Palestinians Have Secret Army with Access to Israeli Arms
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Palestinian fighters have built a “secret army” that has infiltrated into the Zionist regime’s arsenals of arms and ammunition, allowing them to meet their needs with Israeli weapons, reports have suggested.
After the Israeli regime's move to construct the separation wall in the West Bank, the Palestinian fighters invented new methods to take weapons into the occupied territories. Meanwhile, indications are that Palestine’s options for providing and employing the military equipment have not become limited at all.
The Palestinian territories, particularly the Gaza Strip, have been under a full Israeli siege, making it quite impossible for the Palestinians to purchase equipment from abroad. As a result, the Palestinian groups have devised a new method, namely gaining arms from the Zionists.
According to Israeli newspaper Maariv, after the construction of a separation wall between Israel and Egypt, the Palestinian groups have become interested in obtaining weapons from the Israeli military bases.
During the past recent years, the Palestinian groups, particularly their special forces, have begun to utilize the arms and equipment that are also at the Israeli forces’ disposal.
According to reports, the Palestinian groups provide their supply of arms through three main means: purchasing weapons from the arms traffickers in Israel; burglarizing the Zionist regime’s arsenals and arms depots; and collaboration with a series of Israeli military forces who have renounced Zionism.
In fact, a “secret Palestinian army” is currently in charge of obtaining arms from the Israeli arsenals.
On December 16, 2021, the Israeli regime’s Channel 13 reported that more than 100,000 bullets have been stolen from an arsenal of M16 rifles in a military base of the Alexandroni Brigade in northern Palestine. The Israeli police, however, announced that over 150,000 bullets have been stolen.
The experts and a number of Israeli sources believe that the goods stolen from the military depots have been sold to the mafia groups, a term that Israel uses to refer to both the Jewish people using weapons illegally and the Palestinian groups and fighters.
In another report in May 2019, Maariv said 46 M16 rifles had been stolen from a military base in the Western Galilee region in only one month, many of which were never found.
A number of the Palestinian fighters and the perpetrators of a series of recent attacks on Israelis have used the same firearm in their operations.
The robberies from the Israeli regime’s arsenals of weapons are not confined to the light and individual weapons. In 2012, Haaretz newspaper reported that the items stolen from the Israeli military bases, worth $14 million, included even the Gill anti-tank guided missiles.
Pointing to a remarkable rise in the burglaries from the Israeli military bases, the report added that the robbers have on most occasions broken into the security easily and have stolen military equipment, bullets, rifles, generators and even military vehicles.
According to an unnamed Israeli officer at the logistics directorate, the robberies are mostly committed in cooperation with the Israeli military forces serving in those bases.
In December 2020, Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported that a large number of personnel of the 13th Battalion of the Golani Brigade at the Kisonim settlement had been expelled after a considerable amount of drugs was seized from them.
According to Israeli sources, drug addiction is on the rise among the military forces. After the disclosure of thefts of weapons from the Israeli military bases in 2009, drug addiction has turned out to be a main factor behind the arms trade between the Israeli officers and the Palestinians.
According to Haaretz, 122 and 116 rifles have been stolen from the Israeli bases in 2009 and 2012, respectively.
Based on the statistics from the Zionist media, 675 shootings have taken place in the Palestinian territories in 2021 alone, in 463 of which the weapons stolen from the Israeli army have been utilized.
The Arab48 website said in a report that nearly 70 percent of the shootings in Israel have occurred with the stolen Israeli guns, while the robberies of rifles from the Israeli military bases have increased by 22 percent every year since 2013.
The stealing of the Israeli arms that end up in the hands of Palestinian groups has now become a main concern for the Zionist regime’s security systems.
The Israeli police sources have told Yedioth Ahronoth that they are deeply concerned that the rifles and ammunition stolen from Israel in the past may fall into the hands of the Palestinian groups.
