In what has become a daily occurrence, Palestinians are routinely throwing rocks at Magen David Adom ambulances,  smashing windshields and seriously endangering the MDA medical crews.

Despite that MDA ambulances and medics treat wounded without bias to race or religion, Palestinians target these life saving efforts, even when the wounded are Palestinians.

Over the past few days:

April 2, 2013, 17:15 – Palestinians stone MDA ambulance on the Jerusalem – Hevron highway #60, near the community of Karmei Zur.

April 3, 2013 15:43 – Palestinians stone MDA ambulance on Halhul bypass road, part of the Jerusalem – Hevron highway #60.

April 4, 2013 11:27 – Palestinians stone Neve Zuf community MDA ambulance near the Abud village on road 465.

The dangers of daily Palestinian rock throwing in evident by the ongoing critical condition of 3 year old Adele Biton, wounded by a rock attack which left her critically wounded, and injuring her mother and 2 sisters. (story here)

Just yesterday, The Ofer Base IDF Military Court convicted Waal al-Araja, a member of the Palestinian Authority security forces from Halhoul, of the murder of Asher Palmer and his infant son, Yonatan, in September 2011.  Al-Araja, threw stones from a moving vehicle toward Palmer’s car on the Jerualem – Hevron highway 60, causing the father and son’s death. (story here)

Photos from Hatzala Yehuda vShomron and some of the story from rotter

Following Washington and Jerusalem’s decisions to fork over more money to the debt-ridden Palestinian Authority without requiring it to pay off its debts to Israel for electricity, the Israel Electric Corp, is considering raising electricity rates for Israelis to cover Ramallah’s debt.

Israel supplies almost all of the electricity for Jews and Arabs in Judea and Samaria. The Palestinian Authority and the Jerusalem District Electricity Company are responsible for collecting money from Arabs and paying Israel.

After PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas again violated the Oslo Accords last November, this time by going to the United Nations General Assembly for a resolution recognizing the Palestinian Authority on its own terms, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz triumphantly stopped the monthly transfer of tax money Israel collects for the PA and handed over the cash to the Israel Electric Corp. to pay off most, but not all, of the constantly growing debt of the Palestinian Authority for electricity.

That was before President Barack Obama visited Israel and softened up Prime Minister Netanyahu to make another one of countless “goodwill” gestures to Abbas and release monthly tax revenues.

Of course, Abbas has other sources to pay off the debt for electricity, such as the American taxpayer.

But the Obama administration, Washington’s version of Chelm, thinks that American money should be used to help Abbas to bloat his debt instead of paying it off.

After the president’s return to the United States, he came up with his own goodwill measure, and with the kind support of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the United States freed up $200 million for direct financial support for the Palestinian Authority budget, no strings attached.

Following Israel’s Cabinet decision to free the tax revenues, Israeli Electricity Corp., sources told Israel’s Globes business newspaper that the company now has less of a chance to collect money from the Palestinian Authority. “If there is no alternative, the utility will have to record the debt in its books as lost debt and ask the Public Utilities Authority to recognize it as an expense to be covered by electricity tariffs,” according to the newspaper’s website.

Rates will have to be increased approximately 3 percent for one year to cover the debt, but that is only for electricity and does not cover other PA debts.

Three percent would not be so bad by itself, but it would come on top of a 6.5 percent hike that was approved only two weeks ago.

Palestinian Authority PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is willing to accept an “unannounced” freeze on building by Jews in Judea and Samaria as a lever to return to talks with Israel, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The newspaper, which often floats trial balloons for the Obama administration or reflects the government’s intentions, said it obtained a document written by PA negotiator Saeb Erekat in which it was stated that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu “can pledge to you secretly that he will stop settlement activities during the period of negotiation.”

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas forcefully attacked “illegal settlements’ at his joint press conference with President Barack Obama in Ramallah early Thursday afternoon, but President Obama explicitly said that Abbas cannot continue to demands that Israel accept all of his territorial and political demands before sitting down for “negotiations” when there is nothing left to negotiate.

The New York Times report will help President Obama put more pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu to let both Abbas and the American government to climb down from the weak limb of the “peace process.” which has been the cornerstone of American involvement in the attempt by the Palestinian Authority to establish an independent country based on the Temporary Armistice Lines drawn in 1949, otherwise known as the Green Line.

The report in Times provides convenient pressure on Israel, and Israel’s Channel 2 star analyst Ehud Ya’ari said, almost on cue, that he thinks Israel should withdraw from most of Judea and Samaria.

He asserted that the United Nations would recognize the move, a dubious possibility considering that the General Assembly last November gave de facto recognition to the Palestinian Authority sovereignty over all of the land that Abbas demands.

With Obama having the media’s back and the Times’ report floating around the web, President Obama has all his cards in place for his speech to Israeli university students and guest at the Jerusalem Convention Center Thursday night.

He will be at his oratorical best and is bound to deliver a powerful speech playing on emotions that are evoked by recalling the Holocaust and the deaths of more than 22,000 Israeli soldiers in Arab wars.

The president probably will probably not miss the opportunity to make an obscene comparison between the Exodus of the Jewish People from slavery in Egypt, as retold on the Passover holiday next week, and the Arabs in the Palestinian Authority.

As a warm-up, Obama said in Ramallah that PA Arabs deserve “dignity” that it is prevented by the lack of a Palestinian state, which, as every State Dept. clerk knows, is in turn prevented by “settlements.” The same foreign experts also knew that Jewish settlements in Gaza were the obstacle to peace.

The Hamas rocket attacks on Sderot early Thursday were a chilling reminder of the price Israel paid to advance the “war process,” but President Obama, of course, saw the latest missile attacks as proof that Israel has to stop the settlements” in Judea and Samaria in order to make peace with the Arabs.

But President Obama did not force the issue too hard in the press conference in Ramallah. His failure to publicly demand that Israel withdraw to the 1967 borders was met with an unhappy face by Abbas. Virtually all media outlets headlined that Obama chickened out from demanding that Israel accept a building freeze.

But the president is too smart to cause a commotion when he wants calm. He spared no condemnation for settlements, which he said are illegal.

He was careful with his words and insisted that he came to the region to “listen” to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Abbas to understand what they steps will take to advance the “peace process.”

In other words, Israel better accept the tiniest of supposed compromise by Abbas, such as “unannounced” freeze, or risk war, which was the result of Israeli concessions in Clinton’s Oslo Accords, which was the result of Israeli concessions in Bush’s Roadmap Plan, and which was the result of Israel’s grandiose withdrawal from Gaza.

An “unannounced” settlement freeze may not come tonight or tomorrow, but if Abbas makes the “great compromise,” he will have crawled back into the arms of President Obama. He also will have returned to the old game of playing the card of compromise to win a no-compromise deal.

At around 10 PM, Egged bus #59 was hit by Arab stone throwers as it drove through French Hill, in the northern part of Jerusalem. One passenger was taken to Hadassah Har HaTzofim hospital, after being injured in the head with a stone.

Approximately one of every 30 Arabs in areas claimed by the Palestinian Authority is a drug addict, according to statistics reported by the Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency Monday.

The Arab population of Judea and Samaria, along with those living in eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem, is estimated by Israeli demographers at slightly more than 1.5 million.

Maan reported that the PA health ministry stated that its population includes 50,000 drug addicts.

Anti-drugs campaigner Abdul Jabbar Yaraqan told Ma’an last year that Israel is to blame for part of the drug addiction problem in Jerusalem because it allegedly has intentionally abandoned dealing with the problem.

The Dutch government has advised business owners to refrain from labeling products from the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem as “Made in Israel.”

In a circular written by the Dutch Foreign Ministry and published on Wednesday on the website of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, stores are advised but not required to replace “Made in Israel” labels with a label reading “Product from Israeli settlement.”

This applies to products that require a label, such as fresh vegetables, fruit, wine, honey, olive oil, fish, beef, poultry, eggs and cosmetics products, the notice said. The recommendation is in line with guidelines published in 2012 after a meeting by EU foreign ministers that said that “the European Union and its members are obligated to fully and effectively implement existing EU legislation and agreements with Israel regarding products from the settlements.”

The notice also said that labeling products from areas beyond the Green Line as made in Israel would be “misleading,” as international law does not recognize those areas as being part of Israel.

The governments of Ireland, Denmark and the U.K. have also stated their support for labeling settlements products.

Palestinian Authority violence continued early Wednesday afternoon when approximately 200 Arabs in Samaria rioted and hurled rocks at soldiers who evacuated a small illegal village.

Two of the soldiers were lightly injured and w ere treated on the spot. The IDF shot over the heads of the rioters to disperse them.

Following the recent deterioration of the security situation in Judea and Samaria, local residents have decided to take their security into their hands, reinitiating a civilian based recon unit which was operative during the second Intifada. In recent months there has been a sharp upsurge in terrorist attacks against the residents of Judea and Samaria. The number of stone and fire-bomb attacks on the roads has increased dramatically. To contend with this reality the local security councils have decided to reestablish the civilian security patrols on the roads.

The IDF has lately decreased the size of its forces in Judea and Samaria. As a direct result, Arab terrorists are freer to operate.  Furthermore, the IDF has reopened some roads to Arab traffic which have been closed up until now for security reasons. This further endangers the Jewish motorists.

The security councils of Neve Tsuf and Ateret, in Benyamin, dispatched a letter to Minister of Defense Ehud Barak protesting their current precarious condition. “The situation is ablaze and there is no response provided, and it seems that the peak is still ahead of us,” they stated in the letter, “… The residents have come to one conclusion – the authorities have left us with no proper response and we must care for our own security. In a joint decision, we have decided to reestablish the civilian patrols which will scout the roads during the dangerous hours and will provide security to the residents against terrorism.”

They further stated that, “As citizens of the State of Israel, we regret that the trust we had in the security system no longer exists and we can no longer rely on the military to provide the necessary security to our communities and the roads leading to them.” The residents’ representatives concluded the letter with a demand that the IDF restore a presence in the region, thus providing the required security which will enable them to conduct their lives in a proper fashion. Copies of the letter were sent to top IDF officers in the region and to members of Knesset

The civilian patrols are deployed at crucial points, serving as spotters and deterrents. They are equipped with first aid kits and communication tools. They were directed to travel slowly to detect any looming danger. If attacked, they are to block the roads and warn other drivers of the upcoming perils.

On Feb. 18^th, several cars were significantly damaged after being attacked with stones on the Trans-Benyamin highway. It took the army a long time to arrive on the scene, and a significant numbers of cars were hit until the IDF finally arrived and stopped the attacks. Last Friday, several Israelis were ambushed with stones at several points on the roads. Earlier that day a driver spotted two youth who were about to attack him. He drew his weapon and waved it at them and they ran away. In a different incident, a driver was attacked and fired in the air, and the terrorists fled the scene.

Yitzchak Shadmy, Chairman of the Benyamin Residents Council and a lieutenant colonel in the IDF reserves told Tazpit News Agency: “The IDF has lately left various areas in Judea and Samaria. Now, every time something happens it takes the IDF a long time to respond, up to the point where they are not relevant. It is upsetting that the IDF has not yet comprehended that a new Intifada is on the rise, and that it can be stopped early on. We call on all the residents to join and create a standing by force that will protect the women and children, before someone pays a heavy price.”

Neve Tsuf’s secretariat told Tazpit that: “Following the IDF’s decrease of its forces in the region they are unable to fulfill their mission. With the knowledge of the security forces, a civilian patrol has been established. Its mission is to warn the IDF of security related incidents in real time. We regret that as citizens we are forced to replace the security forces guarding our lives. We demand that the political echelons get involved to restore a sense of security and peace to our area.”

An IDF official told Tazpit News Agency that they are doing their utmost, overtly and covertly, to contend with these attacks. The IDF categorizes stone attacks as terror and relates to them accordingly. He further added that the IDF has not decreased its presence in the region, but rather has redeployed its forces. He reaffirmed the IDF’s commitment to the residents of Judea and Samaria.