This is what became of the “amnesty” deal that Israel made with West Bank terrorists: Al Aqsa militants break out of West Bank prison.

“Break out?” Apparently, they walked out, and no one tried very hard to stop them.

NABLUS, West Bank (AFP) - Twelve Palestinian militants escaped from a Palestinian-run prison in the northern West Bank city of Nablus overnight, Palestinian security officials said on Saturday.

The detainees, members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed group loosely tied to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party, were wanted by the Israeli army, the officials said. They had been detained in the Jneid prison under a July 2007 agreement with Israel that allows militants to surrender their weapons and serve a three-month period of detention in exchange for amnesty.

“We left the prison because of the aggression on the part of masked members of the national security forces against the detainees. There were scuffles and then we left,” one of the detainees, Mahdi Abu Ghazaleh, told AFP.

This is a good demonstration of the utter contempt Palestinians have for an international community that never holds them to account for anything: they don’t even try to come up with a good story. Because they know they don’t need to.

The two-faced, fake “moderate,” terror-supporting leader of Fatah (the “political wing” of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades) is, in the words of al-Reuters, “demanding peace.”

The propaganda is shameless, and not just on Abbas’ part. Reuters is openly shilling for this rotten creature.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on Saturday for talks with Israel despite a surge of violence and said that a just peace was his people’s goal.

“We condemn all the attacks, we demand peace and we are determined to make peace, and there is no other path but the path of peace based on international justice,” Abbas told a rally at his headquarters.

UPDATE at 3/9/08 10:10:38 am:

And remember, this is the same duplicitous liar who said recently that he was proud of the Palestinians’ past terrorism, and wouldn’t rule out using terrorism in the future. In an Arabic newspaper, where he thought the infidels wouldn’t see it.

The Palestinian Maan News Agency is reporting that responsibility for the suicide bombing this morning in Dimona is being claimed by several terror groups—including the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the so-called “armed wing” of so-called “moderate” Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party.

You know. Israel’s so-called “partner in peace.”

Three groups, including Fatah’s armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s (PFLP) armed wing, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, and a new group calling themselves the United Resistance Brigades, claimed joint responsibility for the attack.

An Al-Aqsa Brigades spokesperson told Ma’an that a bomber blew himself up before a group of fighters clashed with Israeli security in the area.

He also announced that two fighters have been killed, confirming that they came from the Gaza Strip. The spokesperson denied Israeli reports that the bombers came through the Sinai Peninsula.

According to the spokesperson, the operation was called “the Promise of Those True to Their Words.” He said that the operation came in retaliation for the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip.

NBC Tel Aviv bureau chief Martin Fletcher has gone so thoroughly native in the West Bank that he’s turning in pieces like this one—showing the “human side” of a family of brutal terrorist murderers: One man’s terrorist, another’s freedom fighter.

NABLUS, West Bank – It is hard for me to describe Ahmed Sanakreh as a terrorist, although I know it’s true. Hard, because I got to know him and his family quite well, and when you understand people, it’s hard to hate them: Twenty-year-old Ahmed, baby-faced with black hair sticking up in gelled spikes, and a passion for his Nokia 90 cell phone; and his elder brother, Alaa, the intense, hollow-cheeked leader of the Palestinian al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus. They are the hard core of the hard core.

Although Alaa was the leader, Ahmed was the one Israel most wanted dead. I often asked Alaa why his younger brother had so many bodyguards, and Alaa would only smile mysteriously. But one day he confirmed Israel’s claims: that Ahmed blew up an Israeli officer, and was the bomb-maker behind other suicide bombers.

Alaa, Ahmed and their friend Nasser abu Aziz were my de facto guides to the Palestinian side of the second Intifada (uprising). They were terrorists to the Israelis, freedom fighters to their neighbors, and sources to me.

Guardian “reporter” Clancy Chassay (for whom the term “weenie” was invented) goes along on a field trip with the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades as they fire rockets into Israel, attempting to commit mass murder. Disgusting beyond belief: Video: Inside Gaza - ‘Resistance is our strategy’.

Also note that the degenerate murderers are now using Google Earth to aid in their targeting.

At least the Associated Press isn’t trying to tell us it’s a “toy gun” this time.

A Palestinian girl holds a weapon next to militants from Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a militia linked to the ruling Fatah movement, during a rally in the Old City of the West Bank city of Nablus, Friday, Aug. 31, 2007. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

They were probably trying to kidnap more Israelis, or at least kill as many as possible: Israel thwarts Palestinian infiltration.

