Comic Book Terror Fighters

It’s from the Jerusalem Post that I learned that the Palestinian Authority is suggesting that they are making in roads in stopping terror against Israeli citizens:

The Palestinian Authority capped a largely disastrous first month of rule in the Gaza Strip with an announcement late Saturday night that it prevented 17 terrorist attacks and confiscated a significant amount of weapons.
(…)
The PA Interior Ministry, which controls the various Palestinian security branches, issued the security report, highlighting the confiscation of 75 mines and 15 Kassam rockets, which it said were to be used against Israel. PA security forces around the border town of Rafah also blocked up two smuggling tunnels and prevented seven smuggling attempts from the Egyptian side.
(..)
The PA, said a source close to Interior Minister Nasser Yousef, was experimenting with a new policy."We are striking at the armed groups and then pulling back to examine the results," he said. The source said decisions were being made on a daily basis, and that "this is not a continuing action." Both Yousef and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas have demanded that gunmen cease carrying their weapons in public, but have not asked the groups to disarm.

Of course, 24 hours after this report was released, Ha’aretz was reporting that this had come to pass:

The Israel Defense Forces are to clamp down tightly in the West Bank after three Israelis were killed and three others were wounded Sunday afternoon, one seriously, when Palestinians opened fire on a hitchhiking station at the Gush Etzion junction, south of Jerusalem.

Shortly after the Gush Etzion attack, Palestinians opened fire again near the settlement of Eli, also in the West Bank, seriously wounding a 14-year-old Israeli boy.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz convened a meeting of high-level security officials on Sunday evening following the attacks. It was decided that IDF troops will redeploy around West Bank cities and limit Palestinian movement on main roads via checkpoints and other means. Exits from Bethlehem and Hebron will be blocked, Palestinian cars will be banned from main West Bank roads and arrests raids will be stepped up, officials said on condition of anonymity.

But who knows, maybe it’s because these people are now assisting in training Palestinian Security Forces though it makes me believe there just might be more to this story than one might reasonably suspect on first reading.