A common Israeli argument that serves to justify army operations in Jenin and Nablus that end with many Palestinians dead goes: “The Palestinian Authority has lost control” to terrorist organizations and lone gunmen. Defense officials who work closely with their Palestinian counterparts in other parts of the West Bank often speak disparagingly of the PA’s weakness in northern West Bank cities.
But Israel is exactly the same. It has lost security control in the hilltop settlements of the northern West Bank to armed settlers. The joint statement issued by IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi, Shin Bet director Ronen Bar and Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai Saturday night, in which they said the pogroms perpetrated by settlers in Palestinian villages are “ultranationalist terror” and promised to “fight them,” above all reflects this loss of control. Their statement that Jewish lawbreakers endanger national interests and security is a carbon copy of speeches by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who similarly objected to armed resistance to the occupation for fear that it would undermine the Palestinian Authority.
Halevi, Bar and Shabtai urged settler leaders to condemn “these violent acts” and join the fight against them. They got their answer from National Missions Minister Orit Strock, who termed them a “Wagner Group,” and from the thugs who violently chased away Col. Eliav Elbaz, commander of the Benjamin Brigade, when he paid a condolence call on one of the families of the people killed in last week’s terror attack in Eli. His crime was that he carried out his duty by taking minimal steps to locate the people who rampaged through the village of Umm Safa. Once again, we heard empty condemnations, pending the next pogrom.
In off-the-record conversations, “senior defense officials” accuse the government of tying their hands and preventing them from addressing settler violence (Yaniv Kubovich and Hagar Shezaf, Haaretz, June 27). The result, they said, is that “we actually don’t have any control over the mob of settlers, who do whatever they want.” The unavoidable conclusion is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is encouraging ultranationalist Jewish terror, just as Israel claimed that former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was responsible for the terror attacks of the second intifada even if he didn’t directly order them. The Al-Aqsa Brigades and Hamas understood the message sent by his office, just as the pogromists from the settlements understand the spirit of the commander emanating from the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu is responsible for weakening the PA, neutralizing the army and the Shin Bet in the face of Jewish terror and strengthening Hamas and the settlers. Taken together, these developments have resulted in violent, bloody anarchy in the West Bank. But neither can the heads of the defense establishment make do with issuing press statements and hiding behind Netanyahu. They must fulfill their obligation to protect the security, property and lives of the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and take forceful action against the intensifying Jewish terror.
The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.