THE FRUIT OF OSLO

PA police: Our guns are aimed at Israel

In an ominous letter to PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas, a large number of Palestinian Authority security officers confirmed Israeli's worst fears regarding the “Oslo” peace process – the guns Israel allowed them to obtain are to be used against Jews and their allies only, not terrorists.

The Arabs “know very well that if they use these guns against us once, at that moment the Oslo Accords will be annulled and the IDF will return to all the places that have been given to them,” late-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin warned after signing that agreement with Yasser Arafat in 1993. Rabin's words were neither heeded nor backed up.

Despite “Palestinian” police officers having turned their weapons on Israelis numerous times over the past decade, the “peace” process has rolled on.  In fact, many members of recognized terrorist organizations actually double as PA policemen. Abbas is trying to add more by bringing his Fatah faction's Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades into the fold. But if the man Washington insists is a “moderate” thinks such a move will lessen, at least temporarily, the violence between those he governs and Israel, this week's letter sought to set him straight.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the officers who attached their names to the document stressed “that their weapons would be used only against Israel and suspected collaborators” - those Palestinian Arabs that, in the spirit of “Oslo,” cooperate with Israel in the war against Islamic terror.  Cracking down on terror groups such as Hamas in compliance with US and Israeli demands is out of the question, the officers wrote.  “We are the soldiers of the homeland, not [US security coordinator] General William Ward. Neither are we a branch of the Israeli Shin Bet nor members of a hired gang serving certain centers of power.”

They also cautioned Abbas over the rampant corruption and cronyism his regime has facilitated, and which threatens to tear the security forces apart. “We urge you to get acquainted with what's really happening inside the security forces, which have begun disintegrating because of corruption, mismanagement and placing private interests above the national interests of the people,” the officers wrote.

The letter appeared to contradict Abbas' recent claims that he has taken concrete steps to reform security in line with his Road Map commitments, as well as recent upbeat US State Department assessments concerning the situation within the PA. PA officials attempted to play down the letter, telling the Post “it was written by a group of disgruntled officers who had been retired or dismissed.”

In another challenge to Abbas' rule, several long-serving PLO ambassadors originally placed by Yasser Arafat have refused to relinquish their posts to new appointees.  These incidents again called into question the validity of Israel relying on the Abbas-run PA as a peace partner capable of enforcing the laws born out of any final peace agreement.