Last week Rabbi Meir Avshalom Chai was killed in an ambush. Following the attack, Israel tracked down an killed three suspects in the murder. At the funerals for the murderers, protesters objected to the PA’s cooperation with Israel, leading JoshuaPundit to observe:
This is very indicative of exactly why the so-called peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is dead in the water.
Three terrorists on Fatah’s payroll who had supposedly forsworn further terrorist activities murder an unarmed Rabbi on the roads after an IDF checkpoint is removed, and yet public anger is not directed against the killers for breaching and endangering the peace agreements but at the Palestinian Authority for participating in any sort of cooperation with Israel!
Considering how corrupt, weak and illegitimate a government Abbas and the Palestinian Authority actually are, the Israelis ought to be very wary about making deals with them..especially when it comes to giving up land and removing security checkpoints.If the IDF ever actually pulled out of Judea and Samaria completely, Abbas and his gang would last perhaps a month before being over thrown by the local jihadis and Hamas.
Fresno Zionism (among others) noted that the United States asked Israel for a clarification of its killing of the terrorists.
One wonders if the US demanded ‘clarification’ from the Fatah-dominated PA about the actions of Fatah’s “military wing� Nothing like support from an ally, is there?
Dan Diker, though, turns the tables and said that it is the Americans who have some ‘splainin’ to do. (h/t PowerLine)
THIS IS where it seems more appropriate that the US issue clarifications to Israel. At least one of the Aksa Brigades commanders – Annan Sabuh, who was found with two M16 automatic rifles and two other firearms – had been part of the amnesty program for former Fatah-affiliated terror group commanders and operatives that was predicated on turning in all weapons. The amnesty program was implemented in no small part at the behest of the United States and its security reform program, which began under Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton in 2005.
Notwithstanding IDF praise for PA public policing improvements in some West Bank cities and for PA security actions against Hamas, the American-trained and -funded Palestinian security forces under the command of PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have either refused or been unable to uproot the terror infrastructure of the Fatah-associated Aksa Martyrs Brigades. Similar to the three recently neutralized terrorists, thousands of additional Aksa Martyrs operatives and other Fatah militia members have gone into “retirement” via the amnesty agreement with the PA security forces and their US security coordinators, but many operatives still store weapons in their homes. US security officials may also be aware that some Fatah terror operatives have even been sheltered in PA security installations to remove them from Israel’s most wanted list.
Fayyad has also coopted some Aksa commanders by assigning them to senior positions in the PA security forces, such as Abu Jabbal, a senior PA security forces officer in Nablus. The increased US commitment in 2009, equaling some $130 million to upgrade the PA forces to nearly 3,500 men, has failed to address the very problem of the continued existence of Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades and other armed Fatah factions that resulted in the recent murder of Chai. It is well known in senior Fatah security echelons that the limited capacity and political will of PA forces require the IDF to assume between 70 percent and 80% of the security operations against the extant terror infrastructure in the West Bank.
We’ve been here before. It is also perhaps wise not to ignore the fact that Abbas still calls for a new intifada in Arabic.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
