Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he authorized the shipment of semi-automatic rifles to Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA), "because we are running out of time and we need to help Abu Mazen," referring to Abbas by his terrorist nickname. The government completed the shipment of weapons from Jordan, half of them going to PA headquarters in Ramallah and half to Gaza, where Abbas also has an office. The weapons were transferred after the Supreme Court denied a petition against the move arguing it endangered Israel's security. A large number of weapons were given by Israel to the Palestinian Authority (PA) after the Oslo accords despite warnings they would be used against Israel in terrorist attacks. The government said that this time around it will be different because the weapons are for Abbas' own personal guard, which includes more than 2,500 elite soldiers who are considered the best in the PA security force.



--The Israeli government, through the IDF, transferred 1,050 Kalachnikov rifles and one million bullets to the Palestinian Authority as a gift to the PA from the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. The weapons transfer is apparently meant to prop up the militia controlled by PA leader Mahmud Abbas; however, IDF sources report that the low-level war waged between Fatah and Hamas in the PA indicates that the weapons may not stay in the hands of Abbas-controlled gunmen.