JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the security forces that took part in an operation in Jenin to arrest a Hamas terrorist, which left the suspect and at least two others dead.

“Our policy is to attack those who attack us and who are planning to attack us. Both were applicable in this case,” Netanyahu said Sunday at the beginning of the regular weekly Cabinet meeting.

The suspected terrorist was identified by the Israel Defense Forces as Hamza Abu Alhija, who was wanted for involvement in shooting and bombing attacks as well as planning future terror attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers, the IDF said in a statement.

During the early Saturday morning raid, forces from the Police Special Anti-Terror Unit, the IDF and the Shin Bet security service tried to arrest Abu Alhija, who barricaded himself in his home with other Hamas operatives, according to the IDF.

Abu Alhija then opened fire at the Israeli forces, wounding two security personnel, and then attempted to escape while continuing to shoot. The security forces responded with live gunfire, killing him.

During a riot that erupted at the scene, during which Palestinians from Jenin threw rocks, fire bombs, and explosives at the Israeli forces, the Israeli troops responded with live fire, killing at least two other Arabs, identified as belonging to Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aksa Martyrs’ Brigades, the military wing of the ruling Fatah Party.

Two Israeli security forces were injured in the incident.

Three Palestinian terrorist groups – Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aksa Martyrs’ Brigades – issued a joint statement warning that they will take revenge on Israel and the Palestinian Authority for the deaths.

“The resistance in the West Bank is alive and won’t die, and the Zionist enemy can’t guess from where the resistance will attack. The blood of Jenin Martyrs won’t go in vain,” the groups said in a statement, according to the Times of Israel.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ office condemned the incident, and called it an “escalation” by Israel. The statement also called on the United States to get involved before the teetering peace negotiations are completely “ruined.”

Palestinian Authority Arab hurled firebombs and rocks at Israeli civilians and soldiers in at least two different locations in Samaria Thursday, causing light injuries to a soldier.

The firebomb attack narrowly missed a school bus that was on its way from Itamar, in northern Samaria, to Kedumim to the west. The Molotov cocktail exploded in front of the bus on the highway, and the bus driver slammed on the brakes and managed to avoid running into the flames.

Earlier in the day, approximately 40 Arabs rioters and threw rocks at Israeli vehicles in the Binyamin region of Samaria until the IDF arrived to disperse them. One soldier was lightly injured by a rock and was treated on the spot without being hospitalized.

Israel soldiers killed a 15-year-old boy who was attempting to damage the security fence south of Hebron Wednesday and refused to heed soldier’warnings to halt.

Palestinian Authority media came up with a new idea for the youth’s approaching the security fence. In Gaza, the suspects usually are described by Arab media as playing soccer or looking for scrap metal, but the teenager south of Hebron was said to simply have been looking for a plant that is popular among Arabs.

The youth, identified as Yousef Nayif abu Akar, was picking plants, which is forbidden because it is a “protected plant” but not an offense that interests Israeli soldiers, who patrol the security fence to make sure that there is no damage that would render it inoperative and endanger the lives of Jews in nearby communities.

“Three suspects sabotaged the security fence in Deir al-Asal Atachta, and soldiers at the scene called them to distance themselves and fired warning shots in the air,” an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

The soldiers carried out standard operating procedure, calling for the suspects to halt and then shooting at the legs after they ignored orders.

The other two suspects were arrested.

The IDF and IAF targeted several Syrian army positions on Wednesday morning, March 19 which aided and abetted the attack against IDF soldiers on Tuesday according to the official IDF blog. The IDF targeted a Syrian army training facility, military command posts, and artillery batteries, retaliating with artillery fire directed at Syrian military targets.

Earlier on Tuesday morning, March 18, an explosive device was detonated against IDF soldiers underneath their patrol jeep as in the northern Golan Heights. The soldiers had parked their jeep and were outside of the vehicle when the explosion was set off, causing the injury of four soldiers, wounding one of them severely. Before the explosion took place, the IDF identified suspicious movement on the border.
The wounded soldiers were hospitalized in Rambam Hospital in Haifa.

The IDF said that the Syrian targets had enabled the attack on the Israeli jeep on Tuesday. Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, IDF Spokesman stated that “the attack against IDF troops today is an unacceptable escalation of violence from Syria. We will not tolerate this threat against Israeli civilians or troops, we will fulfill our mission, prevent, protect and defend against hostilities from Syria.”

Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon said that Israel viewed Syrian President Bashar Assad responsible for what happens in his country.
“If he [Assad] continues to cooperate with terrorists who seek to harm Israel, he will continue to pay a heavy price that he will regret,” Ya’alon stated on Wednesday.

Israel informed the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) of the incident, which it considers a grave violation. This was the latest in a series of similar incidents that have taken place on Israel’s northern border.

