"Shooting at your brother is forbidden," PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told a rally in Ramallah. "Raising rifles against the occupation is our legitimate right." He also railed against "the sons of Israel...who are corrupting humanity on earth."



The United States has been supplying the Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman's personal militia with weapons to give him a military edge over the rival Hamas militia. Terrorists have vowed that the weapons will be used against Israel, as they were in the 1990s when the Israeli government, headed by then-Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, gave the PA security forces thousands of rifles.



The Jewish State has since allowed other nations to send weapons to the PA, and Israeli intelligence officials have documented their use in attacks against Israel.



But U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, talking to reporters en route to Israel, said this time it will be different.



"This is a train-and-equip program that is going to move over time, so it is not as if you simply arm the Palestinians on Day One and then have no input or control over what happens from then on," she said. "I think as a result you can maintain some control on what is being done."



Referring to the weapons supplied during the Oslo talks and used against Israel, she explained, "It was envisioned that the Palestinian Authority would have security forces. The problem is those security forces broke [up] into essentially personal militias under Arafat. They broke into too many that were often warring with each other."



Secretary Rice added that American military envoys have created "a plan for security forces that can be part of the solution, not part of the problem. And this plan is not just to equip them and train them, [but] it is also to professionalize them, to unify them, to put them under a single command.



"We continue to work on how to help Abu Mazen [Abbas] and how to help the Palestinian people to create governing structures and security forces that can actually secure the Palestinian people."



However, Fatah Force 17 security officer Abu Yousef told WorldNetDaily that other terrorist groups will use the weapons. He added that many of the members of Abbas' personal militia also are members of other terrorist organizations, including Hamas.



"Our organizations are infiltrated [by Hamas]. In the last elections campaign, our Fatah party was astonished at how many of our security members voted for Hamas. We thought our own forces would vote 95 percent vote for us, but it was 70 percent for Fatah and 30 percent for Hamas," Abu Yousef said.



Hamas spokesman Abu Oubaida told WorldNetDaily last week that his terror group will obtain any American weapons transferred to Fatah militias or purchased by Fatah using the incoming $86.4 million in U.S. aid. "I can confirm 100 percent that this money and purchased weapons will find its way to Hamas," said Abu Oubaida.



Secretary Rice nonetheless remained optimistic in her comments to reporters. "The Road Map is a useful document because it does have reciprocal responsibilities," she said. She pointed out that Israel’s implementation of the Road Map has already succeeded in forcing Israel to expel Jewish residents and destroy their communities in the Gaza region. "They are out of Gaza. And so I think we want to look at what is still to be achieved," she said.



Rice did not, however, mention the responsibilities of the PA, which included its promise to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure and cease incitement against Israel.