The Palestinian Authority (PA) Security Forces have been revealed to be actively policing in Arab suburbs of the capital city of Jerusalem, in a region classified as Area B in the 1994 Oslo Accords.
The Palestinian Wafa news agency reported on Thursday that the PA's Al-Quds (Jerusalem) suburb police were active in Eizariya, a neighborhood located east of Abu Dis between Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim.
In the suburb, the PA force seized illegal drugs, consisting of 55 pills of Ecstasy (MDMA) as well as other drugs including crystal meth and hashish.
The myriad of regions in Judea and Samaria classified as Area B are designated as being under the civilian administration of the PA, but under the full security control of Israel as per the Oslo Accords.
According to the agreement PA forces can only function in the regions after receiving approval from Israel, and are forbidden from carrying weapons in the area.
News of PA Security Forces being active in the suburbs of the capital raises particular concerns given the large precedent of PA policemen conducting terrorist attacks, aside from the obvious breach of Israel's authority.
In late January Amjad Abu-Omar, a member of the PA Security Forces and formerly the personal bodyguard to the PA's Attorney General, shot three IDF soldiers near Bet El north of Jerusalem, seriously wounding two and lightly wounding the third. Hamas responded by calling on more PA policemen to conduct attacks.
The PA and its Security Forces were created in the Oslo Accords in which Israel supplied them with weapons. The Accords led to the 2000 Second Intifada or Oslo War, in which over 1,000 Israelis were murdered; PA officials later bragged that 70% of the attacks were conducted by PA Security Force members.
There have long been concerns raised over the lack of Israeli law enforcement in eastern Jerusalem. It has been shown that Arabs freely breach the expensive security barrier in the east of the city, and in early January hundreds of armed Hamas terrorists fired automatic weapons in the air during a terrorist funeral in the northeastern Shuafat neighborhood.