The Palestinian Authority is once again accused of using ambulances to evade IDF security checks - and possibly even for terrorist purposes.
Israeli police arrested a resident of Azariya, an Arab suburb of Jerusalem, on charges that he worked for Force 17 - Arafat's personal guard unit that has been involved in much of the terrorism of the past 3.5 years. He is accused of transporting PA officials - hooked up to infusions and otherwise portraying themselves as emergency medical cases - through IDF checkpoints in his ambulance. The driver would also produce forged medical documents to facilitate their passage.
It is also suspected that weapons and arms were transported in this manner. Maaleh Adumim police have found the storehouse in which commercial vehicles were turned into ambulances. Additional arrests are expected.
In a related item, Israel's Channel 10 television station aired this week footage of armed Arabs in southern Gaza using UNRWA ambulances to flee undercover. The pictures were taken in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City the night an Israeli armed personnel carrier was blown up by Palestinian terrorists; six IDF soldiers were killed in that incident on May 11, and five were killed in a similar incident the next day. The footage clearly shows Palestinian terrorists boarding a UN-marked ambulance and fleeing the scene.
Reporter Yinon Magal stressed that this was not a Red Cross ambulance of the Palestinian Authority, often known to have transported armed terrorists since the outbreak of the hostilities, but rather a supposedly neutral ambulance of the UN.
Israeli police arrested a resident of Azariya, an Arab suburb of Jerusalem, on charges that he worked for Force 17 - Arafat's personal guard unit that has been involved in much of the terrorism of the past 3.5 years. He is accused of transporting PA officials - hooked up to infusions and otherwise portraying themselves as emergency medical cases - through IDF checkpoints in his ambulance. The driver would also produce forged medical documents to facilitate their passage.
It is also suspected that weapons and arms were transported in this manner. Maaleh Adumim police have found the storehouse in which commercial vehicles were turned into ambulances. Additional arrests are expected.
In a related item, Israel's Channel 10 television station aired this week footage of armed Arabs in southern Gaza using UNRWA ambulances to flee undercover. The pictures were taken in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City the night an Israeli armed personnel carrier was blown up by Palestinian terrorists; six IDF soldiers were killed in that incident on May 11, and five were killed in a similar incident the next day. The footage clearly shows Palestinian terrorists boarding a UN-marked ambulance and fleeing the scene.
Reporter Yinon Magal stressed that this was not a Red Cross ambulance of the Palestinian Authority, often known to have transported armed terrorists since the outbreak of the hostilities, but rather a supposedly neutral ambulance of the UN.