New Duranty: JERUSALEM — Some 900 assault rifles were transferred to the Palestinian Authority in late August with Israel’s approval, an Israeli security official said on Friday, as part of a drive to build the capacity of Palestinian security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

The AK-47 rifles, together with ammunition, came into the West Bank via Jordan.

Israel maintains overall security control in the West Bank and its forces operate freely there, but strengthening the Western-backed authority’s security apparatuses is considered a prerequisite for Palestinian state-building.

As well as helping to enable the Palestinian Authority to fulfill its obligation of dismantling anti-Israel terrorist networks, the weapons may also be intended to bolster Mr. Abbas’s Fatah-dominated forces against the looming threat of the rival Islamist militant group Hamas.

Hamas took control of Gaza more than a year ago after routing Fatah’s forces there in a brief but bloody factional war.

Israel has cooperated with the Western-backed effort to train and equip Mr. Abbas’s forces, and has allowed some weapons transfers. But it also places limits, worried that the Palestinian Authority could turn its guns on Israelis, or get overtaken, as in Gaza, by Hamas.

Israel approved the transfer of 25 armored personnel carriers from Russia to the Palestinian Authority last November, for example, but balked at a Palestinian request to outfit the vehicles with machine guns.

The Palestinian security forces have carried out a number of law and order campaigns in the cities of the West Bank. Israeli military officials say they have proved quite effective in curbing criminals, but less so in the counterterrorism realm.

Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority prime minister, said this week that the West Bank forces have done much to end the “anarchy” that prevailed in Palestinian cities in recent years, but are operating under strict Israeli limitations. Mr. Fayyad’s remarks were made in a speech that was read out on his behalf by the Palestinian foreign minister at an event of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations in Jerusalem.

In another move aimed at bolstering Mr. Abbas, Israel released 198 Palestinian security prisoners from Israeli jails in late August, days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Almost 1,000 prisoners, mostly from Fatah and a few from secular leftist groups, have been released in four rounds since Hamas took control of Gaza.