On September 28, 2000, the eve of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), Ariel Sharon, journeyed to the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. This is blamed for starting the Intifada. If this were true, one would assume that Arafat and the Palestinians would not have undertaken any arms smuggling or preparations for terrorist activities prior to this event. In any event, the Oslo Accords were very specific about the limits on weapons permitted to the Palestinian Authority and any arms acquired beyond these limits would have been a gross violation.

In point of fact, throughout the late 1990s, the Palestinians routinely smuggled large amounts of illegal armaments into their territories. This document, lists some references to this. While the document is from a biased source, the references can be independently verified.

Inventories of forbidden weapons, dated 1999, were found in the offices of Fuad Shubaki, the chief financial officer of the Palestinian Authority. This is mentioned in this documentation by the IDF (Item 6).