Who would have thought it - Abbas is short gunmen

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas apparently does not have enough PLO fighters and wants to import more Palestinian gunmen from Jordan reports the Jerusalem Post:

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas hopes to beef up his loyalist forces with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) troops stationed in Jordan, Palestinian officials said, as rival factions bolstered their ranks in anticipation of a feared civil war.

Israel has objected in the past to letting members of the Jordan-based Badr Brigade enter Palestinian areas. But with clashes intensifying between Abbas' Fatah Party and forces loyal to the Palestinians' militantly anti-Israel Hamas government, Israeli officials said they would consider allowing them in, the Palestinian officials said.

Israeli authorities weren't immediately available for comment.

Palestinian officials did not say how many Badr forces Abbas hopes to mobilize. What is most important to him is that he would command their loyalty as head of the PLO.

Abbas, elected separately last year, is nominally the supreme commander of all seven Palestinian security branches, and most security personnel were hired by Fatah, which controlled the Palestinian Authority for more than a decade. But after Hamas swept Fatah out of office in January elections, it set up a militia of its own, which now numbers 5,700 armed men, and has announced plans to recruit an additional 1,500 forces in the West Bank, Fatah's stronghold.

The rival security forces have clashed frequently in the Gaza Strip in recent weeks as political tensions between the two sides grow. The violence has left more than a dozen dead and stoked fears of a bloody showdown. The threat of heightened unrest led Palestinian officials from both sides to increase police presence on Saturday.

In Gaza, police in blue-and-white camouflage uniforms deployed around the parliament building, and in the West Bank town of Ramallah, security personnel were posted outside parliament, the Prime Minister's office and the Education Ministry. In an attempt to ease tensions, a coordinating committee for all Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, met on Friday night in Gaza, and agreed to remove all their non-uniformed gunmen from the streets.

While it would be logical for anyone to perceive why it would not be in the Israeli’s best interest to have even more armed gunmen running around the West Bank or the Gaza Strip don’t be surprised to soon learn that the Bush Administration will be putting the screws to the Israeli government to allow their pet terrorist his request for more gunman.