Dispatches Beating Swords into Billy Clubs

By LARA MARLOWE, in Amman

On the chest pocket of his navy-blue uniform, Captain Amer Mohamed Abdel-Kader still wears the paratrooper's wings he earned by skydiving out of Jordanian army planes as a member of the Badr Brigade of the Palestine Liberation Army, the military wing of the P.L.O. Under the terms of the peace agreement signed by Israel and the P.L.O., Captain Abdel-Kader is one of hundreds of Palestinian soldiers training in Jordan and Egypt for police duty in soon-to- be-autonomous Jericho and the Gaza Strip. Lectures on courtroom law and fingerprinting may seem banal for men who until last month dreamed of military victory against Israel, but Abdel-Kader is ebullient. "Going to Palestine," he says, "is more exciting than jumping out of a plane for the first time."

Though the policemen still wear shoulder patches embroidered PALESTINE LIBERATION ARMY, their days of furtive desert bivouacs are over. The grounds of Amman's Royal Police Academy, where the men are training, are landscaped with hollyhocks and palm trees. And there is no target practice. "We don't know what weapons we'll have in Jericho," says Lieut. Colonel Mohamed Youssef Al Sadi, commander of a 20-man unit drawn from the Badr Brigade, which is expected to patrol Jericho. "We have forgotten our Kalashnikovs." They have been trained, however, to handle American M-16s. Whether the Israelis will allow the men of the P.L.O. to carry them is still undecided.

As part of the police- application process, hotheaded ideologues are screened out. By design, the trainees in this unit are longtime residents of Jordan who have wives and children but are in their late 20s and early 30s, too young to have fought in the Arab-Israeli wars. ("It is impossible that they are on any Israeli blacklist," says an instructor.) "We're going to Jericho as policemen, not as soldiers," Al Sadi reminds his men. "Being a policeman is much harder. The policeman has to help everyone -- no matter what his nationality -- and forget about his own identity and feelings."

With Israeli and Palestinian extremists opposing the autonomy agreement, the police cadets' riot-control training may prove more useful than courses in directing traffic. And so far, recruits have not been instructed on dealings with Israeli settlers and security forces. Al Sadi brushes aside the possibility of politically charged, violent confrontation. "We can solve things through dialogue," he insists. "Our job is to protect people and prevent crime."

Most of all, the members of the Badr Brigade -- they have kept their unit's name -- are eager to project a new image of Palestinians. Not hijackers. Not dust-caked guerrillas staging night raids across the Israeli border. Just ordinary cops with polished boots and well-pressed uniforms, assisting in the splendidly routine business of maintaining law and order among their own people.