Only two hours after Monday’s murderous spree of two Hebron residents in the streets of Ra’anana, three terrorists were captured in an industrial park in Rehovot, some 22 miles away. The three were found with an explosive charge in a room they had rented in the industrial park. Both the Shin Bet’s success in preventing a potential tragedy and its failure to prevent the losses in Ra’anana suggest an unacceptable level of threat from the Palestinian Authority to Israeli civilians, even as Israeli soldiers are removing the threat of Hamas in Gaza.
Since the beginning of the war on October 7, there have been many attempts by terrorists from the PA to carry out attacks inside the Green Line. These attempts are inspired and encouraged by Hamas, and in most cases, they are stopped before the perpetrators manage to cross the border – largely due to the IDF’s intensive arrest operations in cities and “refugee” camps.
But Israel’s security apparatus is unable to detect and stop individual terrorist acts that are carried out on the spur-of-the-moment, such as Monday’s stabbing and ramming attacks in Ra’anana. The two terrorists, who were arrested by the security forces after their killing spree, are relatives from the Hebron area who stayed in Israel without a permit. One of them worked at a car wash in Ra’anana, after presenting a fake ID stating that he was an Israeli resident of the Bedouin city of Rahat in the Negev. His cousin reportedly showed up last week and stayed in his room above the carwash. He didn’t ask for work, just hung around with his cousin. Who knew?
The Shin Bet should have known. Both men were on the agency’s blacklist, forbidden from ever entering Israel after their repeated illegal entries in the past. The Israeli owner of the carwash was detained for interrogation for employing one of them. He should have contacted the police to find out if his new worker’s ID was real. The future terrorist would have been arrested immediately. But cheap labor without benefits has been hard to find in Israel since October 7, so the owner didn’t.
Monday’s murderous attack is reigniting the debate in Israel between Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the IDF brass who say Israel must bring back the PA-based day workers, to support industrial peace and tranquility in Ramallah, Shechem, Jenin, and Hebron, where a hundred thousand unemployed workers are a burden on the security forces, both Israel’s and the PA’s.
The pro-PA Arab employment voices also suggest this would be good for the Israeli economy which is struggling to survive without the foreign workers who fled to their home countries after October 7, and without the PA Arabs.
But Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and Minister of Economy Nir Barkat, who should be supporting the idea of letting a hundred thousand Arabs bloom, are steadfast against it, as are most of PM Netanyahu’s right-wing ministers. They point to incidents like the murder spree in Ra’anana to suggest, essentially, more PA Arab workers, and more terrorist attacks.
They also point out that the Gaza day workers who were employed in southern Israel before October 7, including on IDF bases, were a rich source of intelligence information for Hamas.
For the record: the absolute majority of terrorists from the Palestinian Authority who participated in attacks on Jews in recent years stayed in Israel without a permit. But does this mean that once they receive the desired permit, they would no longer constitute a terrorist threat?
I’m always reminded in this context of Comrade Vladimir Ilich Lenin’s prophecy, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” There would be no Hamas without Israel, nor would there be a PLO. Like the capitalists in Lenin’s parable, Israel’s democracy provided a small population of downtrodden Arab refugees, feared and loathed by every Arab country, with the means to destroy it. It’s what democracies do – commit suicide.
While the war in Gaza continues, and as long as there is no easing of the economic crisis in the Palestinian Authority, the security apparatus is warning of an imminent outbreak in the PA, far beyond what we have seen since the beginning of the war. There may be a violent explosion driven by Hamas and Fatah terrorists, as well as the armed PA security servicemen.
But if Israel were to let the Arab workers in from the PA, it would provide the terrorist groups with ripe opportunities to attack civilians, as they have done in 2021 and 2021, with dozens of Israeli victims.
The quality of the Israeli security forces in Judea and Samaria has been degraded because of the war in Gaza. Instead of regular units, the IDF now relies mainly on reservists. Last week things got so bad, that one elite force, the Duvdevan Mistaravim unit, was hurriedly yanked from Gaza and put to work in the PA.
The only light at the end of the tunnel would be the light in Yahya Sinwar’s tunnel, after he is captured, tried, and executed, with or without the release of the surviving hostages. Only such a decisive victory against Hamas in Gaza would deliver the necessary blow to PA terrorism. Barring such an outcome, the safety of Israeli civilians in their homes appears to depend on the greed of businessmen who hire cheap, illegal Arab labor to the detriment of their innocent neighbors.
