"Investigators said Jaara got up at 4 a.m. yesterday, prayed at a mosque, picked up 15 pounds of explosives and headed on his deadly mission." - a passage from Uri Dan's report in Friday's (January 30) New York Post.



That a Palestinian policeman could obtain 15 pounds of explosives almost at the spur of the moment speaks volumes of three critical elements of the Palestinians' thinking process (an oxymoron, to be sure): It amounts to a military operation that is probably systematically organized; killing Jews takes priority over feeding their own children; and, at the least, some Palestinian police have warped ideas about law enforcement.



I learned of the bus explosion in Jerusalem that murdered 11 innocent human beings early Thursday morning when checking the Internet. I needed only sketchy details to bring out the tears, a private experience that has become all too familiar during the last 3-and-a-quarter years.



Ali Jaara clearly did not act alone when he destroyed the bus Thursday morning, 50 feet from the official residence of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. After all, how else could he find explosives so quickly?



The 24-year-old Bethlehem police officer wrote in a farewell note that he sought to avenge eight Palestinians killed in fighting with Israeli troops in Gaza the day before.



Consider: This killer was able to move swiftly. He committed these murders one day after the other incident that affected him and he was able to obtain the explosives quickly.



This scenario suggests that he knew where to find the explosives and that he must have been closely associated with the very terrorists he was supposed to help keep in check.



That would mean that the terrorists are so incredibly well-organized that, when they are sufficiently antagonized by an incident, they are ready to act on short notice. Their weapons of choice are ready and their agent ? this time, the Palestinian police officer ? has been selected ahead of time.



Especially galling is the Arabs' sense of priorities. They complain that their people live in squalor, yet they can afford to acquire explosives and other weapons, and organize a virtual army. Do they really care about starving children, even their own?



Ali Jaara is not the first Palestinian police officer to have harmed Israelis. I don't believe he suddenly changed because of the Gaza incident. The fact that he was able to pick up the explosives the day after the fighting makes it obvious that this chain of events was too methodical for Jaara to have abruptly gone crazy over the Gaza incident.



It certainly looks like he was part of a planned,systematic operation, which can respond to such an incident swiftly.



Question is, are all Palestinian police like him or is he a rare exception? The truth is probably somewhere in between, which makes it difficult to trust any of them.