Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 19, 2007

Abbas tells Rice he'll resign and Al Qaeda will take over if Annapolis fails

The pro-Fatah Palestine Press Agency reports that Mahmoud Abbas threatened to resign as chairman of the PA:

Kuwait-Palestine-Presse (A Kuwaiti newspaper today) revealed that President Mahmoud Abbas threatened to American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he would resign from his post as chairman of the Palestinian Authority, if the "Annapolis" next peace process completed without results, and demanded of Rice, "that there should be a timetable and a clear political agenda before attending the Conference, but it would not be prepared to sacrifice himself to sacrifice for a popular Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert."

According to the Palestinian official, "there was a sharp political rivalry between President Abbas and the American minister stressed that alternative before his resignation and his retirement from political action letter is clear and public will be one of two possibilities bring troubles to the United States and not a political earthquake in the Palestinian territories alone, but in the All-States allies of the United States."

Abbas said that "the absence of its political moderate lead Washington to deal with a third intifada may be impossible. (Without progress) such as a road map or a new international conference, the United States will find that Al-Qaida, which permeates secretly in the Gaza Strip has become enemy number one and deducted face-to-face in the Palestinian territories if not met possibilities together and then the entire region will not be able to achieve anything. "

So it sounds like Abbas is saying that he is the moderate bulwark against terrorism and that if he falls, America will have a wave of terror attacks. He somehow doesn't seem to address the issue that Al-Qaeda came to Gaza on his watch.

This is behavior we've seen before. Just like the explicit terrorists threaten the West if they don't get what they want, moderate terrorists like Abbas threaten that the other terrorists will attack the West if they don't get what they want. It is the Arab version of good-cop, bad-cop - and too many in the West believe what the "good cop" says.

The last group of a total of close to 100 Palestinian refugees who lived in Iraq, but had to flee to the Jordanian desert, have arrived in Brazil. The 25 refugees are being settled in the southeastern state of São Paulo and in Rio Grande do Sul state, in the Brazilian South.
Another group of 36 had arrived earlier this month after the first 35 Palestinians who came to Brazil in September. All of them were sent by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
The Brazilian government will offer the Palestinian refugees financial help for two years as well as Portuguese classes. They will also be receiving accommodations and medical care.

The refugee agency says Jordan's Ruweished camp, where the refugees lived, will be shut down in the coming weeks.

Many Arab and Western countries with strict immigration policies have refused to host the Palestinian refugees.

The UN has two agencies dedicated to refugees: UNHCR and UNRWA. The UNRWA isdedicated exclusively to Palestinian Arabs, while the UNHCR takes care of everyone else worldwide.

While specific refugee populations around the world have dwindled, only the "refugees" under UNRWA responsibility have increased.

The reasons are simple: UNRWA defined Palestinian Arab "refugees" to include descendants of the original 700,000 refugees, the UNRWA has morphed from an organization that truly wanted to solve the refugee problem into one that only wants to perpetuate it to keep its bureaucracy in existence (it is mostly staffed by Palestinian Arabs,) and the neighboring Arab countries refuse to resettle their Arab "brethren" to live in peace and dignity, preferring to keep them in limbo for 60 years.

This story shows that the UNHCR actually takes its job seriously, trying hard to find a way for its refugees to become normal members of society. It shows that Brazil has more empathy for Palestinian Arabs than any Arab country. Above all, it shows the utter corruption and hypocrisy of the UNRWA and all Arab countries who refuse to truly solve the original refugee problem.

One year ago I found an Arabic editorial upset over the resettlement of some 46 Iraqis of Palestinian origin to Canada, because happy PalArabs mean less "unity". The editorial proved the hypocrisy of the Arab world and how much they want the Palestinian Arabs to suffer as a strategy. I've also pointed out how the Arabs have turned their backs on the Iraqis of Palestinian origin for years.

This story is a damning indictment of the Arab world and the UNRWA, and yet more proof of their pure hypocrisy as they do everything they can to perpetuate Palestinian Arab suffering while they pontificate about how much they love them. Hundreds of millions of Arabs over hundreds of millions of square miles have institutionalized discrimination against Palestinian Arabs for decades, the UNRWA perpetuates the problem, and the world is silent.

Palestinian Arab group succeeds in torpedoing peace concert

An idealistic organization named OneVoice is dedicated to ending the PalArab/Israeli conflict on a grassroots level, through cooperation between the two peoples.

