By Stan Goodenough
Aug 05, 2007
According to a "senior Palestinian security official" cited Sunday on The Jerusalem Post website, all but three terrorists offered amnesty by Israel have voluntarily disarmed themselves and "sworn off violence."
The Post said 300 "gunmen" had laid down their arms, among them terrorists from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas, a veteran terrorist in his own right, is trying to present himself as a moderate in order to secure more support and concessions from the United States and Israel on the road to acquiring his Palestinian state.
Al-Aqsa was founded in September 2000 at the onset of the Oslo War (second "Intifada"). Its members have perpetrated dozens of shooting and "suicide" attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, acting under instructions from the Bush administration, offered the amnesty to these killers of his countrymen as part of a package deal intended to bolster Abbas and his Fatah against the Hamas Islamist terror group, which last month violently took over the Gaza Strip.
What renders the agreement - widely regarded as immoral - a full farce, is that after a brief spell, these same men who have now disarmed themselves can join the PA "security forces" and pick up new guns and other weapons.
PA security forces have often used weapons provided them under agreements with Israel to murder more Jews.