Where terrorists run free: Lessons from a few hours in the Palestinian Authority’s Jenin

Israeli security forces spent a few hours in the Palestinian Authority city of Jenin earlier this month. The incident didn’t make much news, but there’s much to be learned from it.

Let’s start with the extent of the terrorist presence in the city. The Israelis managed to eliminate a total of nine armed terrorists and uncovered four explosives laboratories.

The city is literally riddled with bomb-making sites—yet somehow the PA police never noticed them. Some of the terrorists were killed by Israeli air strikes, which then set off “multiple secondary explosions,” according to the Israeli Army spokesman. That indicated “the presence of weapons caches.” Israeli forces also “neutralized dozens of explosives planted along routes intended to target Israeli soldiers.”

What a city! Explosives labs. Weapons caches. Terrorists busily planting dozens of bombs on various roads. Yet not a single member of the PA police or security forces ever noticed them. Amazing!

The PA has been the sole governing authority in Jenin since 1995. For twenty-nine years, the U.S.-trained PA security forces have been in charge.

That security force began as a 12,000-man “strong police force,” according to Article VII of the first Oslo Accord. It grew into a 60,000-man “security force” that has become a de-facto army.

What are the PA security forces required to do in cities such as Jenin? The Oslo agreement says they must “apprehend, investigate and prosecute perpetrators and all other persons directly or indirectly involved in acts of terrorism, violence and incitement.” (Annex I, Article II, 3-c of Oslo II).

 The PA has ignored that obligation for three decades now. It doesn’t arrest terrorists, it doesn’t shut down their explosives labs or confiscate their weapons depots, as the Israeli forces discovered, yet again, in Jenin this week.

 According to the World Atlas, the PA has the sixth-largest per-capita security force in the world—an astonishing 1,250 “police officers” per 100,000 people. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has reported that “by late 1998, the PA security services…had in almost every regard violated the letter of the agreements reached with Israel,” turning the Palestinian Authority governed areas into “one of the most heavily policed territories in the world.”

Yet somehow those PA security forces can’t find a single bomb-making lab after 29 years in Jenin, while the Israelis found four of them over the space of a few hours.

Now let’s take a look at how the PA responded to the latest Israeli operation in Jenin.

The Palestinian Authority’s leaders should have been celebrating, right? After all, the State Department, the United Nations, and J Street keep telling us that the PA is opposed to terrorism. Peace Now and the Washington Post insist that the PA is “moderate” and is against the “extremists.” So the PA should have been delighted that the Israelis were catching and eliminating terrorists.