OneVoice planned a set of twin concerts for yesterday, in Tel Aviv and Jericho, to advance its agenda. The Israeli side enthusiastically embraced the idea, but things were a bit more difficult on the PalArab side:

Palestinian civil society groups claimed victory Wednesday after the collapse of a planned pair of concerts in support of negotiations with Israel.

Opposition from Palestinian activist groups and high-profile mismanagement resulted in the cancellation of the OneVoice People's Summit, a concert event planned to take place in Tel Aviv and Jericho simultaneously. The concerts were originally scheduled for Thursday.

The event's stated purpose was to call for the implementation of "a two state solution." The concerts signed on such acts as Canadian rock singer Bryan Adams, and the popular Palestinian hip hop group DAM. The sponsoring organization, One Million Voices, boasted the support of notables including former UN High Comissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, US envoy Dennis Ross, and Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat.

A range of Palestinian groups, under the auspices of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), succeeded in persuading several high-profile artists, including DAM, to withdraw from the concert.

The major thesis of OneVoice is that most people on both sides want peace. PACBI feels differently.

Like the current crop of Palestinian Arab negotiators, PACBI believes that everything is Israel's fault and as a result the Arab side has no responsibilities. The natural outcome of that is that they are against any group that actually advocates compromise, no matter how vaguely worded.

On their website they have a brochure, in Arabic only, that tries to explain to Palestinian Arab kids not to participate in any joint Arab/Israeli peace programs. The document justifies bus bombings as legitimate "resistance," specifically, "the resistance, in all its forms, is a legitimate right for all peoples of the occupied protected by international law, including international human rights instruments."

Both sides claim the majority of Palestinian Arabs support their side. Apparently, in this case at least, the terrorist supporters seemed to have more clout.

October, 1947 Gallup poll of German anti-semites

Another illuminating - and depressing - gem from the Palestine Post, October 20, 1947.

Two years after the fall of Nazism, only 2% of the German population could be said to be against racism. Of the group that was least biased, only 22% said that Jews should try to rebuild their lives in Germany.

While there is no doubt that there was a heavy amount of anti-semitism in Germany that predated Hitler, it is amazing that 12 years of incitement could make virtually an entire nation into racists (normally I wouldn't use the term, but the Germans themselves considered Jews to be a race.)

If twelve years of incitement was successful in creating an entire nation - 98% of the population - into bigots, try to imagine how impossible it would be to change Arab attitudes about Zionists and Jews after a century of daily, sustained incitement.

In 2006, a Pew poll showed that 44% of Germans still had unfavorable opinions of Jews - after sixty years of intense effort to undo the toxic effects of their bigotry. And the same poll found that 98% of Jordanians, and 97% of Egyptians, had the same unfavorable attitudes towards Jews.

The pure hatred that Arabs feel towards Israel and Jews, way out of proportion to anything Israel has ever done, simply cannot be erased or even effected by a "peace treaty" or "goodwill gestures." What needs to be done is a sea change in the Arab and Muslim worlds against this kind of hate, a sustained, multi-decade campaign teaching universal principles of responsibility and equality. Realistically, this will never happen, perhaps unless the Islamic world is utterly defeated militarily - and even then it would take another half century to see real results.

Those poor Gazans

Yesterday, Hamas fought with a pro-Fatah Gaza family for some eight hours, destroying their house (and five died in the process.)

Palestine Press Agency printed pictures of the damage done to the house, and once again it appears that some poor Gazans are not so poor - this was a mansion!

UPDATE: See also this poor slum of a home from earlier this year. The marble foyer was damaged!

Best-selling Turkish book claims Jews behind Islamists

From Omedia:

A book resembling the Protocols of the Elders of Zion has become a bestseller in Turkey. What makes this book so special is that the blood libel against the Jews takes on a new twist. The Washington Post reported the story.

The book is called The Children of Moses. Its cover shows Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan inside a Star of David. Reporter Mustafa Akyol writes that this is the first in a series of four volumes. The book argues that Erdogan and his conservative allies in the pro-Islamic party are in fact crypto-Jews with secret ties to the conspiratorial forces of "global Zionism."

