A long-wanted terrorist chief captured this week by Israeli forces was trained by the U.S., served in a senior capacity on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s U.S.-backed security detail, and was a ranking member of a team that received and distributed American arms shipments the past two years... Khaled Shawish, an officer in Abbas’s Force 17 presidential guards, was arrested Sunday by undercover Israeli police forces following scores of shooting attacks Shawish is suspected of carrying out. Shawish doubles as Ramallah chief of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades terror group. He previously boasted of involvement in a West Bank shooting attack in December 2000 that killed Israeli nationalist leader Benjamin Kahane and Kahane’s wife, Talya... Shawish also directed a number of suicide bombings that killed eight Israelis.

According to Israeli and Palestinian security sources, Shawish, as a member of Force 17, received U.S. training in 1997 at an American-managed military base in the West Bank city of Jericho. The base continues to train Force 17 members. Many other Brigades members who also double as Force 17 officers have received U.S. training.