TEL AVIV – The sons of a top Palestinian police officer have been arrested by the Israeli army in the West Bank, the Palestinian media reported on Sunday.
The two sons of Jihad Messeimi, the deputy Palestinian police commissioner in the West Bank, have reportedly been detained for possession of an M16 rifle.
As Breitbart Jerusalem recently reported, young Palestinians, especially Fatah loyalists, increasingly defy their movement’s understandings with Israel and accumulate weapons, leading the Israel Defense Forces to tighten their control over arms proliferation in the West Bank.
Sunday’s arrest came in the wake of a series of incidents in the West Bank where gunmen clashed with Palestinian Authority forces who tried to search refugee camps for illegal weapons.
The resistance mounted by hundreds of militants prevented the PA from collecting weapons in the Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, and Jerusalem areas.
Meanwhile, Hamas seems to have has stepped up its armament efforts in the West Bank, despite an ongoing clampdown by the IDF and Shin Bet security services as well as Palestinian forces.
A Palestinian security source told Breitbart Jerusalem that PA forces arrested a Hamas military operative after four M16 rifles, a number of pistols, and a large amount of bullets were found in his possession. It is unclear whether the detainee planned attacks against Israelis.
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