Last Friday, March 14, an explosive device was activated against IDF soldiers patrolling the Israel-Lebanon border, injuring no one. Earlier in the month, on March 5, two Hezbollah-affiliated terrorists were caught attempting to plant an explosive device near the Israel-Syria border in the northern Golan Heights. IDF forces responded immediately to the suspects and hits were identified.

Very early Wednesday morning, March 19, the Israel Defense Forces targeted several Syrian military installations. Those sites were specifically targeted because they played a role in assisting the roadside attack on Israeli forces yesterday in the northern Golan Heights, along the border with Syria.

In yesterday’s incident, four IDF soldiers were injured when an explosive device was detonated. One of the four soldiers was wounded severely.

The targeted Syrian sites included a Syrian Army training facility, military headquarters and artillery.

IDF Spokesman Lt. Col Peter Lerner said,”The attack against IDF troops today is an unacceptable escalation of violence from Syria. We will not tolerate this threat against Israeli civilians or troops, we will fulfill our mission, prevent, protect and defend against hostilities from Syria.”

Lebanon’s Hezbollah-backed Al Manar satellite network claimed on Tuesday that the bombing of an IDF patrol at the Syrian border was a kidnap attack, but the terrorist organization frequently makes such claims after attacks.

Israel has not responded to the report.

However, Israeli media reported that soldiers were trying to approach and arrest a suspicious man when the explosion occurred.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the government “has turned the Negev and Be’er Sheva into the cyber capital of the Eastern Hemisphere” and that “there will no trickle of rockets.”

Every prime minister for the past 20 years has promised Jews in Gaza, before they were expelled, and residents in the Western Negev, that Israel will not tolerate missile fire from Gaza.

Those promises were worth about as much as the commitment of Ariel Sharon when he encouraged Jews to live in Gush Katif and as much as the intellectual dishonesty of the Labor governments that offered incentives to Jews to live in the same communities in Judea and Samaria that they now want to dismantle.

After the expulsion of Jews from Gaza in 2005, the Palestinian Authority, then under the aegis of Mahmoud Abbas and later under the current Hamas regime, relentlessly pounded Sderot and Netivot with missiles. They developed longer-range rockets to hit Ashkelon, and then Ashdod, both of them key port cities where a single missile blast at the wrong place could blow up strategic  infrastructure, such as the electric generating, fuel depots and gas lines. Defense ministers talked, and terrorists fired. When the missiles stated hitting the area of Rehovot and Rishon LeTzion, cities that are part of metropolitan Tel Aviv, the government ordered the IDF not only to put an end to the attacks but also changed its policy and started retaliating for every rocket attack.

It is a sad fact that the government really does not care that much about the towns of Sederot, Netivot and surrounding rural areas. The votes are in metorpolitcan Tel Aviv, the home of most Israeli factories and offices and the homes of the power brokers, the people who really run Israel.

Tel Aviv is running out of room, Home prices are out of reach of the average family, and the Olmert and Netanyahu administrations made strategic decisions to invest in the wide open Negev, whose “capital” is Be’er Sheva, for decades an ignored outpost for Moroccan Jews and academics who learn and teach at Ben Gurion University.

A revolution is taking place in Israel, and it is in the Negev. A new high-tech park, with international investment, was launched earlier this year. The north-south Highway 6 high-speed highway is being extended to the outskirts of Be’er Sheva.

The IDF is in the process of moving bases, especially Air Force bases, from the Tel Aviv area to the Negev.

“We are in the midst of a revolution that is turning the Negev into a thriving center, not a periphery or branch, into a bustling center of Israel,” Netanyahu said Tuesday.

His last line, that “my policy is clear; any firing of rockets will be met with an immediate and sharp response,” was ostensibly irrelevant to the subject of development, but in fact it was part and parcel of the new Negev.

Israel now has a vested interest in the Negev, and it cannot afford even one rocket attack no more than it can allow rocket firing on Ben Gurion Airport.

It is not a very nice message to the pioneers of kibbutzim, moshavim and development towns in the Negev, but the truth is that the Iron Dome anti-missile system is just a Band-Aid.

The developing the Negev as the Cyber Capital of the Eastern Hemisphere is guaranteeing southern Israel peace and quiet.

The IDF shot at Syrian army posts Tuesday afternoon following the bomb blast that  hit an IDF jeep on patrol at the Syrian border on the Golan Heights Tuesday and wounded one soldier seriously.

Three other soldiers suffered light and moderate injuries.

The blast, at the border near the Israeli Druze city of Majdal Shams on the Golan, also scored a direct hit an armored vehicle that absorbed the impact without additional injuries to soldiers inside the vehicle. The fire at the Syrian army posts may have been intended to provide cover for the evacuation of the wounded soldiers to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.

Army tanks also retaliated with artillery fire on suspected Hezbollah positions in the Lebanese village of Kfar Kileh near the northern borders of both enemy countries,

Last Friday night, an IDF convoy was targeted by a Hezbollah bomb, and the terrorist organization is almost certainly trying to take revenge for an alleged Israeli bombing of a Hezbollah missile last month.