The well-known Palestinian pollster, Dr. Khalil Shikaki, checked and found out that 80% of the Palestinians in Judea & Samaria support Hamas and the October 7 massacre it committed. Figures within the security establishment who found these results difficult to believe decided to commission their own poll. And surprise, surprise, the results were identical. Shikaki had not made any of this up. He was simply mirroring the current reality of the situation on the Palestinian street; the same one from which the Americans insist on creating a new Palestinian Authority, to be followed by a Palestinian state. US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has reiterated this point on numerous occasions, including during his last visit here.
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The position of the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria was also examined: and lo and behold, only a tiny fragment of a percent there actually supports Jewish terrorism. But for the US, in an extreme display of a total loss of proportion, there is nothing more urgent than to impose sanctions on four Jews, who are alleged to have attacked Palestinians, even though Washington is fully aware that Israel, as a law-abiding state, deals with them or those similar to them, not only according to any applicable law, but with extreme severity.
It is this same line of thinking that led the Americans to demanding and obtaining an Israeli commitment, that the thousands of M16 assault rifles that have been purchased from manufacturers in the US, will not be handed over to the rapid response squads in the settlements. The reason for this: the concern that these weapons, whose function is to protect the Jewish residents, might end up being used to attack Palestinians.
And these are no more than the patent symptoms of a deep-rooted obsession: the US knows full well that it is the Jewish residents who are under threat, and that the rapid response squads have a purely defensive function. It also knows that the chance of the rapid response squad members actually going and attacking Palestinians is next to nonexistent.
The Americans are also distinctly familiar with the Palestinian side, whom which only a few months ago, at their request, Israel supplied with armored cars and machine guns. They know that the members of the PASF (Palestinian Authority Security Forces) are heavily involved in acts of terrorism. The incident at the weekend involving a Palestinian officer firing on an IDF soldier near the community of Shavei Shomron, and the recent shooting at Kibbutz Meirav on the Gilboa mountain range, are mere symptoms of this.
The US is also either turning a blind eye to or ignoring the worrying signs of growing proximity between the PA and Hamas, the connecting link between them being Fatah – the beating heart of the PA. The Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades operate in joint cells together with terrorists from Hamas and the PIJ. Both the IDF and Israel's Security Agency, better known as Shin Bet, have come face to face with this phenomenon on numerous occasions over the course of the last year.
Urban warfare training for policemen?
The local Fatah branch secretaries, who are hierarchically subordinate to Mahmoud Abbas, are well known to the Biden administration along with their various outbursts in support of terrorism. Whether this involves Muhammad al-Masri, who praises the murderer of the seven Israelis in the north Jerusalem suburb of Neve Yaakov, in an attack on a Friday night just one year ago, or the senior Fatah official, Abbas Zaki, who openly talks of the cooperation between Fatah and Hamas and who has said "As long as Mohammed Deif is able to walk about, our situation is good."
Fatah only recently published a mourning notice in memory of three young men – "heroic shahids" from the village of Idna near Hebron, members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades – who were killed while trying to infiltrate and attack the nearby Jewish community of Adura. The 'Brigades' also published Hamas posters, to which they added their own logo. The posters (which were uploaded and presented on the website of MEMRI or Middle East Media Research Institute) sought to recruit the people in the West Bank to the "Al-Aqsa Flood" (the name given to the October 7 massacre by Hamas) and to attack Jewish communities throughout Judea & Samaria – those selfsame settlements from whose rapid response squads, the Americans wish to deny the supply of M16 rifles.
If I were an American citizen, whose taxpayer funds are paid to the PA, I would ask the US authorities to conduct an in-depth investigation into why the PA "police officers" are taking part in rigorous urban warfare training, along with parachute training in Algeria and South Africa, while other Palestinians are attending para-gliding courses in Iraq. Why is it that figures and entities that are affiliated and identified with the PA (including educational institutions) laud, support or actually carry out acts of terrorism?
Such an investigation is not being carried out apparently as it would interfere with the realization of the overarching objective: a Palestinian state to be established in the heart of Israel. The half a million Jews who live in Judea & Samaria are also an obstacle to the implementation of this goal; therefore, their rights and their security are considered to be of less or even 'second-class' importance by Washington.
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