By NOAM AMIR/MAARIV HASHAVUA , JPOST
This coming Monday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz will end his four year term and will be replaced by Maj.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot. Waiting on Eisenkot’s desk are some chilling security assessments including the potential risk that the security situation in the West Bank will deteriorate in the near future.
Over the past weeks, in the context of Gantz’s farewells to the various IDF divisions, the outgoing Chief of Staff spoke again and again about the fragile security reality in the West Bank. Gantz even spoke of the influence of politics on the territory, probably in reference to the upcoming Israeli elections and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ unilateral moves in international bodies.
Another cause of the “heating up” of the West Bank is Israel’s decision not to transfer tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority in response to its ICC membership – a move that is bringing about the collapse of the Palestinian economy.
Against this background, the army has told the government that at any given moment the Palestinian Authority can collapse.
In one of the scenarios that the IDF presented, a small localized security incident, like an altercation between settlers and Palestinians, or the throwing of a Molotov cocktail could quickly escalate to rioting in the Galilee and the Triangle area. With the weakened Palestinian Authority a situation like this is liable to lead to terrorist organizations taking control of the West Bank.
The army has pointed to the month of April as a critical moment for security in the West Bank. In April, the Palestinian Authority’s money is expected to run out, it is slated to formally join the ICC and immediately ask to investigate Israel, and the new government in Israel will take power. Tensions surrounding all these events, including the anger caused in the Palestinian street if the current political leadership is re-elected to office, may lead to a deterioration in the security situation.
The IDF has begun to prepare for this possible deterioration, and with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) has been carrying out many operations for the seizure of ammunition in the West Bank. In the process, the army has also seized funds meant to bolster Hamas’s standing in the territory. The frequent operations are slated to continue through March.
The army says its fears of a security deterioration are based on an upswing in terror activity including the throwing of Molotov cocktails and stones and the use of other improvised weapons. Such acts have been carried out recently on a daily basis. The security assessments are also based on a rise in incitement against Israel in the Palestinian social media. Many of the prominent figures inciting against Israel are prisoners who were freed in 2011 in the deal to release IDF soldier Gilad Schalit.
The IDF says that the security situation is even more complicated by developments in areas outside of the West Bank. In Gaza desperation is on the rise as the rehabilitation following last summer’s war is stalling raising the specter that Hamas will again open fire. On the Lebanese border and in the Golan Heights there is a state of alert after hostilities of past weeks.
@ Bear Klein:
BK:
The Arab civilizational belt is ruled largely and historically by tribes and clans, and that pattern, over thousands of years, has brought such rule into urban Arab populations. As a matter of fact, tribal and clan rivalries are one of the key factors underlying the all-but-incredible instability of larger Arab states.
So I am not writing here about putting “a guy” into power in any of the Arab cities in Yesha. What I have in mind is allowing the natural and traditional pattern of Arab rule asserting itself. And that is rule by tribes and clans, which tend to be far more stable than any other form of government among them.
The rule-by-hamula plan that I have been advocating is roughly equivalent to the “Eight State Solution” of Professor Mordechai Kedar, which is also supported by MK Naftali Bennett and his party. I don’t know or care what individual Arabs think about that plan, because I am not interested in democracy in general, and especially not the kind of democracy promoted for Arabs and Jews by idiots representing governments and either has-been or would-be empires in Washington, London, Paris, or Brussels.
In any case, the very fact that Fatah’s “Palestine Authority”, could be broken up by combination of bankruptcy and exclusively Jewish settlement covering Area C, which accounts for 62 per cent of the lands in Shomron and Yehuda, tells me above all that the present arrangement, even if the UN were to recognize it, is totally unstable and, in the long run, unsustainable. Which, by the way, serves the interests of the Jewish state and the Jewish nation.
My hope is that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu — whom I am certain will lead the next government of Israel, will come to understand that rule by Fatah and by Hamas must be broken up, and that, the large Arab city populations cannot be ruled directly by a Jewish government in Jerusalem. I also think that if these steps are taken, over time, it will be easier for Israel to negotiate separate autonomy agreements with those local Arab notable families and clans, then attempting to deal similarly with pumped-up Arab overlords who purport to represent all the Arab in all those families and clans.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
@ ArnoldHarris:
This has been tried before and when a local guy agreed to take charge he was either threatened or killed?
