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August 13, 2004/Av 26 5763, Vol. 55, No. 47
Opponents see Oslo accords repeat
DAN BARON
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - The rallying cry of Israeli oppo-nents to the Oslo accords - "Don't give the Palestinians guns!" - is being sounded again, and this time against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
This time, though, it's not a question of giving Palestinian Authority policemen guns, but of allowing them to carry pistols they already have.
Acceding to a request by the Palestinian Authority, which says it can't get a handle on growing chaos in Palestinian areas unless its security forces are strengthened, the Sharon government last week agreed in principle to allow armed patrols by Palestinian police.
Sharon said Aug. 8 the decision was subject to Cabinet approval, but few among Israel's top brass expected a veto.
However, on Aug. 10, Israel backed away from the plan as military sources said any security coordination would be carried out on a local level - between Israeli and Pale-stinian military commanders in each city - rather than between statesmen.
But the public outcry is seen as the real reason the move is being reconsidered.
The Defense Ministry decision drew flak from right wingers and others for whom it recalled the creation, under the 1993 Oslo accord, of armed P.A. security forces. Many of these officers ended up turning their guns on Israelis, even joining forces with Palestinian terrorist groups.
"It is inconceivable to permit the Palestinians to carry weapons, even pistols, because the authority and even the police are fully involved in, initiate, carry out and abet Palestinian terror," Welfare Minister Zevulun Orlev of the National Religious Party said at the Aug. 8 Cabinet meeting.
P.A. police in most places have been prohibited from carrying their weapons due to an Israeli decision taken during the intifada.
The decision to encourage renewed self-policing by the P.A. flowed from a declaration by Israel's military intelli-gence chief, Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash, last week that terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza was a "bottomless barrel."
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