The book is not a rarity. Copies are on display in bookshops, on Independence Avenue (Istiklal), in the secular part of Istanbul and in Turkey’s international airport. They are displayed alongside a Turkish book with an international reputation by Pamuk Orhan. The publishers claim that over 520,000 copies – an astonishing figure – have been sold since it came out earlier in the year.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion blamed “International Jewry” for destroying both Czarist Russia and communism as well as for the capitalist system. But this is the first time Jews have been blamed of all things for setting up an Islamic state. Most ironically, the book portrays Israel as allied with the Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The author, Ergun Poyraz, is a self-declared Kemalist, i.e. a loyal follower of Kemal Ataturk, who founded modern Turkey in 1923. “Zionism has decided to turn Turkey from its secular path and make it a moderate Islamic republic," Poyraz maintains in all seriousness, offering no support for his arguments, which are not documented and have no factual backing.

A clear case of anti-Semitism does not spring from virgin soil. Last February saw the exposure of a fascist group calling itself the Union of Patriotic Forces, led by retired colonel Karadag Fikri. The group’s secret oath included the words, "I am of pure Turkish blood and there is no Jewish convert in my lineage." Its members promised to "kill or be killed" so that "the Turkish nation will rule the world."

In June, police found 27 hand grenades and sticks of dynamite in a house in Istanbul belonging to one of the group members with shady links to someone in the security forces. The arrest led to other cells and Poyraz, the anti-Semitic author, belonged to one of them. The lawyer hired to defend him was Kamal Kerincsiz, who is suing Nobel Prize-winning author Pamuk for "insulting the Turkish people." The trial of Poyraz and his comrades continues.

This anti-Semitic book recalls a dark chapter in Turkish history. When Ataturk died in 1942, his successor Mustafa Ismet Inonu imposed heavy taxes targeting mainly the Jews. When unable to pay, the Jews were sent to labor camps in Eastern Turkey.

Remember - the secular Turks are considered the "good guys!"

The PalArab welfare state

Even though I have been busy with other stuff, I continue to research for the next installment of my Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs series. In August I found a fantastic article by Martha Gellhorn written in 1961 where she described in detail her visits to many UNRWA refugee camps, and more recently I found a short follow-up she wrote for The Nation after the Six Day War (not available for free.)

In this 1967 article, Gellhorn talks about the mindset of the Palestinian Arabs, in camps and outside of them:

In 1961, I had made a long tour of the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) Palestinian refugee camps m Lebanon. West Jordan and the Gaza Strip, and I had been at this camp near Jericho before. It is disheartening. The world believes, because it is constantly told, that the Palestinian refugees have lived in physical misery for nineteen years. Middle-class refugees will confide, in private, that their poorer compatriots, those who remarn in the camps. owned nothing at home and are no worse off now than before. The majority of refugees, educated, skilled, semi-skilled, live outside the camps and manage like any other Arabs.

The refugees’ misery is in the head. They are sick in their minds from a diet of propaganda, official Arab dogma and homemade fantasy, which they have gobbled for nineteen years. Schooled in self-pity, encouraged to believe they are the worlds unique vlctims of mjustice, they have never been allowed to forget the daydream past or to settle for the real future. Since the third Arab-lsrael war hardly touched them, they learned nothing from it.

...Then, as on remembered cue, we went into the fantasy phase of conversation. It consists of recounting how many acres of fine fields and orchards, what splendid houses, were left behind in Palestine and stolen by the Jews. There is competition in fantasy ownership: if you add up the lost acreage claimed by the inhabitants of any camp you usually arrive at a total larger than the whole recovered arable land of Israel. One very nice man in another camp told me that he had owned 11,000 acres of citrus groves: legend has it that once the Sultan of Turkey owned that much land in Palestine and sold it to the Rothschilds. But I think this ownership fantasy is the real human core of the Palestinian refugee problem, as opposed to the unreal Arab propaganda problem.

Gellhorn uncovered a basic fact that nobody else noticed. UNRWA created a welfare state for Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendants, and while the ambitious and successful ones managed to get out of these camps on their own, the ones who stayed - the lazy ones - are quite happy being on the dole, spinning fantasies about how successful they were in old Palestine while they partake of free food, housing and education.

A hint that this is true can be found, of all places, buried in the "tourism" section of the Palestinian National Information Centre website:

Before its withdrawal from Gaza strip, Israel tried to dismantle some camps and transfer their inhabitants to settlement projects as; Al Sheikh Redwan project. Others tried to do the same procedures before but the refugees insisted to stay in their camps rejecting to leave them without a just political solution to their problem.

