From Haaretz, with thanks to TTN:
Israel has rejected a proposal by the United States to supply the Palestinian police officers in the West Bank with weapons that would assist them in performing their duties.American officials have told their Israeli interlocutors over the past few days that the Palestinian security forces need weapons to help them maintain order in the territories. In response, the U.S. officials heard a negative reply from Israeli officials: "Let them first take the weapons from the terrorists."
The Americans are assisting in training the Palestinian security forces, and are also interested in supplying them with appropriate materiel.
The American officials also had praise for the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), for the way he has handled himself since being elected. As an expression of their esteem, Abbas will be extended an invitation to the White House in the middle of May. Before then, he will meet with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
At all of his meetings with foreign dignitaries, Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Yousef brings up the demand to arm the Palestinian police officers in the territories. Yousef says that it is difficult for them to enforce the law and safeguard security in the West Bank without weapons.
The U.S.'s security coordinator in the Middle East, Lieutenant General William Ward, is apparently leaning toward supporting the Palestinian request.
A political source in Jerusalem said in response that the Bush administration envoys, Elliott Abrams and David Welch, raised Yousef's request for arming the Palestinian police during their visit to Israel last week...
We remember how well arming the Palestinian police force worked out last time. What is the administration thinking? Do we have to make the same mistakes over and over?
Israel supplied the Palestinian police with weapons last time during the Oslo talks. This happened circa 1997. The Pali police ended up shooting at Jews with these weapons when the second intifada was uncorked by the dirty degenerate Yassir Arafat
Disengagement means to disengage:
No money, no weapons, no invitations, no more BS.
Invitation to the white house?
No way! Abbas is no better than Arafat and doesn't deserve the light of day.
But then again, didn't Bush just kiss cuddle and hold hands with that fat cat Saudi 'prince' who promised to pay up for 9/11?
What? He didn't promise anything? Ah, perhaps he promised to let the oil flow if Bush gives him Israel on a silver platter...
Then I woke up and realized it was all just a Hollywood movie....
A kind of mental or conceptual paralysis prevents American, European, and even Israeli policymakers -- perhaps most intolerably, Israeli policymakers -- from recognizing the Muslim sources of Arab Muslim opposition to the well-being, or permannent existence, of a Jewish (i.e., non-Muslim) sovereign state) in the middle of dar al-Islam. Of course, such opposition is also shared by certain "Palestinian" islamochristian Arabs, such as Naim Ateek, or the gunrunner for the PLO Archbishop HIlarion Cappucci, or Hanan Ashrawi, the good friend of Peter Jennings. Like the Christians who helped found the Ba'athist party (such as Michel Aflaq, who "reverted" to Islam at the end of his life), these Arab "islamochristians" have sought to make their own lives tolerable, and to find a way, as Christians, to survive in the midst of a permanently hostile Arab Muslim world -- and the only strategy they have discovered, once they realized that the European powers no longer were going to protect them (as France, for example, had helped protect Christians in Lebanon and Syria a century ago), that they had to accept, adopt, and promote the Muslim world-view.
And along with that, even some "Christian" Arabs have been so convinced of the intimate connection between Islam and "Arabtum" (Arabness) that they feel their own ethnic identity is somehow wrapped up in the defense of Islam.
Of course they are wrong. Of course Islam does not now, and never has, boded well for Christians in the Middle East (or anywhere else). Of course many of those "Christian" Arabs -- such as the Maronites and Copts -- are not Arabs at all, but rather indigenous peoples who were given Arab names, forced to use Arabic, and otherwise "arabized" as, over centuries, their own countries were islamized over time. "Christian" Arabs who, like Cappucci or Ashrawi, tried to fit in by adopting, and promoting, or parroting, the Islamic agenda, and who as Arabs cannot bring themselves to turn their backs on Islam in the way that non-Arab Christians -- such as Christians in Pakistan and Indonesia -- have no trouble doing, may still not realize that they actually have a stake in Israel's survival as a strong and viable non-Muslim power. But not a few of the local Arab Christians, especially those who have clamored for Israeli residency cards or citizenship, or those who are simply fleeing the P.A.'s islamic rule by leaving for Australia or Canada, have finally begun tor realize that there is no hope for them under Muslim rule, which for non-Muslims now used to the concept of equal treatment for minorities (word gets around, throughout the world), can no longer tolerate as they did for centuries. Either the Muslims themselves will change, or the Muslim-dominated countries will empty out of non-Muslims -- as has been happening in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, and more recently, in Egypt and Lebanon where Copts and Maronites have diminished in relative numbers and in power.
It is madness to give the "Palestinians" -- i.e., those local Arabs who appropriated that name post-1967 -- any weapons more than rifles and jeeps. But the Americans do not see this. They do not see that without Israel, there is no possible purchase anywhere closer than Ethiopia or the southern Sudan. They do not see that the "Palestinian people" business is a recent invention, a re-packaging of the old Jihad that Ahmed Shukairy (Arafat's predecessor), Azzam Pasha (Secretary-General of the Arab League in 1948, and great-uncle to Ayman al-Zawahiri) discussed in such unambiguous and naked terms.
But nowadays, nothing is too ridiculous for the Americans, or for the pathetically obstinate and slightly demented Ariel Sharon (who once had an idea, and now that idea has him, no matter how obviously foolish and dangerous that idea has turned out to be) to convince themselves "makes sense." Sure -- why not arm them? And who cares if that weaponry will inevitably fall into terrorist hands, or be used by the people to whom it is given in the first place, to make even more hellishly difficult the job of defending Israel, which has become an abstraction, a place that no matter what the odds are against it, no matter what the ratio of length-of-border to area-of-country becomes (and it is already the hightest in the world, before any further retreats or yielding of territory to which Israel has a legal, historic, and moral claim that is superior not only to that of the "Palestinians" (many of whom boast Egyptian or Iraqi grandparents -- but that is the kind of mere detail that, while well-known to both "Palestinians" and Israelis, never quite makes it to the Western press).
IN the eyes of the PLO and Hammas, Israel has no right to exist. it has been so since the foundation of these organisations and nothing has or will ever change.
MUch of the left wing european academia is now taking the same line for reasons that have been well illustrated on this forum.
The UN denies the right of israelis to self defence and now the Bush Admin asks Israel to arm those who seek its destruction.
The refusal of the Bush admimistraion to recognise the Jihadist causes behind the long standing attacks on Israel is of the highest hypocrisy since it knows well enough that the attacks on Americans are motivated by the same reasons.
Like a kept woman, the PA nuzzles up to sugar daddy Sam to coyly drop a hint for what she wants:
Gee Sam, I sure would like to fight those mean terrorists and bring demmmocrisee to the Territories. But ... sigh, there's so many of them and just little ole me. Maybe, just maybe if I had more weapons...
Sam stiffens at the sweet sound of democracy dripping like honey off the lips of this exotic maiden and his wallet falls open ...
Why not supply them with non-lethal devices?
Nets; hose-able foam (a thick liquid which coats demonstrators in something like quick-drying styrofoam), CS gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, stun guns, tranquilizer darts, etc.
You can be helpful, but need not be suicidal.
Innundate them with tools that will allow them to control crowds, but not kill anyone.
That way the West get the p.r. value, but doesn't cut its own throat (either literally or metaphorically).
Putin's going to arm the PA:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050429/ap_on_re_mi_ea/mideast_putin
"Israel has reacted coldly to a Russian proposal to give the Palestinians 50 armored vehicles, fearing they could fall into the hands of militants. But Putin said the Palestinians will need resources to bring order to their territories and heed Israeli and international calls to rein in militants."
Fall into the hands of "militants"? They are all militants.