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Friday, January 04, 2008

Hamas explosives cache discovered in Nablus by PA?

Yesterday, Israel revealed that it found two rockets being built in Nablus.

Israel's raids into Nablus has upset PA leader Fayyad. Palestine Press Agency reports:
Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister, said "The Israeli military operations in Palestinian territories, especially in the governorate of Nablus, would destroy Palestinian efforts in the area of security."

Fayyad stressed that the Israeli attacks had a significant negative impact on the intensive efforts Palestinians and the Arab world and internationally to revive the peace process.
But the PA leadership is in a pickle - they claim that they have the ability to secure Nablus, and in fact have already done so, and yet Israel is discovering weapons that can significantly alter the status quo where the PA has some nominal autonomy.

It is with this background that we can read this story in Ma'an:
Palestinian security services revealed on Friday that a new type of explosive material has been discovered in Nablus, believed to be part of a Hamas arsenal to be used in a coup against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Palestinian intelligence officer Abdullah Kamil said the explosives were discovered in a bomb-making factory in Nablus.

He added that Palestinian security services had also found a large quantity of weapons belonging to Hamas in Nablus. He said that "sleeping cells" belonging to Hamas in Nablus were planning to use the weapons and explosives to stage a coup in the West Bank.
Ma'an Arabic adds:
Abdullah Kamil, Palestinian intelligence official, told Ma'an that Palestinian security services revealed the existence of explosive materials that is the most serious discovery of its kind in the history of the Palestinian National Authority in the governorate of Nablus in recent months, believed to be belonging to Hamas.

He told Ma'an that these explosive materials were found in one of the buildings in Nablus, which are used to manufacture bombs were designed to strike Israeli targets "serve partisan agenda contrary to the national interest" and the objectives of the National Authority.

He noted that a Palestinian Intelligence press conference will be held next Sunday to reveal details of what was carried out by the security services to detect cells and find weapons belonging to Hamas.

He pointed out that the Israeli daily incursions did not produce anything, so Israel decided to do a big, and thanks to the Authority and the security agencies and citizen awareness of the security agencies would continue to work to provide adequate internal security of the citizens of Nablus.
This sounds very much like a couple of months ago when the PA claimed, to much fanfare, to have discovered rockets in the West Bank - that turned out to have been pipes kids set up to imitate rockets. They are trying very hard to falsely show effectiveness of their huge security services when it is politically convenient when in fact they have done nothing against terror, and only have acted against some crimes like car theft.

(Notice also how they exclusively blame Hamas for weapons and explosive caches in the West Bank and don't say a word about Fatah's terror cells there.)