This is not quite true - Israel did manage to move some willing Palestinian Arabs out of the camps and into brand new housing projects, as the UN itself admitted (A/43/653 30 September 1988, from Google cache):

11. The Israeli authorities, according to information available to the Commissioner- General, have to date allocated a total of approximately 3,914 plots of land in the Gaza Strip for housing projects. A total of 2,583 plots have been built on by 3,653 refugee families comprising 22,732 persons, buildings on 257 plots are under construction, 937 plots are still vacant and 137 have been built on by non-refugee families. In addition, 3,034 refugee families consisting of 18,823 persons have moved into 2,666 completed housing units consisting of 5,893 rooms.

12. Refugee families are continuing to purchase plots of land at subsidized rates for the construction of houses in the projects developed by the Israeli authorities in the Beit Lahiya, Nazleh and Tel-es-Sultan areas. The construction of multi-story apartment blocks in Sheikh Radwan, sponsored by Israeli authorities and offered for sale upon completion, as reported last year (A/42/507, para. 12), continues.

While some PalArabs took Israel up on this offer, the vast majority did not.

The Gaza City Website adds:

The quarter of Sheikh Radwan was established to the north of the city so as to evacuate Shati Camp and resettle the refugees whose houses were demolished by the Israeli occupation authorities, in the first stage. In the second stage, anyone else who wanted to move from Shati Camp to Sheikh Radwan Quarter had to demolish his house in order to obtain a house there. The goal behind this project was to resettle the refugees and put an end to their case, but the attempt was unsuccessful.

Even Palestinian Arabs admit that Israel wanted to help them move out of camps and into houses, but they will twist the facts to make it sound like this was a bad thing:

Since the Gaza Strip is distinguished by a huge concentration of dispossessed Palestinian refugees maintained in large camps, the Israeli authorities, from the early stage of the 1967 occupation of the area, have devoted major effort to breaking up the camps and relocating their inhabitants elsewhere. The Israeli authorities have applied a clear policy of systematic destruction of refugee shelters and initiation of resettlement schemes, aimed in the short run at making the refugee camps less congested, while in the long run, the policy appears designed to remove these camps from the landscape entirely, since they remain a constant reminder of Palestinian uprootedness and exile. To date (1990), the Israeli strategy of demolishing the entire refugee camp network has failed to achieve its final objective.

In general, the Arab leaders have wanted to keep as many people in the camps as possible because keeping them in misery helps their political goals, and it has been no secret that Arab leaders have vied with themselves to use Palestinian Arabs as pawns for decades. But what was not clear was that a large percentage of Palestinian Arabs are willing to perpetuate the problem of being stuck in camps themselves - because it is a free ride. The fact is that their so-called "leaders" will happily exploit this, as will UNRWA in its attempt for self-preservation.

No better proof is needed than the fact that since Israel left Gaza, the camps are still there, along with the free UNRWA handouts. This benefits everyone: the UNRWA stays embedded in Gaza and feels like it is useful, the PA/Hamas can point to "refugee" camps as examples of Israeli cruelty, and the camp residents themselves get all the UNRWA benefits without having to actually try to work for a living.

Egypt blames IDF for arms smuggling to Gaza

Egypt, worried about potentially losing $200 million in US aid this year because of its human rights record, has written a document for Congress claiming that most arms smuggling to Gaza is done by Israeli soldiers:

An Egyptian document distributed in Congress asserts that Israeli soldiers cooperate with smugglers in allowing arms and military equipment into the Gaza Strip. ...

The Egyptian document was circulated among congressmen by a group of Egyptian generals visiting Washington for meetings. The document was also given to legislators serving in the House Appropriations Committee. Representative Nita Lowey (D-NY), who chairs the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee was the driving force behind a freezing of $200 million worth of American aid to Egypt for reasons that included Cairo's refusal to act more forcefully to prevent smuggling. The official reason given for freezing the funds is Egypt's human rights record.

During briefings made to congressmen by the Egyptian delegation, it was argued that most of the smugglings into the Gaza Strip are carried out from the sea, not through Egyptian territory. They also maintained that Israeli soldiers collaborate with smugglers and allow them to cross into the strip. The Egyptians are also charging that Israel is exaggerating in its assessment of the amount of smuggling activity.

