The rocket threat from the West Bank is being ignored by the media - but it will change everything when it happens

One of the Hamas terrorists arrested by Israeli forces in Jenin on Monday was Abdallah Hassan Muhammad Zubah. He is known to be one of the major forces behind the nascent West Bank rocket firing attempts.

There have been several attempts to fire rockets over the past few months into Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. They've so far either misfired or landed away from the Jewish targets. 

The luck won't hold out forever. The genie is out of the bottle and Hamas and other terror groups have plenty of experience building rockets which they are anxious to transfer to the West Bank. 

As unacceptable as it is to have large arsenals of rockets in Gaza (and Lebanon) aimed at Jewish communities, in some ways rockets in the West Bank would be worse. Their targets are often very close by, and unlike with Hamas or Hezbollah, Israel has no government to pressure to stop the rockets from being fired - just as with in the West Bank can easily get M16s, they will soon be able to put together crude rockets. 

Right now, Israeli forces can arrive on the scene of a terror attack within minutes in Judea and Samaria. It can pro-actively stop rocket launchers being setup if it has proper intelligence.  But if Israel would unilaterally withdraw from areas of those territories, each incident becomes an invasion.

This is reason by itself that unilateral withdrawals, or a Palestinian state even on provisional borders, is a supremely bad idea. 

But the rocket fire will come, sooner rather than later. Jewish communities will be threatened. The same "primitive" rockets with a two-mile range that reach Sderot from Gaza can also reach the suburbs of Netanya from Tulkarm. 

Not enough people are considering the dangers of West Bank rockets - and the media won't care until they kill someone. If even then. 

Now is the time that Israel needs to pro-actively let the media and world leaders know that any rocket that injures or kills an Israeli will prompt a massive response that can cause unpredictable results. The PA needs to be pressured by its international  friends to step up its presence in the "refugee camps" and other areas it has effectively ceded to Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups. 

Because otherwise, as always, the world will be fixated on the "disproportionate" response more than the rockets themselves. 

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Today's Jenin raid was remarkable - and it shows how Israel adheres to human rights law in even impossible conditions

From Times of Israel:

The Israeli military arrested three members of the Hamas terror group during a raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank on Monday morning, marking the first overt entry of forces to the camp since a major operation was carried out in the area two months ago.

In a joint statement, the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet security agency, and Border Police said troops entered the camp and nabbed Abdullah Hassan Mohammed Sobeh, Ward Sharim, and Mus’ab Ja’aydah.

The IDF said troops opened fire at the wanted gunmen as they attempted to flee a building when the forces arrived. One of the armed Palestinians shot in the leg and seriously wounded, and was taken by helicopter to Rambam Hospital in Haifa.

An assault rifle belonging to one of the wanted Palestinians was seized, the IDF said.

The IDF said troops also responded with live fire against Palestinian gunmen who opened fire at forces in the area, and Palestinian rioters hurling stones.

A local wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group said its gunmen opened fire at Israeli forces on the outskirts of the camp.

The Palestinian Authority health ministry said four people were lightly wounded by Israeli fire in the area and taken to nearby hospitals.

No Israeli soldiers were wounded in the operation.

The IDF did injured the captured terrorists, and transported them by helicopter to a hospital. 

Imagine the difficulty of such an operation.

The goal, as always, is to arrest terrorists - not to kill them. The IDF knows that it will be attacked from all directions in a crowded camp that is filled with booby-traps, IEDs and angry youth with stones, firebombs and automatic weapons. 

And in the end, no one was killed on either side. The terrorists were captured alive. 

This must have involved many, many hours of planning, intelligence and practice. 

But this result is always what the IDF wants to see. It doesn't want to kill people, but when under fire, soldiers must return fire towards the source. Nearly every person killed in the past two years were involved in fighting or members of terror groups. For urban warfare, this is incredible, and military experts know this.

But the media ignores all of that. "Human rights groups" insist on perfection in a war zone and that the IDF use peacetime, law enforcement standards when the enemy is often a heavily armed military group. As much as they can, Israel tries to live up to those standards, and it showed that today, even if it is not at all clear that the more flexible laws of armed conflict wouldn't apply to Jenin today.  

The world is so obsessed with demonizing Israel that it ignores how unique it is for an army to have so few civilian casualties in urban war zones. 

Try to find stories where US or British troops entered a crowded town and extracted wanted men under constant fire without killing anyone. If it has ever happened, it is incredibly rare. Yet the IDF strives to do that each and every time - and its success today proves that. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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