MKs warn against plan to let armed PA officers work alongside IDF
A group of Knesset members from coalition parties this week warned the government against strengthening cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, speaking amid reports that Ramallah has agreed to deploy police officers who will counter-terror alongside IDF personnel in Samaria and the Jordan Valley.
On Sept. 9, Israel’s Channel 14 News reported that Jerusalem would permit armed P.A. forces to fight terrorism after the conclusion of the IDF’s large-scale operations in northern Samaria and the Jordan Valley.
“A good example of this can be seen in Nablus,” a security official told the outlet, in reference to the major Palestinian terrorist hub in Samaria.
According to the letter, which was signed by 19 members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition at the initiative of MK Limor Son Har-Melech, the P.A. “cannot be trusted to keep us safe as it finances and supports terrorism.
“P.A. personnel have already carried out attacks against Israelis. To let them operate among us while armed is a continuation of the dangerous [security] concept that brought us disasters in the past,” the legislators continued.
“History shows that every time the P.A. was given access to weapons, those weapons were eventually used against Israeli citizens,” they said, calling on the government to cancel the reported move and “classify the Palestinian Authority as an enemy and act accordingly.”
The letter was signed by lawmakers from Netanyahu’s governing Likud Party, Son Har-Melech’s Otzma Yehudit Party and the Religious Zionism Party, as well as opposition member MK Sharren Haskel (New Hope).
Many members of Israel’s security establishment support the Palestinian Authority’s control over parts of Judea and Samaria as a “moderating force,” as opposed to Hamas and other Iran-backed terrorist groups.
Members of Ramallah’s security forces have a long history of attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians. Last year, Fatah, the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority, boasted that most of its “martyrs” served in the P.A. police.
In addition, the Hamas terrorist organization has recruited dozens of P.A. security forces members, using them as terrorist combatants and for intelligence gathering, Israel’s Kan News public broadcaster reported in mid-2023.
On Sept. 2, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a “military” arm of Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, declared responsibility for a double car bombing attack in the Gush Etzion region of Judea.
The following day, the Brigades claimed responsibility for a drive-by shooting that killed three Israeli police officers near Hebron, also in Judea.
The P.A.-linked terrorist group vowed that it would continue to “pursue the occupier [Israel] at every intersection, alley and neighborhood, until it is expelled from our land and our holy sites, Inshallah [‘God willing’].”
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