In the draft of foreign aid appropriations, approved by the House Appropriations Committee chaired by David Obey (D-Wisconsin), and by Congress, $200 million out of a total aid package of $1.7 billion to Egypt are frozen. The draft proposal brought before the Senate does not note the frozen sum. The final version of the appropriations bill on foreign aid will be decided during a conference of both houses. In an effort to affect the result in its favor, Egypt is lobbying hard to convince legislators to adopt the Senate version of the bill.

In the deranged minds of the misozionistic Egyptians, it makes perfect sense for IDF troops who fight daily in Gaza - and sometimes get killed, as one soldier fell yesterday - to facilitate the smuggling of weapons there, just to make Egypt look bad. Lying to Congress is just par for the course.

Hamas/Fatah fighting in Gaza, five dead

Whenever there is a period of relative calm in Gaza, it is always followed by a real explosion. This one was between Hamas and a pro-Fatah family, where they battled overnight using RPGs and other peaceful weapons smuggled in from Egypt, and the death toll has hit 5.

Our 2007 Palestinian Arab self-death count is now at 545.

UPDATE: One of those "mysterious explosions " at a training camp in Gaza, killing a 19-year old. Palestine Press Agency quotes people who think that this man was actually killed during the fighting mentioned above but they try to cover up any of their battlefield losses. 546.

Saudi prince: "Islam guarantees justice for all"

From Arab News:

Crown Prince Sultan said yesterday that the newly issued Judiciary Law and Court of Grievances Law were important turning points in the Kingdom’s judicial history. He said the new laws would ensure justice and protect public rights. Prince Sultan made this statement as he opened an international conference on engineering arbitration organized by the Saudi Council of Engineers. “Islam guarantees justice for all,” the prince said. Eastern Province Gov. Prince Muhammad ibn Fahd and his deputy Prince Jalawi also attended the opening session.

This may be the most unintentionally ironic quote of the decade.

The US State Department 2005 report on human rights in Saudi Arabia found:

• no right to change the government
• infliction of severe pain by judicially sanctioned corporal punishments
• beatings and other abuses
• arbitrary arrest
• incommunicado detention
• denial of fair public trials
• exemption from the rule of law for some individuals and lack of judicial independence
• political prisoners
• infringement of privacy rights
• significant restriction of civil liberties--freedoms of speech and press, assembly, association, and movement
• no religious freedom
• widespread perception of corruption
• lack of government transparency
• legal and societal discrimination against women, religious and other minorities
• strict limitations on worker rights.

The government does not provide legal protection for freedom of religion, and such protection did not exist. Islam is the official religion, and Islamic law as interpreted by the government requires that all citizens be Muslims. Government leaders called for tolerance and moderation, and King Abdullah and other leaders made public pronouncements condemning religious extremism.

...Christians were detained for practicing their religion. For example, the newspaper Al-Jazeerah reported that 40 Pakistani citizens, including one Muslim, were arrested on April 12 after conducting Christian religious services in an apartment in Riyadh.

...Proselytizing by non-Muslims, including the distribution of non‑Islamic religious materials such as Bibles, was illegal. Anyone publicly wearing any kind of religious symbols risked a confrontation with the religious police.

Under the Hanbali interpretation of Shari'a, judges may discount the testimony of persons who are not practicing Muslims or who do not adhere to "correct doctrine".

...There continued to be instances in which mosque speakers prayed for the death of Jews, including from the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina.

...Male citizens have the freedom to travel within the country and abroad; however, the government restricted these rights for women based on its interpretation of Islamic Law. All women in the country were prohibited from driving and were dependent upon men for transportation. Likewise, they must obtain written permission from a male relative or guardian before the authorities allow them to travel abroad.

...Women were not permitted either to vote or to stand for office.

It looks like we need to amend "justice for all" to "justice for all Muslim Sunni religious adult males who don't upset the Muttawa."

Remember the roadmap?

Here are some of the requirements for the Palestinian Arabs under the "roadmap" that are considered way too onerous by them, so much so that they want to skip all of these Phase I steps and go right to the final status negotiations. We've also added a helpful description of why the Roadmap requirements are untenable from the Arab perspective.

At the outset of Phase I:

* Palestinian leadership issues unequivocal statement reiterating Israel's right to exist in peace and security and calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to end armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere. All official Palestinian institutions end incitement against Israel.

We can all understand how this is simply unacceptable. Ending violence and incitement would be antithetical to Palestinian Arab culture and is just a Western attempt to impose colonialist hegemony on the poor, semi-indigenous people.

