Last April 28 I argued that Israel should dismantle the Palestinian Authority. I pointed out that a suicide bombing the week before in Tel Aviv, which killed ten and wounded 80, was the sixth suicide bombing since Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in September 2005 and the 82nd since the Palestinian Authority took shape early in 1994—in addition to a steady succession of shootings, stabbings, kidnappings, and artillery bombardment of Israelis. I acknowledged that “Israel’s reoccupation of the territories would entail costs,” but noted that “the cost of not dismantling the Palestinian Authority is its continued existence: continued attacks, carnage, and endangerment of Israel.”
I wasn’t at all surprised when the current dovish Israeli government didn’t take my advice. I also knew that even a more hawkish government, which might have agreed with my logic, would have been very unlikely to dismantle the Authority because of concern about world and, particularly, U.S. reaction. The same democracies that took part in dismantling the Taliban and Saddam Hussein regimes, and are still involved in combat in those places, regard the Palestinian Authority’s existence as sacrosanct. Yet the PA, as a front for Iran and Syria’s genocidal war on Israel, poses a greater and more direct existential danger to Israel than those regimes posed to the United States or any other democracy and is also, in its own right, an epicenter of the world jihad movement.
So since April 28 the Palestinian Authority has continued to exist, and Israel—and not only Israel—has continued to pay its “tax” to it. Before turning to the most recent high-profile events, it is worth realizing that, as the summary below makes clear, they are another eruption of a pot that has been steadily boiling. The list is derived mostly from the highly informative WeaponSurvey.com, which draws in turn from various Israeli news sources. It is a very partial list, meant to be suggestive, and leaves out many of the rocket attacks in this period (all from Gaza) that did not hit a target, as well as other less lethal incidents.
April 30-May 1, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire a Qassam rocket at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai. No injuries or damage are reported.
May 3, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire two Qassams at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip, briefly interrupting Independence Day celebrations in the south of the country.
May 4, 2006: The Israeli navy intercepts a Palestinian fishing boat near Ashkelon. The crew throws weapons and large bags overboard. A sample later reveals that the contents were 550 kilograms of high-quality TNT.
May 8, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire eight Qassams into the western Negev.
May 13, 2006: Israeli Border Police sappers safely detonate a bomb in Nablus in the West Bank packing 10 kilograms of explosives. Police sources note the explosive device was intended for use in a suicide attack against an Israeli target.
May 14, 2006: Palestinian terrorists detonate a bomb against a vehicle at the Shiloh Junction in the West Bank. One person is lightly injured.
May 14, 2006: Israel Navy patrol ships intercept a Palestinian vessel in close proximity to the Gaza Strip. The boat contained about 450 kilograms of TNT as well as mine components, and large bags of explosives had been thrown overboard.
May 16, 2006: Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists fire a Katyusha at the western Negev community of Netiv Ha’asara. The rocket hits a chicken coop, killing thirty chickens. Shrapnel damages a water pipe and adjacent greenhouse. The IDF determines that the rocket was a Grad-class Katyusha, which carries 6 kilograms of explosives. This marks the third time Palestinian terrorists have fired a Katyusha at Israel.
May 18, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire at a civilian vehicle near the Tapuah Junction in the West Bank, wounding two Israelis. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claims responsibility.
May 21, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire two Qassams at the Israeli city of Sderot. One hits an empty classroom, while the other causes two women to go into shock. Defense Minister Amir Peretz instructs the IDF to prepare an immediate plan for the fortification of schools in the Gaza vicinity.
May 23, 2006: The Egyptian interior ministry announces that the three suicide bombers responsible for the triple explosion in the Sinai resort of Dahab on April 24, which killed more than twenty, were trained in weapons and bomb-making by Palestinian religious fundamentalists in the neighboring Gaza Strip.
May 29, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire two mortars at an IDF base in Nahal Oz (near Sderot).
May 31, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire four Qassams at Sderot, which cause damage and send two people into shock.
June 1, 2006: Islamic Jihad claims responsibility for a bombing attack that lightly wounds two IDF soldiers in Jenin in the West Bank.
June 2, 2006: The U.S. military determines that Palestinian terrorists have become senior operatives in the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Officials note than an increasing number of Palestinians have joined Al Qaeda-aligned groups in Iraq. On May 30, Iraqi and U.S. troops captured three Palestinians identified as leaders of insurgency cells in Baghdad. The Palestinians were said to have recruited students from Baghdad Technical University and ordered them to plant bombs near Iraqi police and army positions (“Palestinians Rise in Sunni Insurgency,” Middle East Newsline, June 2, 2006).
June 6, 2006: The head of the General Security Service, Yuval Diskin, tells the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the amount of weapons and explosives smuggled into Gaza from Sinai since the September disengagement is larger than the total amount smuggled since the 1967 Six Day War. The quantity includes 11 tons of TNT, three million bullets, 19,600 rifles, 1,600 pistols, 65 RPG launchers, 430 RPGs, and about ten shoulder rocket launchers.
June 6, 2006: Haaretz reports that Hamas terrorists in the West Bank have experimented with adding toxic chemicals to their bombs.
June 6, 2006: A volley of Qassams injure an Israeli woman in Sderot and wound four other Israelis.
June 7, 2006: Two Palestinian terrorists attack an Israeli couple while they are hiking in Gush Etzion in the West Bank, stabbing one and hurling rocks at the other.
June 8, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire three Qassams at southern Israel from Gaza in two separate attacks. One woman suffers from shock.
June 10, 2006: Israeli police commissioner Moshe Karadi orders police forces to an advanced stage of alert due to ninety warnings of impending terrorist attacks.
June 11, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire a Qassam at Sderot that critically wounds an Israeli. Hamas spokemsan Abu Oviyada proclaims, “We have decided to turn Sderot into a ghost town and we will not stop the rocket fire until the residents leave.”
June 12, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire at least eighteen Qassams at Israel. One hits a parked car and causes a fire. An Israeli woman is lightly injured by shrapnel, and two other women suffer shock.
June 12, 2006: Palestinian terrorists shoot dead an Israeli Arab motorist, mistaken for a Jew, on Route 443 in the West Bank.
June 12, 2006: Egypt accuses Hamas of training suicide bombers in the Sinai Peninsula. Egyptian interior minister Habib Adly claims evidence of Hamas involvement in the training of at least two suicide bombers who blew themselves up at tourist sites in Sinai in April 2006.
June 12, 2006: A study reported in Haaretz finds that almost half the parents and one-third of the children in Sderot suffer from posttraumatic stress. “15 percent of the children, ages two and up, are suffering from severe post-traumatic stress syndrome. . . .”
June 13, 2006: Palestinian terrorist gunmen seriously wound another Israeli motorist on Route 443.
June 14, 2006: The IDF Home Front Command determines that 24 schools in the western Negev are in need of reinforcement against Qassam rockets. Two will have to be completely rebuilt. The cost of reinforcing the roofs of the 22 remaining schools will total NIS 165 million.
June 15, 2006: Islamic Jihad terrorists fire a salvo of Qassams into Sderot, wounding three people and damaging a factory.
June 15, 2006: Palestinian terrorists kidnap an Israeli girl near the Rahelim Junction in the West Bank. The girls’ friend flees the scene and reports the abduction to the police. The girl is found 20 minutes later.
June 18-19, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire two Qassams at southern Israel, leaving sections of Sderot without electricity for several hours.
June 19, 2006: Palestinian foreign minister Mahmoud Zahar says Iran is preparing to deliver two aircraft and three hundred combat vehicles to the PA.
June 19, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire two Qassams at Sderot during a visit by President Moshe Katzav and Defense Minister Amir Peretz. One woman is lightly injured.
June 19, 2006: Palestinian terrorists open fire against an Israeli bus traveling north of Ofrah in the West Bank, injuring six female civilians.
June 25, 2006: Two IDF soldiers are killed and another kidnapped when Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups attack an IDF position at Kerem Shalom near the Gaza border.
June 25, 2006: Fatah announces its has developed chemical and biological weapons. “With the help of Allah, we are pleased to say that we succeeded in developing over 20 different types of biological and chemical weapons, this after a three-year effort....”
June 26, 2006: Palestinian terrorists fire a Qassam at Sderot. Four civilians are lightly wounded by shrapnel and a number of residents suffer from shock. The impact causes a blackout in the area.
On June 28, Israeli forces entered Gaza with the stated goal of freeing kidnapped soldier Gilad Shilat. Palestinian terrorists threatened in retaliation to execute an Israeli male civilian, age 18, they claimed to have kidnapped in the West Bank several days ago.
On June 29, Thursday, Israeli security forces found the body of the civilian, Eliyahu Asheri, covered with dirt in a field in Ramallah. He had been shot in the head on Sunday shortly after he was kidnapped while hitchhiking. Meanwhile in an apparent punitive clampdown, Israeli forces apprehended over sixty Hamas cabinet ministers, parliamentarians, and others. At least in its public rhetoric, however, the Israeli government seemed studiously to ignore the fact that the murderers of Asheri—as well as those recently threatening Israel with WMD attacks—were Fatah and not Hamas terrorists.
The goals of rescuing Shalit and penalizing Hamas are, of course, laudable but fall well short of what needs to be done: to reconquer the Palestinian Authority before more innocent victims are murdered, injured, traumatized, and kidnapped; before it further develops—whether or not under Hamas’s aegis—as a fulcrum of jihadist terror threatening not only Israel but also Egypt, Coalition forces in Iraq, the region and the world in general; before more generations of Palestinian children are indoctrinated in murderous anti-Semitism; and before a large-scale catastrophe involving WMD occurs.
Similar Israeli moves, like Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 and the targeted-assassinations campaign that peaked in 2004, have achieved respites or reductions in the terror—while allowing it ample time, space, and means to recuperate and unleash further rounds of atrocities. However temporarily effective or dramatic Israel’s current measures, the same eventual outcome can be expected. Israel is fighting to win a round but not the game, and the eventual losers are people like Eliyahu Asheri and many others like him.
The Palestinian Authority is a small, particularly vicious Arab dictatorship that has done nothing to improve its people’s lot but instead has sunk them in poverty while inflaming their worst moral and ideological tendencies. In the twelve years before its creation, there were 160 Israeli deaths by terrorism; in the 12 years since, there have been 1,350 along with thousands wounded. But the Palestinian Authority is also a repository of Israeli and Western dreams, hopes, guilt, and perceived interests, and will be allowed to keep exacting its toll until it is judged too terrible or until it is too late.
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