@ yeshol:
Yeshol:
I don’t anticipate Zahal or Israeli security forces finding need to fight the PA security forces. The latter are hired guns. They, and probably Abbas, are probably the main recipients of whatever cash the PA gets. Once the source is dried up by means of Israel pulling the plug on them, the PA hired guns will go private.
Which is exactly what Israel should expect and, even hope for. Because once Israel negotiates local Arab autonomy arrangements in each of the main Arab cities in Shomron and Yehuda — Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus, Kalkilya, Ramallah, Jericho, Bethlehem, and Hebron — the hamula (blood-related clan) or other notable family that rises to the top in each Arab city will want and need experienced cops and militiamen to help them stay in control. That will require them to keep the peace and stay out of trouble with the real Sultanate — which will be the Israeli government and army.
Will it be difficult to recruit the local Arabs to play their roles in these new arrangements? I don’t think so. Few people — Moslems, Christians, Jews, or whomever — are strong willed enough to refuse a chance to take power and to enrich themselves from its exercise. Most people, in fact, are as buyable as postage stamps.
Jews should stop worrying about displeasing the world. The world at large doesn’t really give a damn what happens to the Jewish nation, for better or for worse. And chances are, that’s the way the world has always worked and will be that way forever. For instance, who really cares now whatever happened between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes of East Africa a few years ago?
Thinking back on it, I can’t even remember who did the butchering, the Hutus or the Tutsis. Nor would I really care even if I knew for sure. Because I’m not a Hutu and I’m not a Tutsi. My interests are confined to my own Jewish nation, and, if and when all the Americans can get their act together and start retiring that $18 trillion Federal debt, then my interests will expand also to what used to be the great USA.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
When and if the PA collapses, the IDF will have contingency plans for taking security and administration at first. There will be violence. Palestinian on Palestinian. Palestinian on Israeli.
Once the IDF gets control, Israel should have a referendum in Area C to see if the inhabitants want to be part of the state of Israel. The vote will be yes and it will become part of the State of Israel.
In Arab towns in Area C and East Jerusalem start a program to buy the Arabs out of their property. Help them move overseas. Let individual Jews or organizations buy this property from the government of Israel. Take the money and plow it back into the program to keep it going.
Arnold Harris is of course absolutely right: every good manager analyzes a coming crisis and evaluates whether he should avoid it or use it as an opportunity to improve – and what is the cost/benefit ration. In this case the cost will not be small: it will mean fighting the Fatah police with whom our security forces have worked hand-in-hand for many years; it will mean over the short term more incidents, more Israeli casualties, and more Arab casualties, and the bad press that follows. IF the Israeli government decides to go ahead with it, and institute the 8-state solution of Mordechai Kedar – it is the preferred way. See http://www.cijr.com/eight-state-solution-mordechai-kedar
Depending upon Israel’s responses to growing evidence that withholding of Fatah’s funding could collapse the so-called Palestine Authority, I cannot think of news which has more positive potential for Israel and the Jewish nation. As most Israpundit readers and commenters who read my comments here well know by now, the game plan I have been supporting in recent years is:
1) Transfer of Israeli authority in Area C from Zahal to the civil government, leading to a more or less permanent status of de facto sovereignty over that territory.
2) Undercutting of Fatah’s control in the main Arab-populated cities of Shomron and Yehuda by negotiating local autonomy agreements with the various predominant Arab hamulas and other notable families of each such city.
This process, which would involve little expense and which could in fact bring enforceable calm to Shomron and Yehuda, would be made far easier to implement if Fatah’s control, now exercised by the totally artificial Palestine Authority, were to dissolve by the natural process of total bankruptcy. The PA, in fact, has a permanent Jewish lock grip around its throat, which is precisely a situation that is in the interest of the Jewish state and the Jewish nation.
Would the situation be the same if the PA were replaced by some eight or nine urban Arab hamulas or notable families, as under Ottoman rule for many centuries? Not at all. Among other things, the Sultan would be located in the Knesset of Israel, only a few miles from any and all those eight or nine cities. Nature abhors vacuums, and in the affairs of the nations, power not grasped is power lost to someone else. Let the Jewish nation and its government in Jerusalem act accordingly.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI