Dropping Boxes Of Ammo And Small Arms

I had been thinking of doing a piece on the small arms trade in Gaza when commenter mdmhvonpa nudged me along with this comment to Vengeance:

Hatfields and McCoys ... swell. Perhaps we should just start dropping boxes of ammo and small arms into 'Palestine' to hurry this up.

We have a better deal going than that. They are paying for the stuff.

RAMALLAH - A loud siren wails in the main street of Ramallah as the ambulance races to the nearby hospital. The casualty inside the vehicle is a teenage Palestinian who received two bullets to his chest during clashes among rival armed militia.

In a separate incident, a number of disgruntled armed young men showered the Daraghmeh store with scores of bullets in Ramallah’s commercial district. The fire engulfed the store’s interior, resulting in losses totaling USD 450,000.

At the entrance of a well-established restaurant in the city, a big sign reads “No hand guns allowed on the premises.”

As ammunition is readily available through black market middlemen, the sounds of bullets are heard frequently across the city. In a Pavlovian response, the citizens of Ramallah run into hiding as soon as the bullets start flying, their daily life controlled by the will of the gunmen.

So what is the market like?

“In the West Bank, the weapon pipeline is the Israeli gangs. They sell their weapons to Palestinian counterparts, who in return sell them to armed groups and private customers,” the officer says.

The Israeli army spokesman replies that “this accusation is baseless.” Israel has expressed its concerns over the issue of weapon smuggling several times during meetings with Palestinian officials, he adds.

Selling weapons in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is an extremely lucrative business, because of the amount of cash they generate.

“This business is flourishing due to internal clashes; it’s simply a matter of supply and demand,” says Hamdi Al- Ashgar, owner of a jewelry store in the middle of the Gaza Strip.

“To purchase a weapon, all one has to show is interest. Arms merchants are ready to provide you with whatever you want: M16s, hunting rifles, bullets, Kalashnikovs, mortars and spare parts,” Al-Ashgar adds.”

Prices have gone down and nowadays owning a gun in the Palestinian areas is not anymore the sole privilege of the armed groups.

“You can have the famous Kalashnikov for USD 1,500, and a Chinese-made rifle for USD 1,000. While digging a tunnel in Gaza costs USD 100,000, renting one could climb up to USD 10,000 per a day,” Ashgar says.

In the Gaza Strip, nearly four out of five people are armed, whereas in the West Bank two out of five are armed with different kind of rifles and pistols, according to an officer of the Preventive Security Forces, on condition of anonymity.

I did a little searching and found a Kalashnikov for $335. Considerably below the prices charged in Gaza. Good profit indeed.

The Israelis must have trouble at those anti-smuggling meetings keeping a straight face while denouncing the smuggling.

With prices pretty much standardized there has to be a lot of competition in the market. Figuring out how much it costs to keep the civil war going is pretty much a job for accountants.

Muhammad is a young journalist working for a local radio station affiliated with Fatah. In recent weeks, he's gotten several death threats.

"In a place like Gaza, that sort of menace isn't to be taken lightly, so the station's security guards and staff are armed with hand grenades and machine guns.”

Muhammad says he carries a handgun and keeps an AK-47 assault rifle at home.

“In such a lawless context, it's normal for journalists to carry guns," he explains. "Some accuse us of pouring gasoline on the fire and fueling the confrontations between Fatah and Hamas. But I am broadcasting the problems of my society and the Palestinian street.”

In Gaza, the arms are coming from all over the world, being transported through the desert to Egypt and to Gaza through the tunnels in Rafah.

After the Israelis pulled out from the Gaza Strip, the number of tunnels for smuggling weapons and other contraband has more than doubled, evolving into an underground maze clawed out of Gaza’s soft soil.

The largely unhindered weapons influx also heightens the threat of civil war, instability, and tribalism.

There are usually about 20 tunnels in use at any one time along the border.

It is my opinion that American and Israeli policy for the Palestinians is for the time being: civil war, instability, and tribalism.

When they have had enough they will either leave or ask the Israelis to rule over them.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Testing the Limits of the Law

An interesting discussion of the limits of the Fourth Amendment is taking place at The Volokh Conspiracy. It concerns the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Ninth Circuit in reference to drug smuggling cases. Here is my take on the question:

It looks to me from what little I know about the law that the DOJ is looking for more Drug War opportunities to shred the Fourth Amendment.

If you go back into the history of the country and study the case of John Hanncock's sloop "Liberty" and its run in with British revenuers in support of British mercantilist policies you will see where the Fourth Amendment in part originated.

We have a similar mercatilist policy, in support of the pharmaceutical, alcohol, and tobacco companies, of keeping competing products which are easy to manufacture off the market.

For this very reason Benjamin Rush an MD of the time and signer of the Declaration of Independence thought medical liberty ought to be written into the Constitution to prevent doctors and pharmaceutical companies from becoming monopolists. Which in fact has happened. The goal of bringing herbal medicine and vitamins under the control of the FDA is also in furtherance of this mercatilists/monopolist policy.

The reason medical costs are so high is that government controls who can enter the market through a series of "health and safety" regulations. In other words government is not just interested in an informed consumer which the initial regulations provided for. The government now controls entry into the market through control of the medical guild and the pharmaceutical industry.

It was just such restraint of trade that the Fourth Amendment was aimed at.

The Fourth Amendment in fact a limited the taxing power of the state by giving smugglers an advantage. If taxes are low smuggling is not profitable. High taxes forces the state to become intrusive in its searches.

We are in the mess we are in re: Drug Prohibition because we have forgotten what animated the founders: the British mercatilist system of monopoly profits and taxes.

The situation we are in today is actually worse. The monopoly on drug importation has been given to criminal gangs. What I like to call Republican Socialism: price supports for criminals.

In cases where there is actual harm done to a citizen, i.e. an actual crime, probable cause is not too difficult a standard to meet. Where there are willing buyers and sellers that standard is much more difficult. The government must go on fishing expeditions. To limit the taxing power of the state unreasonable searches (fishing expeditions) were in effect outlawed. As in so much of the law made by the Supreme Court these days "unreasonable" is getting more and more narrowly defined. In fact many would argue that it has been defined almost out of existence.