New York — The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has questioned why the need still exists for Israel to mobilize and increase security measures and implement a closure of Judea and Samaria on the eve of Passover if Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas is a peace-seeking, moderate Palestinian leader who is supposedly fulfilling his various peace treaty commitments and obligations by, for example, preventing and fighting terrorism against Israel. Reports indicate that terrorist threats have led Israel military, police and security forces to go on a heightened state of alert.
The initial stage of preparations is already underway, as police mobilize to form three rings of security extending from the “Green Line” pre-1967 armistice line dividing Israel from Judea and Samaria through to Israeli city centers. According to Yaacov Lappin’s report in the Jerusalem Post, “an increased police presence will be felt across the inner cities, and in markets, shopping centers and other population centers. Mobile checkpoints will spring up at the entrances and exits of cities. Police will also increase forces in and around Jerusalem…At international border crossings, police have been instructed to make more stringent checks.” (Yaacov Lappin, “Police on heightened alert for Pessah,” Jerusalem Post, April 6, 2009; see also “IDF to impose closure on West Bank ahead of Pesach“, Ha’aretz, April 6, 2009).
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said: “After decades of engagement, over $6 billion in US aid to the Palestinians, 16 years of the ‘peace process’ and a half dozen Israeli Prime Ministers being pressured into making painful concessions, one would have thought that the situation would have progressed. One would have thought that people in Israel would now be safe and secure in their celebrations of the Passover holiday without the IDF and Israel Police being forced to close Judea and Samaria and initiate heightened security measures to stave off Palestinian terrorism. Indeed, if the “peace process” had actually accomplished something real and substantial to benefit the security of the Israeli people, one would have thought that Palestinian terrorism and incitement to hatred and murder within the PA would, by now, be something of the bygone past.
“But what is one to make of the bizarre situation whereby, on the one hand, the United States government is constantly praising Mahmoud Abbas as a moderate peace-seeker who is sincerely devoted to fighting and preventing terrorism, is rewarding Abbas and the PA with financial support, is building up and training PA security forces, and is reiterating American political, diplomatic and financial support for Palestinian statehood, while, on the other hand, the IDF and Israel Police are mobilizing a heightened security effort to prevent Palestinian terrorism from Judea and Samaria from reaching into Israel during the Passover holiday? Is it peace that is within reach, or is more terrorism just around the corner?
“Why is America pushing Israel to continue to negotiate with Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party to discuss more land concessions and even statehood while Fatah is unwilling to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and continues to be unwilling or unable to stop terrorist attacks emanating from Judea and Samaria, a territory Fatah allegedly controls? If Abbas and his Fatah party cannot be motivated to stop terrorism when they are is still seeking Israeli concessions, what possible motivation will Abbas or his Fatah party have to do it when they have received all these concessions?
“Abbas and Fatah have taken absolutely no action to fulfill signed Palestinian commitments under the Oslo agreements and the 2003 Roadmap peace plan to arrest terrorists, confiscate their weaponry and end the incitement to hatred and murder that permeates the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps. Just yesterday, the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz reported that according to Israeli Security sources “Fatah has resumed terrorist activities” (Amos Harel, “Security sources: Fatah has resumed terrorist activities,” Ha’aretz, April 5, 2009).
“The Obama administration’s drive for creating a Palestinian state regardless of what Palestinians think and do is bound to lead to still more bloodshed and disaster. We have no reason for assuming that a sovereign Palestinian state, in a Judea and Samaria ethnically cleansed of Jews, will be any more peaceable, any more conciliatory or any more responsible than the current terror-promoting and terrorist-protecting regime.
“At no time has statehood been a method for preventing terrorism or producing peace. Iran, Syria and North Korea are all sovereign states – they are not lovely and peaceful. On the contrary, regimes like these in control of a country have greater capacity to inflict harm and advance their illiberal, violent agendas. The massive security operation that Israel is obliged to put in place to protect the country during a major holiday is a stark and sad testimony to these truths.”
