By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
May 01, 2005
Israel has expressed firm opposition to US and Russian proposals to further arm the Palestinian Authority after PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas claimed he could not fulfill his obligation to restore peace and security without additional weapons.
Visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin promised his hosts in Ramallah Thursday future deliveries of military equipment and vehicles.
"We will give the PA technical help by sending equipment and training people. We will give the PA helicopters and also communication equipment,"Putin said during a joint press conference with Abbas.
Earlier last week, US envoy Lt.-Gen. William Ward informed Israel the "Palestinians"his men are currently training needed more weapons in order to carry out their duties.
The response from Jerusalem was that the PA would have plenty of weapons if it fulfilled its decade-old peace obligation to disarm the terrorists operating out of territories under its control.
But far from disarming them, Abbas has made public his intention to incorporate wanted terrorist gunmen into the PA's official security forces.
This, too, has met with fierce Israeli opposition, with Jerusalem insisting it is unacceptable that individuals involved in past acts of anti-Jewish terror would now be paid to maintain possession of their weapons.
In 1993, the government of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed to arm the PLO's "security" forces under the condition that the guns provided would never be turned on Israeli Jews.
Rabin told skeptical Israelis to "stop being afraid. There is no danger" the weapons we are giving the Palestinian Arabs "will be used against us."
"?They [the Palestinian Arabs] 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," he stated.
Israel's defense establishment has documented innumerable cases where this tenet of peace has been broken. On several occasion, PA police officers have opened fire on IDF soldiers with whom they were on joint patrols.