"An Israeli security source further confirmed to the Maariv newspaper that “the transfer of nine armored vehicles provided by the Americans to the Palestinian Authority is clearly in Israel’s national security interests.”
What can we conclude? The US and Israel do not object to arming the PA if the weapons are directed against resistance cells in the occupied West Bank. The existence of the Palestinian Authority is necessary for Israel as it can reach places that Israeli special units cannot. The PA is a tool that the Israeli National Security Council (the Cabinet) relies on, which explains why on July 9, 2023, the Cabinet held an emergency meeting to approve urgent assistance to save it.
This assistance relies on and mandates the performance of Mahmoud Abbas’ security apparatus to protect settlers when they wander into the occupied West Bank, to thwart resistance cells from carrying out their operations, and to arrest individuals Israel cannot reach.
To carry out this mission, the PA needs weapons, which the US provides and Israel agrees to lend or transfer, under two conditions:
Restricting their distribution to “some Palestinian security agencies,” whose loyalty to Israel is guaranteed. Using them exclusively for “counterterrorism activities.” The Israeli army made a radio broadcast on September 13, 2023, that the occupation government has agreed to transfer weapons and military equipment to the PA on a number of conditions, as part of a series of steps to support the Palestinian Authority and increase security coordination with it.
The broadcast quoted Israeli security officials as saying: “This step is part of a program of assistance to strengthen the Palestinian Authority, and is conditioned upon two things: demonstrating operational achievements by the Palestinian Authority (especially in Jenin), and the official return of security coordination with Israel.”
According to the settler media, the deal includes armored vehicles and at least 1,500 pieces of weaponry, including M-16 rifles enhanced with laser sights and Kalashnikov rifles.
The PA requested these weapons over a year ago, but Israel rejected the request. The approval has now come following the Aqaba and Sharm el-Sheikh summits, held in February and March respectively, at the request of Washington. The goal of these summits was to develop a comprehensive strategy to “pacify” the resistance in the West Bank.
Why do we care about this news? Israeli and US support for the PA comes in the context of arrangements that the US is making in the Arab world that seek to ensure the “integration between Israel and Arab and Muslim-majority states, as exemplified by the Abraham Accords, other normalization agreements, and the Negev Forum.”
Achieving this goal is impossible without achieving “calm” in the Palestinian territories. This “calm” means implementing all US-Israeli projects to deliver a final blow to the Palestinian cause, by turning the occupied West Bank into “Israeli land” and permanently eliminating the Right of Return.
To ensure this “calm,” Israel and the US must rely on the PA’s security agencies and support them financially and militarily."
Because creating the conditions for war is how the USA destroys nations for decades without getting its hands dirty. If you pump weapons into Palestine, they’re going to end up eventually in the hands of people resisting Israel. That will escalate the conflict to justify Israel cracking down harder and killing a huge number of military-aged males. Given the USA’s history of diffusing youth bulges this way, we should be digging up some demographic info on Palestine to see if there’s a youth bulge.
Edit: Thanks to @cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml and @DeDollarization@lemmygrad.ml for explaining to me that my comment implies that the Palestinians should not use violence to fight for their liberation. This was not my intended meaning. The Palestinians can only free themselves through winning the violent conflict they have been forced into by the USA and Israel.
I was attempting to answer the question in the headline differently than the article in this way - the article says that the USA will arm Palestinians as long as they collaborate with the objectives of repressing Palestinian liberation and organizing. I am raising the additional point that the USA has a history of bringing weapons into a conflict knowing that those weapons will raise the overall level of conflict, not merely the side they support, and they do so usually because they have gamed out the situation and identified how they can benefit from an escalation occurring in the manner and on the timeline that they have the power to influence. Yes, fighting back is necessary, but fighting back must also take into account how and when the opponent expects that fight back to occur because if they have sufficient intelligence and sufficient force they can usually force the next outcome. Does that mean not using the weapons and not fighting? No. But it does mean attempting to identify the strategic landscape to ensure you’re not walking into a trap.
The easy narrative is that the colonizer is dividing and conquering, arming the traitors, and running the standard colonizer playbook. I don’t buy that narrative in 2023. The lessons the colonizers have learned is that these weapons will absolutely fall into the hands of the resistance - it’s one of the key components of the success of asymmetric warfare from the 1950s to today. I think the USA fully expects the weapons to propagate and I don’t think they just believe they can win with overwhelming force (because they’ve lost so many times using that calculus). I think they’re expecting an escalation. And I’m trying to explore why.
The answer according to people in the know is in the article.
Your comment is anti-resistance.
