This attack could have been prevented

About a month ago, a security official who closely monitors the situation in Judea and Samaria told me in a conversation that the current head of the Shin Bet, David Zini, is making a big mistake in his lenient attitude toward Jewish terror. 'He does not think such a thing exists and tends to downplay everything related to settler violence,' he said. 'Until the attack happens, and then maybe he will wake up.' I asked if he meant a Jewish terror attack, and the same official replied quickly: 'No, no, the opposite - it is a matter of time until someone ambushes one of these groups of settlers who harm Palestinians or enter villages to provoke. And then there will be casualties, and maybe, God forbid, hostages, and then maybe he will wake up.'

The incident that took place on Friday in the village of Tel ended with a heavy blood price: two Israeli fatalities, Major Yuval Ezra and Benyahu Malet, a member of the Gilead Farm standby squad and the farm's agriculture manager. Four more Palestinians were killed. There was no planned attack here, nor an attempted kidnapping. What looked like a deliberate provocative move by a group of 'hikers,' who were supposedly on a trip in the area but intentionally entered the territory of the village of Tel, led almost as expected to a severe confrontation. In the end, less predictably, one of the Palestinians grabbed a weapon and began shooting in all directions, killing Malet and Ezra. It is almost unnecessary to mention that the 'trip' was not coordinated with the IDF, which is the sovereign in the area.

But unfortunately, it is doubtful that the security official was right: the severe results of this incident will probably not wake anyone up on the Israeli side, certainly not when it is an election period and the Prime Minister needs every vote from the settlers to survive. He will not dare to act to stop the provocations carried out by extremists, and not even the more explicit Jewish terror, despite the danger this phenomenon poses to Israeli and Palestinian citizens. Instead, he naturally prefers to focus on arresting Palestinians in the Shechem sector, as if it were a terror infrastructure planning a major attack. Indeed, the IDF reported yesterday on the arrest of dozens of wanted persons in various sectors of Judea and Samaria, including those linked to Hamas infrastructure, even though they have no connection to the incident in the village of Tel.

The hard truth about the incident is that it should not have happened, period. The blood spilled in this incident is on the hands of the terrorist who grabbed the weapon, but also on the hands of the government that knowingly allows violence and Jewish terror to continue unhindered, on the hands of the Israel Police that gives full backing to a group of serial lawbreakers, and also on the hands of the IDF and Shin Bet that are either ignoring or afraid to confront a group of provocateurs. There is no justification for violence here, quite the opposite. It is a severe, terrible incident, but it could have been prevented. And as long as the decision-makers on the Israeli side allow a group of outlaws to do whatever they want in the territories, they are endangering not only the Palestinians living in the villages that have become targets of attacks, but also the lives of the Jews themselves who carry out these attacks and enter Palestinian territories without coordination, without security.

In the territories of Judea and Samaria, there are constant alerts for terror attacks and intentions to murder Jews, and the Israeli security forces should be allowed to free themselves to thwart these attacks instead of occupying them with intentional violence against Palestinians. International public opinion does not interest the Jewish extremists behind the provocations, and unfortunately, human lives are not at the top of their priorities, not of Jews and certainly not of Palestinians. Incidents of Jewish violence against Palestinians, or by their less sanitized name 'Jewish terror,' which occur almost every day in the territories, receive almost no coverage in the Israeli media. But this is a phenomenon that causes enormous damage to Israel in the world, even in places that were previously considered sympathetic to Israel (see the Republican Party). In their view, the entire area, including villages in areas B or A, is Jewish territory where Palestinians have no right to be, and therefore actions must be taken to cause Palestinians to leave their land and get out.

Indeed, yesterday and on the night between Friday and Saturday, 'retaliatory actions' already returned, and again the scenes we have become so accustomed to were seen: Jews entering Palestinian villages and trying to provoke in the best case or acting with violence against local Palestinians in the worst case. To say again that this will end in blood? It is doubtful that anyone does not understand this, but in an election period, it seems there are those who know how to extract political profit from it.