January 23, 2015
Is the U.S. Helping to Form a New Palestinian Army?
The U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem, which serves as a de-facto embassy to the Palestinian Authority, recently violated a 2011 agreement by firing some of the IDF veterans who guarded the consulate and replacing them with members of the Palestinian police. The incident follows American efforts to beef up Mahmoud Abbas’s security forces, ostensibly to protect his government in the event of a violent confrontation with Hamas. Arming the PA has worked out poorly in the past, and there is little reason, writes Shoshana Bryen, to believe it will work better this time: