Palestinian Authority to disarm citizens - I will believe when I see it.

Here’s the latest Palestinian Authority feel good story reported by the Jerusalem Post:

Palestinian police began confiscating stolen Israeli cars in the West Bank city of Nablus on Saturday and have beefed up their forces to crack down on growing lawlessness. The police informed Palestinian terrorist groups, which oversee theft rings and possess illegal weapons that they also intend to start collecting unlicensed guns, police said. The factions were told, in the meantime, to obey a recent order to keep their weapons out of the open, the police said.

This is your classic PA story, but if you read on you come to this caveat buried near the end:

Police would not say when they would start collecting the unlicensed guns, an operation likely to set off tensions between the security forces and militant groups.

No doubt announcements like this send the right kind of message even if the words spoken are only sincere until the sound bite ends. I would take the PA stated intentions of disarming the local populace seriously, if the PA were to actually go about it in a realistic and concrete way. Establishing a weapons for cash program with a sliding scale payout for the type and number of weapons could go a long way in getting the “illegal” weapons out of the hands of the general populace.

Palestinian Authority controlled areas are incredibly poor places with unemployment often running well over 60%. Offering enough cash could go a long way to hold off the hunger pangs of a Palestinian family or could even motivate a neighbor to tipping off the security forces to another neighbor’s larger weapons cache. It could potentially make a significant dent in helping to impede the various and sundry competing terrorist organizations within the West Bank and Gaza by hindering their ability to launch attacks against Israel or the PA itself. You can’t have a Kassam attack without the Kassams.

Furthermore, the official Palestinian Authority security forces have been claiming that they are running out of guns and ammunition since the beginning of the year and it could go a long way in restocking their allegedly empty arsenal. No doubt the Palestinian Authority could easily entice the European Union to bankroll this initiative.