26-Jul-07: Just what the area needs - more guns

Our friend David Frankfurter points us to today's report that the government of Israel has authorized the transfer of 1,000 rifles from Jordan to the security forces of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

This is beyond absurd. Little more than a week ago, we commented here (17-Jul-07: The Joke's On Us) on the preposterous charade of Israel giving pardons to Fatah gunmen for having turned their weapons in. Where, asks David, did those weapons go? And why do the Fatah terrorists need another thousand?

Answer: the surrender of the weapons was a charade. Hundreds of armed, active, committed Zionist-hating murderous terrorists are now operating freely with freshly minted Israeli free-passes. And their arsenal has just gone through a significant, approved-by-Israel upgrade.

Note also that the Haaretz report completely fails to mention the arms "surrender". Was it too far back for the editors to remember?

Three months ago, one of Israel's extreme left voices, Yossi Beilin, under the headline "Don't give 'em guns: Last thing Palestinian Authority needs at this time is more weapons" wrote this:

It is sad to see how figures such as Sharon and Olmert, who reached positions of influence while holding on to a very hawkish worldview, ended up advocating positions that doves would not even imagine proposing – ranging from withdrawal without getting anything in exchange to handing over weapons to one Palestinian group, as pragmatic as it may be, in order for it to undermine another group. Those who pay the price of these mistakes are Israelis and Palestinians, who see peace moving further away, and meanwhile are forced to live with lack of security and concern over the next war, which is facing them from newspaper headlines.

Today Haaretz reveals that the thousand rifles

"were delivered to the PA security forces three weeks ago following Israeli authorization... [in other words, prior to the charade of the weapons surrender by the Fatah terrorists] This is the largest arms transfer authorized in recent years, and it is meant to aid forces loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in preventing the possibility of a Hamas challenge and possible takeover similar to that of the Gaza Strip... The transfer of the M-16s was kept under strict confidence on both sides, in an effort to prevent any possible leak that could undermine Abbas' standing."

George Santayana's dictum that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" might have been written for this neighbourhood.