UN to train Pali militia

The Telegraph reports that the UN have begun training Palestinian "militia" with a former Royal Marine leading the project.

A former Royal Marine is leading a highly sensitive United Nations operation to train the Palestinian Presidential Guard on a mission that has raised concerns about the impartiality of the UN.

Concerns about UN impartiality? Are they actually starting to admit that the UN is taking sides between Palestine and Israel? No, of course not. The concerns are about the UN's impartiality between the terrorists of Fatah and the terrorists of Hamas. It appears the "Presidential Guard" is run by Fatah.

But with Fatah clashing regularly with Hamas gunmen in Gaza, there are concerns that the mission will be construed as favouring one side in a nascent civil war.

"The UN is meant to be totally impartial, above party politics and factional fighting, so to be seen to be helping just the Presidential Guard, which is connected to Fatah, raises very real risks," one UN field officer not involved with the Karni Project said yesterday.

The Karni Project was born out of the worsening economic situation in Gaza following the withdrawal of Israeli settlers and troops in the summer of 2005.

Odd that. Israel pulls out of Gaza - which is something I thought the Palestinians wanted - and this is followed by an economic collapse. Those Israelis are so evil! Even so, I'm finding it hard to understand how training a rabble to fight better improves the economics of Gaza.

Their departure had promised an economic boom led by the export of high-value agricultural products such as cut flowers and cherry tomatoes that would be grown by Palestinian farmers in hothouses vacated by the Israelis.

And which had been built and paid for by the Israelis and which the Palestinians got for nothing.

But the export project collapsed when Israel repeatedly closed the Karni Crossing, the only route for exports, for fear of attack by militants.

S'funny, but I thought the export project collapsed because the Palestinians looted, ransacked and demolished the hothouses and then used them to dig tunnels into Israel to launch their murderous attacks - which they never seem to run out of cash for. Silly me, it appears the export project collapsed because of those evil Israelis shutting the crossing over some silly "fear" of attack. As if that was going to happen.

The worse thing about this report is that it comes from The Telegraph. I would expect it from the BBC or Grauniad, but I thought The Telegraph would do better. It looks like the anti-Israel message has finally filtered through to them to.