End the Red Tape to Prevent Terror

The United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, expressed concern over the Israeli arrest operations in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), as Israel continued to conduct an urgent search to save three kidnapped youths. At first I could not react to this as I felt it was inappropriate to be political at a time of danger to human life. Further the level of frustration I feel at even thinking about this is painful for another reason.  I feel that the flaws of the Oslo accords are haunting us in this. That only because in an effort to win favor with terrorists, cities of refuge for terror were enshrined into administrative policy in Judea and Samaria so that today we find that the apparatus to immediately end the kidnapping in a good way does not exist. Something is wrong with security when you have to practically rely on miracles for the safety of your citizens.

In addition to the danger to the kids lives created by these cities of refuge that the Knesset signed off on, what about the reaction of the UN to this?  Was this unexpected? No one with any familiarity of current trends at the UN would not expect this reaction. But rather than commenting on the injustice from the UN or quoting all the details of the story, I did want to point out that this horrible situation is an illustration of how failing to annex the territories is creating perpetual opportunities for the world to complain about urgently needed police action. It is constant Hasbara in reverse. A PR nightmare just waiting to happen every time the Palestinian Authority is unable or unwilling to resolve the situation. This situation also shows that the promises made by Labor, Kadima and Likud that we could give land and have security is just not true. If a treaty was ratified before the international community that the land the Palestinians govern for Israel actually belongs to them, would a future situation like this where Israel felt they must follow through in hot pursuit of a potential security breach create worse reactions or less reactions from the international community? Need I even comment on it?

There can only be the IDF in charge of all the security West of the River Jordan. The boys would likely already have been found if nests of hiding places from the IDF were not created by restricting their ability to travel freely for the sake of security.  Imagine being the parents of one of those boys, knowing this would have been happily over already if the IDF had free reign to protect the people of Israel from kidnappers. Imagine what the parents of a different group of teens would say if this, Heaven forbid, would occur again?  They would say to the Knesset. 'You knew! You knew and still you did not protect us!'

And now with Hamas in tow, does anyone seriously believe things with the PA will be getting better anytime soon? Remove the PA from power so that all people, Jew and Arab alike may live in peace and security West of the River Jordan. A safe plan of annexation like the Everyone Wins peace plan could ease the transition without further risks to the right or the left.  Then the government will be able to say, we have done our job, we have protected our people.  May it soon be so, by the grace of God.