by Shai Alon, Mayor of Beit El, translated by Hillel Fendel.
These past two weeks provided several close-up opportunities for us to learn about a matter that has been of great concern for many years. It is something that the mayors of municipal councils and towns in Yosh (Judea and Samaria) have long been loudly warning about. I'm referring to the smuggling of large amounts of weapons, from Iran and elsewhere, into Judea and Samaria – for use against local pioneering Jews, and also in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
We saw in recent days and weeks a failed suicide terrorist in Tel Aviv; the elimination of Asin al Makdah in Lebanon, who together with his brother ran an arms smuggling operation into Yosh; and clear indications of anti-personnel mines among PA elements in Yosh.
This is not a new phenomenon that we never knew about. It is rather something that has simply been not attended to sufficiently. Old Israel – i.e., Israel before Oct. 7th – acted in a tactical, local, and insufficient manner against the well-planned Iranian strategy that is gradually headed towards massive arming of the Arabs of Yosh and the terror organizations there.
Old Israel, which carried out the successful Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, followed it by entering a phase of relative passivity vis-à-vis the terrorists. It thus bought a measure of quiet in Yosh, at the price of the continued entry of weapons and armed terrorists into the region. These policies of the past 20 years have brought us to a situation in which the IDF is unable to enter the PA villages without facing concrete threats to the lives of our soldiers.
All these years, Israel preferred to avoid friction, and what we received was a threat many times larger than what we would have faced had we acted as we should have against the Iran/Jordan/PA smugglings into Judea and Samaria.
Some ten days ago, the miraculous failure of a terrorist to detonate a suitcase full of explosives inside a packed Tel Aviv synagogue is an example of the sad reality in Yosh: Hamas and Islamic Jihad are recruiting more and more terrorists to their ranks in Judea and Samaria, as opposed to in Gaza, and are using advanced weaponry to carry out major attacks on civilian targets.
The failed attack in Tel Aviv is actually a success from their standpoint, because of the fact that the terrorist was able to penetrate so deeply into "little Israel" with a large amount of explosives without being detected. The calamity that was avoided thanks to Divine Providence attests, more than ever, to the danger that our security forces face in Judea and Samaria. This was not an unusual incident, but rather a dangerous precedent.
It is now the turn of "new Israel," the post-Oct. 7th Israel, to act differently and to take the bull by the horns. This could be the great opportunity of the still-new IDF Central Commander, Gen. Avi Blut, to take charge of our eastern border, through which many weapons have been smuggled, and make an essential change. True, we're engaged in a war already. But the State of Israel, and particularly its security establishment, may not allow themselves to take its eyes off this major strategic threat.
The Arabs of Yosh's Jordan Valley, on the Jordanian border, have the will, intention, and ability to supply terrorists with many weapons and powerful charges. It is incumbent upon the security forces in the area to step up their offensives against the terrorist bodies that are increasingly establishing themselves as a leading arena in Judea and Samaria. The IDF must encircle the city centers, go from house to house, and simply clean them out of all weapons. The terrorists in Yosh must not be allowed to feel safe in their homes or in their market places. We must strengthen and reinforce the eastern border, and we must establish systems for identification, monitoring and warning, even as our ongoing security activities continue alongside it.
The current reality leaves us no choice. Israel must carry out a wide-ranging operation, as we have been calling for even before the current war began, and as is just as applicable and relevant even now.
If not, the calamity that was averted in Tel Aviv will return to plague us in a different locale, but with horrific consequences, Heaven forbid. In order for this not to happen, we must truly internalize how explosive the situation is at present, take strong action against the smuggling, and search for and collect all the smuggled-in, dangerous weapons in Judea and Samaria.
The recent successful liquidation of a smuggler in Lebanon must be the opening shot for "new Israel" and new, take-the-initiative policies to effectively answer our security needs.