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Palestinian Arabs

PA opens Gaza arms stores to terrorists


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
May 24, 2004

The Palestinian Authority’s continued affinity for terrorism was further demonstrated this week when it began arming Gaza-based terrorists with weapons provided to the “Palestinians” under the terms of the Oslo Accords.

Senior PA security chiefs in the Gaza Strip handed out weapons to members of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups in order to help them fight against IDF forces operating there, an Israeli defense official reported.

The “Palestinians” claimed they had no choice, insisting the terror groups would have taken the weapons by force had they not been surrendered.

That left many in Israel wondering what exactly the PA brings to the “peace” table if it is unable to fulfill its obligations to prevent terrorist activity.

Rabin was wrong

When former-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords with the PLO in 1993 he told Israelis to “stop being afraid. There is no danger” the weapons we are giving the Palestinian Arabs “will be used against us,” he insisted.

“…They know very well that if they use these guns against us once, at that moment the Oslo Accord will be annulled and the IDF will return to all the places that have been given to them,” Rabin stated.

But the one thing Rabin swore would never happen following his handshake with arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat in fact took place this week, a senior security official told Army Radio Sunday.

According to the official, the Palestinian Authority had opened up its arms stores in the Gaza Strip to members of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Brigades terror groups.

They had done so to help terrorists battle Israeli forces carrying out anti-terror operations in the border town of Rafiah, the official said.

He specifically fingered the PA's National Security Service, headed by “General” Abdul Razek Majaideh, and the regular PA police, headed by Razi Jabali, as being involved.

A “Palestinian” official responded by saying the PA had no choice but to give up the weapons.

"If the [security] services hadn't given the weapons to the [terrorist] organizations, the organizations would have seized the weapons by force," Ha’aretz quoted one Arab source as saying.

It remained unlikely Israel would respond to this gross violation of the Oslo Accords in the way proscribed by Rabin – annulling the “peace” agreements and “reoccupying” all areas previously handed over to the PA.

Violating Oslo

But if the PA is unable to prevent terrorists from seizing weapons that were meant to fight terror, it remains unclear to many Israel’s what exactly the “Palestinians” bring to the negotiating table.

Israeli Arab affairs analyst Ehud Ya’ari noted on Channel Two News Sunday evening that the same PA police forces that are sustained by international aid are turning around and transferring arms to the terror groups they were created to combat.

The Palestinian Authority’s primary obligation under every agreement it has signed with Israel is to bring to an end the terrorism plaguing Israel’s Jews and to dismantle the groups that perpetrate it.

It has repeatedly refused to honor that commitment.

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