UN Leaves Hamas Guarding The Henhouse--With Predictable Results

Earlier this month, we learned that Hamas acquired hundreds of tonnes of food by "mistake":

UN awaits return of Gaza aid, Hamas says 'crisis over'

The United Nations was on Saturday awaiting the promised return of hundreds of tonnes of food aid for Gaza "mistakenly" seized by Hamas, as the Islamists insisted the crisis is over.

But UNRWA, the main agency for Palestinian refugees, said the incident will not be considered "over" until all 200 tonnes of rice and flour have been returned and Hamas has guaranteed the situation will not be repeated.
In the wake of the incident, the UN agency suspended all imports of aid into the Gaza Strip.

Now it appears that Hamas has "mistakenly" gotten hold of some unexploded weapons left over from Operation Cast Lead:

The United Nations is frantically searching for a large stockpile of unexploded weapons that have disappeared in the Gaza Strip, the BBC reported.

The explosives, fired by Israel during the recent Gaza offensive, including aircraft bombs and white phosphorus shells, were being guarded by Hamas and were scheduled to be safely disposed of by the U.N.

Israel has accused Hamas of taking the weapons and the U.N. has called for their immediate return.

"We are anxious to get the return of this ordnance. It's clearly extremely dangerous and needs to be disposed of in a safe manner," Richard Miron, the senior U.N. spokesman in Jerusalem, told the BBC. "This is our primary concern."

A U.N. Mines Action Team found the explosives in a storage site in Gaza City on Feb. 2. They included three 2,000-pound bombs and eight 500-pound bombs that had been dropped by Israel but failed to explode, the BBC reported.

When U.N. officials returned to the warehouse Sunday to retrieve the weapons, which was under a Hamas police guard, the explosives were gone.

Left unexplained, of course, is: why the UN would trust terrorists to guard weapons--especially when the UN saw for themselves that Hamas has a tendency to appropriate things for themselves. 

Apparently, the UN actually believes all of their rhetoric about freedom fighters--not that they'll learn their lesson this time around.

Technorati Tag: UN and Gaza and Hamas.