JERUSALEM — Palestinians are recruiting thousands of police in the Gaza Strip to prevent attacks on Jewish settlers and soldiers during Israel's planned pullout from the area this summer, a security official said today, in a significant step toward co-ordination after months of deadlock and years of bloody conflict.
The new signs of co-operation, including a meeting of technical experts late Monday, came despite a confrontation at a disputed holy site in Jerusalem in which Israeli police hurled stun grenades to disperse hundreds of Palestinian stone-throwers.
The second reading sent me searching the Israeli papers in disbelief. Hey, this is the Associated Press and its not like they haven’t gotten a few things wrong. I quickly found this Haaretz Article:
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz declared on Monday that the army will collect the settlers' weapons shortly before the scheduled date for the disengagement plan. Mofaz warned the settlers that those who refuse to give up their weapons will have them taken by force. This initiative is to ensure there will be no armed settlers during the evacuation.
Mofaz's remarks touched specifically on the weapons that the Israel Defense Forces provided the settlers for self-defense, namely to security officers of the local authorities, security coordinators of settlements and members of on-call forces in the settlements. In mid-April, after a meeting with senior officers, Mofaz ordered the army to begin collecting weapons from settlers ahead of the evacuation. Mofaz told IDF officers that the collection was to be coordinated with settler leaders. The directive was postponed soon after due to fears that collecting weapons at that point would create a crisis of confidence in the army among the settlers.
In his appearance before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the defense minister said the IDF will collect weapons from the settlers only immediately before the evacuation planned for August 15. This way settlers will be able to defend themselves until their evacuation.
Mahmud Abbas has done his best to plumb out the ranks of the Palestinian Authority security forces with former Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists but according to this Yahoo News article there are a few disenfranchised gunmen running around Nablus that the Palestinian Authority overlooked:
Militants loosely affiliated to the Fatah party of Mahmud Abbas stormed public offices in Nablus under a hail of gunfire, accusing the Palestinian leader of failing to honour security promises. The band of 20 militants from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades barged into the local interior ministry office in the northern West Bank city on Sunday, opened fire and ordered everyone out, Palestinian security sources said. The gang then stormed the governor's office at the other end of town, ordered out all staff under gunfire and lightly wounded one man, they added. Nablus governor Mahmud al-Uol was in Ramallah at the time.
"We demand that the Palestinian Authority, especially Abu Mazen (Abbas), keeps their promises. He promised us jobs in the security services and that he would secure our safety. We have seen none of it," Al-Aqsa said in a statement.
I don’t see that Abbas has much choice but to give these guys the Gaza pull-out security forces gig after the events of the past week with the local Gaza security forces.
But let’s be up front and realistic. I can think of nothing more inspiring of a Charleton Heston moment if I was an Israeli living in Gaza than to know that the PA has my back and the IDF can have my weapon back when they pry it from my cold dead hand.
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