While the palestinians claim they do not have enough flour in Gaza, I am glad to see that not only do they have enough to subside on, but they even have extra for their recreational needs.
White flower (sic.), not explosives was packed in a plastic bottle and thrown towards Israeli soldiers by a 15-year-old Palestinian boy who turned up at the Huwwara checkpoint south of Nablus two weeks ago.
The boy, Ra’fat Obeid from the Askar refugee camp, was arrested by Israeli forces and taken into Israeli custody, and was released to Palestinian Authority (PA) police this week.
Details of the events are murky, and officials have bounced blame between poverty, Israel and internally divisive forces.
Details from Palestinian security sources say the Obeid told police that his friend had convinced him to take the bottles filled with flower to the Huwwara checkpoint and surrender himself to Israeli soldiers.
Sources told Ma’an’s Nablus correspondent that Obeid hoped that after his arrest his family would receive a small monthly sum of money from the Palestinian government in compensation for his loss to the family. The PA has a policy of supporting the families of those arrested by the Israeli army.
Security sources explained that Obeid was handed over to his family after they signed several pledges to Palestinian Security Services ensuring that the boy would not try the stunt again. They added, however, that they suspected there was a third party involved which had provided the boys with the flower-stuffed bottles and advised them on the time and place for the plan’s execution. Such a force, said Palestinian Security, was an attempt to corrupt the children of the area.
In other words, palestinian children are wasting flour – which they claim is in short supply – so they can receive money for being arrested. As Elder of Ziyon notes:
Which means that the world is funding the PA which takes a significant amount of its budget to effectively pay salaries to anyone who gets arrested, from terrorists to kids who want a free education in Israeli prison. (A WashPo article from 2006 says that the amount is $220 a month per prisoner, so families with lots of sons in prison can stand to make a pretty penny.)
Meanwhile, a Ma’an News article without the blaming of Israel is like Spain without the running of the bulls.
For his part, the Palestinian official accused Israeli intelligence agencies as being behind the incident. He said that it was a ploy to have vulnerable children arrested and to plant ideas and strategies into their heads.