JERUSALEM - Under the cover of fog, two heavily armed Palestinian militants used a rope and ladder to scale a border wall Saturday and enter Israel from Gaza, attacking an army base with explosives and gunfire before they were tracked down and killed by Israeli troops. …

In Saturday’s early morning raid, the militants took advantage of darkness and weather conditions to slip into Israel near the Erez border crossing, said Col. Moni Katz, an Israeli commander. “There was thick fog that enabled us to see only a few meters (yards) ahead,” he said. Katz said four militants approached the wall, but only two of them climbed into Israel. Soldiers showed reporters the rope the attackers used to slide down.

Maj. Tal Lev-Ram, an Israeli army spokesman, said there was “an intention to carry out a large attack in Israeli territory.” He said the militants were armed “head to toe” with grenades and automatic weapons. …

In Gaza, three militant groups — the Popular Resistance Committees, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades — claimed responsibility in a joint statement.

An Al Aqsa official confirmed the fog had created a “golden opportunity,” adding the border farming community of Netiv Haasara was the target. He was not authorized to talk to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The groups also issued a farewell video made by the two dead attackers in which the men, wearing green and brown camouflage, read verses from the Quran and said the attack was for the sake of God and the Palestinian homeland. The men brandished automatic weapons, and flags of the three groups were in the background.

It’s another terrorist charm offensive, brought to you by the Associated Press; Snapped Shot collects all the grotesque photos of smiling Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades members that are appearing on the wires: Humanizing the Unhuman.

Palestinian Zakareia Zubaidi, a local leader of Al-Aqsa martyrs brigades, poses for a picture in an undisclosed location in the West Bank town of Jenin Saturday July, 14 2007. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

What the Associated Press isn’t telling you about Zubaidi: those little black specks all over his face are powder burns from close proximity to explosions. Let’s give them a state!

UPDATE at 7/16/07 9:38:26 am:

When he retires from the mass murder and suicide bombing business, Zubeidi plans to go into theater.

Zubeidi, 31, who has been pursued by Israel’s security forces since 2002 and who now says he wants to dedicate his life to developing theatre in Jenin, was adamant that he had not surrendered.

The madness is going ahead, as Ehud Olmert issues another hallucinatory statement about “strengthening the moderates:” Israeli Cabinet OKs prisoner release.

JERUSALEM - The Israeli Cabinet on Sunday approved the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners, officials said, in the government’s latest gesture of support for moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his struggle against the Hamas militant group.

However, the officials said Israel had still not finalized the list of prisoners to be freed or the timing of the release. Palestinian officials said they were disappointed Israel was not coordinating the release with them.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to the prisoner release at a June 25 summit with Abbas as part of Israel’s strategy of bolstering the Palestinian leader following Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip last month.

Israel also has transferred more than $100 million in frozen tax funds to Abbas, and pledged to ease travel restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank.

“We want to use every means that can strengthen the moderates within the Palestinian Authority, to encourage them to take the path that we believe can create conditions for the start of meaningful discussions,” Olmert said in a televised statement at the opening of the meeting.

At this point in history, after Oslo, after countless suicide bombings and murders perpetrated by the very people Olmert is lauding as “moderates,” there’s absolutely no excuse for this kind of delusional thinking. The inmates truly are running the asylum.

Oh yeah. This will work. US wants to train Fatah in West Bank.

US State Department officials, looking to shift US Security Coordinator Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton’s work with Palestinian forces to the West Bank, have begun holding discussions with Congressional staff on how to restructure an $86 million funding program previously allocated to bolster Dayton’s Gaza activities.

The earlier package was whittled down to $59m. before Congress signed off on it and would have gone largely to non-lethal equipment and training for the presidential guard to secure the Gaza border crossings and help Fatah leaders and institutions there. Now the US, caught off-guard by Hamas’s speedy defeat of Fatah forces in Gaza, is scrambling for new ways to strengthen Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and isolate Hamas in Gaza.

“They have a great appetite to work with Abbas and [PA Prime Minister Salaam] Fayad,” said one Democratic Congressional staffer. “But I don’t think they’ve quite figured out… what that cooperation looks like, where that money ought to go.”

“They don’t have good answers right now,” he said.

Of course, there are always cynical, xenophobic, reactionary naysayers, even to the most brilliant State Department ideas.

“I see no evidence that [Dayton’s mission] succeeded,” said Shoshana Bryen of the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs of efforts to reform the Palestinian security forces and secure the Gaza crossings.

“They simply didn’t fight, they abandoned their posts,” she said of the Fatah forces outgunned but not outnumbered by Hamas. She said, though, that the failure was larger than the battle in Gaza and stemmed from flawed American expectations that any US security coordinator could lead Fatah security services in a direction amenable to US and Israeli interests rather than their own.

Many Israeli security officials said they have been turned off from the whole Dayton enterprise since Fatah forces fell to Hamas, saying that it’s now hard to take his efforts at security reform seriously and interpreting the situation as an example of American inability to grasp the realities of the Middle East.