WarSclerotic

Israel set to open second int’l airport near Eilat in response to flight cancellations | JPost | Israel News.

( Good news for my home, