The Wall Street Journal’s Jerusalem correspondent Cam Simpson has been focusing on arms trading around the Middle East in recent weeks and months. He has a story reported out of Gaza City before last week’s flare up and the Hamas takeover in today’s paper that’s worth a read:
Shin Bet, Israel’s state security agency, says about 25,000 assault rifles poured into the strip during 2005 and 2006 alone. The influx is equivalent, per capita, to 135,000 assault rifles entering New York City. Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians crowd into an area about the size of Wichita, Kan.
In addition, thousands of handguns are also entering the territory. Chinese-made semiautomatics are the cheapest and most available, with reproductions of famous American names, such as .45-caliber Colt semiautomatic handguns, starting at about $700. Many of these guns bear the counterfeit stamp “Made in USA” alongside the logo of Norinco, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate with significant interests in arms production.
As new vendors and their wares proliferated, street prices plummeted. A standard Kalashnikov-style assault rifle that sold for about $2,800 in Gaza a little more than two years ago now sells for about $1,400, dealers say. So merchants who once had a lock on this market now smuggle and sell even more weapons to maintain their revenues.
Sudan is flooded with weapons after years of conflict. Even as the United Nations struggles to enforce a 2005 Security Council arms embargo to prevent weapons from flowing into the African country’s Darfur region, large quantities of generally inexpensive guns are coming out of Sudan, according to current and former Israeli intelligence officials and some top arms dealers who say they are trading in these weapons.
A competitor of Mr. Dogmush confirms his trade’s growing competition: Showing off Russian assault rifles and Chinese-made 40mm rocket launchers that entered Gaza through Rafah’s tunnels, he says his margins are so thin that he must now move at least 1,000 pieces of weaponry just to cover his tunneling expenses.
The thirst for weapons is also apparent 30 miles away in the West Bank… The price of decent M-16 has gone from about $5,000 to $11,000 in the West Bank, says Madhi Abu Ghazali, a regional commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the militia of the Fatah movement.
Security forces in Gaza complained that they were far outgunned and did not have adequate supplies of ammunition. A presidential guardsman told me they had several hundred freshly trained recruits ready to help the fight against Hamas but there were not weapons for them. They were frustrated with President Abbas who refused to resort to smuggling weapons in order to keep pace with Hamas.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Naot // Jun 19, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Wondering when the Chinese will be held accountable for their role in the arms trade…
2 A Blog For All // Jun 20, 2007 at 12:42 am
Guernica Redrawn…
Carter is right in one respect; the West shouldn’t be playing favorites. We should be doing absolutely nothing to take sides and to prevent anyone else from taking sides. Let the Palestinians duke it out between themselves with no one else arming the….
3 Solomon2 // Jun 20, 2007 at 1:10 am
A presidential guardsman told me they had several hundred freshly trained recruits ready to help the fight against Hamas but there were not weapons for them.
Egyptian-trained, yes? I hear that whenever the U.S. contracts with the Egyptians to train soldiers the results are terrible because the Egyptian officers supply little ammo and purposely teach their soldiers as little about their weapons and tactics as possible, because they fear the knowledge and ammo will give soldiers too much power.
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