing he wants to do, he said, "is to start a civil war by killing strugglers for freedom," he said.

The PA soldiers' orders are to first "talk to the fighters." If negotiations fail and rockets or mortars are launched, the soldiers might shoot into the air in order to disperse the mortar men. Then they are to arrest them if possible.

The PA acknowledges the risks of such tactics. Kayed says that it is not air strikes but tank shells that he fears most. "They are not aimed with pinpoint accuracy like the air rockets," so the devastation they leave behind can be immense."