* Palestinians declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism and undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conduction and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere.

Another insane demand. Planning attacks against Israel helps foster community and unity among the PalArabs and to ask them to stop would be like asking them to stop breathing itself.

* Rebuilt and refocused Palestinian Authority security apparatus begins sustained, targeted, and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. This includes commencing confiscation of illegal weapons and consolidation of security authority, free of association with terror and corruption.

Pure insanity. Expecting some 80,000 police to actually stop terror attacks is clearly untenable when the policemen are the people doing the attacks. One cannot expect the police to arrest each other, as that would negatively affect morale.

* Arab states cut off public and private funding and all other forms of support for groups supporting and engaging in violence and terror.

Clearly the infidel crusaders who drafted this obscene requirement do not understand the Muslim concept of Zaka, where Arab states give millions of dollars of charity towards Hamas and other charitable organizations dedicated to defending poor Palestinian Arabs from aggression by purchasing weapons and explosives. This is a religious and moral obligation!

One can now easily understand why Palestinian Arabs do not want to agree to any sort of preconditions to getting 100% of their demands met. It is obvious that these conditions are way beyond their capability - the roadmap was drafted back in 2003 and they have still not begun most of the Phase 1 requirements.

The fundamental problem is that the roadmap expects the PalArabs to act like human beings who actually respect life, and that is really a deal-breaker for them.

The West Bank economy is booming - for weapons

From the peaceful, moderate West Bank:

Two years ago, an M16 automatic rifle could fetch $5,400 or more in the Palestinian West Bank. Now buyers at Hebron's clandestine gun market are asked to pay more than double.

Four months after Islamist Hamas routed secular Fatah in the Gaza Strip, fears that clashes between the Palestinian rivals could erupt in the West Bank and uncertainty ahead of a U.S.-led peace conference are fueling a scramble for guns.

Dealers at the gun market in Hebron, the West Bank's most populous city, say weapons sales have jumped by up to 70 percent since Hamas took control of Gaza, while buoyant demand and supply bottlenecks due to tighter security have inflated prices.

In the northern West Bank city of Jenin, every bullet for an AK-47 rifle costs 35 Israeli shekels, or more than $8. In Hamas-controlled Gaza, an AK-47 bullet goes for 4-6 Israeli shekels, $1-1.50.

Militants from both Hamas and Fatah, and the powerful family clans who are often called in to deal with West Bank crime or land disputes, are driving the market, according to gun dealers and senior Palestinian security sources.

But ordinary West Bankers, too, are taking no risks.

"I don't feel safe anymore," said 28-year-old Abo Abdo, who sold his car this month to buy a rifle to protect his wife and two children. "Everyone is buying guns."
Since the Gaza takeover, Western powers have started pumping cash into the West Bank in an attempt to bolster Abbas and further isolate Hamas in Gaza, and are training police and security forces loyal to the Fatah-backed administration.

But despite the drive to support him, many Palestinians doubt Abbas has the clout to keep the peace.

"We are facing a very grave situation," a Palestinian security source said. "People distrust the Palestinian police. They are buying guns to defend themselves."

Hebron restaurant owner Salam Shabanah is a case in point. He wants guns to protect his property, but says the scramble by militants and family clans for guns is inflating prices to the point he can barely afford them.

"The money I am saving is not enough to buy the guns I need," he said.

The Palestinian Authority, with tens of thousands of "security forces," cannot be trusted to keep the basic minimu standards of public safety. Hundreds of millions of dollars are going towards this sham of a government which is utterly incompetent.

The West trusts the PA far more than its own people do.

It goes beyond the immediate security problem - the entire Palestinian Arab culture is conditioned to look at violence as the solution to all problems. The thought process that a man needs to sell his car to buy a rifle is bad enough, but even worse is the idea that his owning a single rifle will actually protect him from the roving gangs in the streets with their RPGs and machine guns. This is the PalArab culture - glorifying violence - and since it was so successful at making heroes out of terrorists it is natural that the same mindset would spill over into intra-Arab relations.

The PA owns the media. It has had since at least Oslo to turn around this mentality from terror to co-existence, from violence to peace - but instead it has done the opposite. An entire new generation has been raised to romanticize death and terror.

It is difficult to imagine a group of people, and a leadership, that are less qualified to run their own affairs than the Palestinian Arabs and the PA.