The Palestinian Authority security force trained by U.S. military envoy Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton makes its debut this weekend in the terrorist hotbed of Shechem. The PA force was trained by Dayton and armed with American equipment.
Dayton has been supervising their training at an American-funded base in Jericho, with a gift of arms purchased for the new police officers by the Bush administration.
The deployment is considered a test case for the PA to prove its ability to maintain law and order in the territories under its control.
Success would allow PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas to demand that Israel withdraw from other Arab cities and remove security roadblocks which have been instrumental in stopping suicide bombers and other terrorists from entering the heart of Israel.
While the new Fatah-controlled force is being deployed in Samaria, however, its Gaza counterpart has reported to have defected to the Al Qaeda international terrorist organization. According to Hamas sources quoted in a report by the Jerusalem Post, scores of Fatah members who formerly served as PA security officers in Gaza have abandoned their posts and joined the Al Qaeda-affiliated Army of Islam.
The terrorist cell is headed by former PA Preventive Security Service officer Abu Muhammad al-Ansari, also known as Mumtaz Dughmush.
The Dughmush clan and Army of Islam were responsible for the kidnap in March of British Broadcasting Corporation journalist Alan Johnston, who was released in July after four months of captivity. The Scottish national, who was the only full-time foreign journalist who remained in Gaza this year, told BBC Radio after his release that he had had enough of the region.
"I was there for three years, and for four months as a prisoner. Enough for a while," he said.
Another group of Fatah terrorists, the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, claimed responsibility for a barrage of rocket attacks this week on the western Negev, including an intense Kassam rocket attack on the western Negev Thursday. Three of the missiles exploded in the city of Sderot but injured no one. The other six rockets landed in open fields outside the city.
"We don't know what is happening in the Gaza Strip," said a senior Fatah official in Ramallah. "Ever since the Hamas coup last June, we have no idea what's happening on the ground."