British monitors keeping an eye on jailed Palestinian militants in Jericho were on to a fairly cushy number - while it lasted, writes
One of the first of the British monitors at the Jericho jail recalled his initial impression on arriving there in 2002: ‘It was like Beau Geste,’ he said.
He was hot, and the glare from the prison's white and yellow stone did not help. It was also dusty. The palm trees added to the overall impression of having stepped back to the 19th century.
Another of his colleagues looked even further back, to Biblical times, recalling the story of the trumpet call that brought down the walls of Jericho. The job of the mission, he said, was to ensure that the prison walls were not brought down.
The men were part of a joint British-US mission to ensure that the Palestinian Authority did not allow six Palestinian prisoners in Jericho to escape. Five of them were accused of involvement in the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister, the other alleged to have been engaged in arms smuggling.
Unusually, the British took the lead over the Americans, providing eight of the team.
The UK team was made up of former soldiers, most of whom had experience in Northern Ireland and the Balkans, and former Northern Ireland prison wards.
They monitored the jail until Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, ordered them to stop this week, provoking a series of anti-British protests in Gaza and the West Bank.
Compared with colleagues in Iraq or even Afghanistan, the team had a relatively easy mission: they lived in Jerusalem, with access to good restaurants and bars, and were well paid, reported to be on a basic of £55,000 a year plus a further £25,000 in expenses.
Although as long ago as 2002 the Israeli press said the men faced threats from the Palestinians, it is rare for Palestinians to target British or other European or US citizens.
And their half-hour commute was along the Jerusalem-Jericho road, which despite being subjected to Palestinian fire in the early days of the intifada has been quiet over the last four years.
They monitored the jail 24 hours a day, on a rota system. Much of the job involved watching the prison from a rooftop position, and noting the prisoners' movements and visitors. The monitors did not conduct searches of visitors or of cells: that was left to the Palestinian security guards - though if the monitors did feel a search had conducted less than properly, they could point it out.
At the end of each week, the monitors reported to their respective embassies, which contacted the Israeli government to confirm that the six prisoners, high on Israel's wanted list, were still inside.
Mr Straw told the Commons that he, along with the US, had ended the mission because he felt the risk to the team was unacceptable after increasing riots inside and outside the jail.
There had been hopes in the western diplomatic community that the British-US mission would be the start of a bigger international deployment in Israel-Palestine.
That never happened, though there is a small European Union contingent at the Gaza-Egypt border. And now even the Jericho mission is over, and the British team is without a job.