I am curious why my comment is anti-resistance.
The USA has a history of leveraging blowback to advance it’s aims. I don’t think calling that out as a necessary part of analysis is the same as being anti-resistance, but if I am missing something I want to rectify my understanding.
The notion that if Palestinians fight back it will only worsen their situation is a propaganda narrative spread by the Zionist occupation forces and their allies. This is no different than anti-union propaganda telling workers that it is against their interest to unionize because it would put their jobs at risk. It may carry certain risk for individual people but as a class the only way to win is to fight. The only way for Palestine to resist the genocide that is being perpetrated on them is to fight back with any and all weapons at their disposal and without regard for the moralizing and equivocating of western liberals.
It’s a good point and not the intent of my wording. I will go back and edit it to be clear.
Both things, however, can be true. It can both be true that the Palestinians fighting back is the only way to liberate themselves and also that the USA is creating conditions for the Palestinians to fight back in a way that will advance the goals of the regime in Washington. Obviously if the USA was handing weapons directly to the resistance everyone would need to be suspect of the motives. But the USA doesn’t do that much, instead what they do is they bring weapons under a narrative cover that deflects attention from the fact that they fully expect the weapons to end up with the resistance fighters, and they do it to create conditions that they can more fully control. I will never say that the Palestinians should stop fighting for their own good. I will say that they need to be very wary if this article is pointing to a net new or an intensification of weapons transfers in the region because that might be evidence that the USA is banking on the blowback from their actions (as they have in the past) and are prepared to manage the situation to their benefit.
They are not transferring weapons to the resistance, they are giving them to the Palestinian Authority to suppress the resistance. The PA are a tool of the Zionists designed to control the Palestinians.
I gave up. That person is just loud and ignorant and obviously didn’t even bother clicking the linked article.
The implication is that the US is just waiting for Palestinians to fight back so that they can attack. But in reality the occupation has never needed excuses to enact limitless violence against Palestinians. In truth, it is only with guns missiles and ied’s that Palestinians will liberate themselves which is why the genuine forces of solidarity which is Iran, Hezbollah and Syria are doing everything they can to smuggle weapons to the resistance in the West Bank.
Your initial comment aligns perfectly with PA/israel/US propaganda. Do you see?
Edit: I did not downvote.
I do, thank you for the explanation. I agree that the only path for liberation is through winning the conflict. I did not mean to imply that Palestinians should not fight back. I believe the USA has used weapons distribution as a means to worsen situations in North Africa in the past, so while it’s true that they are arming anti-resistance units, my understanding of USA military strategy is that they expect these weapons to migrate into the hands of the resistance eventually. We should be trying to understand why they would be OK with that and what can be done about it. If my thinking is correct, we should see a new narrative emerge in the news cycle at some point in the next 18 months about how the USA needs to increase its presence, support, whatever due to the uptick in violence. This narrative would have already been preplanned, following existing templates, which means the response is already preplanned. So in my head, I’m trying to figure out what the 3rd-order consequence is. If I assume the US is doing this to escalate the situation, then they’re doing it in order to control the timeline of that escalation. If they control the timeline of that escalation, then what’s the move. It feels like pretty decent timing for the USA presidential election. It might be cover for weapons movements into North Africa given the changes going on there. It could be, as you said, just business as usual.
If this article is referring to a standard normal everyday delivery of arms, then it’s likely just as you say - business as usual. If the arms transfer represents a new or intensifying phenomenon, then thinking through the consequences can be useful for anticipating propaganda and developing a counter-narrative more quickly. I’m not in a position to do much more than that, but the BRICS countries would do well to do the analysis to identify potential changes in the region that they may be able to intervene to stop or may be forced to react to.
I understand what you’re trying to say here and it’s solid analysis that would have probably been correct in the past, but i think that it does not fit with the current conditions on the ground today. Such a ploy to try to control the situation by escalating the level of violence makes sense only if the position and the support of the resistance is tenuous while the legitimacy of the occupation and its American ally in the world is strong. I believe that is no longer the case. The axis of resistance is stronger than ever and the occupation regime is experiencing severe internal turmoil as we have seen with the recent waves of protests and infighting among its various factions. All that escalating violence toward the Palestinians would do now is to further galavanize the forces of resistance and their allies. Perhaps the US does not understand this and still thinks along the lines that you outlined, but if this is the case their actions will only end up weakening the imperialist hold over this region and accelerate the demise of the Zionist project.
Or to put it simply i think that the balance of forces is currently is in favor of the resistance and an escalation of the conflict would not benefit the US and its Zionist proxy.
Good analysis, thank you comrade
