A Gusher of Illegal Weapons

BOSTON —  What do the salt waters of the Dead Sea, tunnels under the Gaza Strip and stolen cars from Israel have in common? They are all major smuggling routes for bringing thousands of illegal weapons to the Palestinian-controlled West Bank and Gaza Strip. The smuggled arms threaten to undermine progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks as well as the longer-term stability of Palestinian society.

As set out in recent U.S. proposals for jump-starting the stalled peace talks, Israel’s future land transfers of West Bank territory are predicated, in part, on the success of the Palestinian Authority’s program of collecting and disposing of illegal weapons. Given that both Israeli and Palestinian sources estimate there could be as many as 10,000 to 15,000 illegal weapons in the territories, this will be a formidable task. What makes it even more problematic is that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are themselves responsible for some, if not much, of this illegal trade in weaponry.

In 1995, the Oslo accords called for a Palestinian police force of 30,000, armed with 15,000 rifles and pistols, and a few hundred heavy machine guns. Yet, independent Palestinian and Israeli sources put the number of security personnel at 40,000, and the number of weapons in Palestinian hands at between 30,000 and 40,000, including small numbers of antitank and antiaircraft missiles.

Recent interviews with Palestinian officials and journalists, as well as with Israeli army commanders in Hebron and Gaza, paint a picture of widespread smuggling of a variety of small arms and light weapons into the Gaza Strip and West Bank from Jordan, Egypt and from Israel itself. In the past several years, thousands of weapons have been smuggled across the Dead Sea and Jordan River, or carried in tunnels under the Sinai Desert, into the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. They also are transported in stolen cars by joint Israeli-Palestinian car-theft rings across the Green Line separating Israel from the West Bank. Consisting mainly of AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifles originating in Lebanon, Egypt and the Sudan, these black-market weapons include American M-16 automatic rifles and Israeli Galil assault rifles and Uzi submachine guns stolen in Israel or transported from South America and South Africa.

The market for such weapons is so lucrative that assault rifles like the AK-47 and the M-16 reportedly fetch as much as $2,000 to $3,000 each. In other parts of the world, such as South Asia or southern Africa, where vast quantities of weapons are left over from civil wars, an AK-47 can cost as little as $20.

Despite the profits to be made in weapons smuggling, however, the main motivations for acquiring small arms and light weapons are political. The Palestinian Authority reportedly has bought or confiscated hundreds of weapons to buttress its police and security forces, possibly in anticipation of a meltdown in peace talks. Unlike Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which rely on explosives and have little need for large arsenals of light weapons, Arafat and his top commanders want as well-equipped and well-trained a security force as possible for both domestic and external reasons.

Within the separate Palestinian police and security forces, moreover, individual commanders and officials are arming themselves and their supporters in advance of the day when Arafat is gone and there is a political struggle for control of Palestine. There are currently 12 different Palestinian police and security services, which Arafat plays off one against the other. The two commanders of the most feared force, the Palestinian Preventive Security--Col. Jibril Rajoub in the West Bank and Col. Mohammed Dahlan in Gaza--are well-positioned for any post-Arafat succession struggle.

Finally, traditional cultural biases for possessing weapons are reasserting themselves in Palestinian society. Evidence of a growing gun culture in the West Bank and Gaza Strip can be seen in cities like Ramallah, where restaurateurs openly wear pistols while serving customers, in villages near Jenin, where volleys of shots are fired during wedding ceremonies, and in pastures near Hebron, where Palestinian shepherds carry firearms to protect their flocks.

In the short term, the influx of weapons is stoking violence between Palestinians and the heavily armed population of Jewish settlers living in their midst. Numerous drive-by shootings and random firefights have broken out between Palestinians and settlers. The disputes often concern land rather than national politics.

In the longer term, the implications of heavily armed political factions within Palestinian society for the development of Palestinian democracy are disturbing. For the moment, Arafat is able to control political infighting, but the Palestinian leader is nearing 70 and in poor health.

If Arafat doesn’t move more aggressively to stop the flow of illegal weapons, and if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to budge from his insistence that the smuggling end, or slow down, the prospects for peace will suffer accordingly.*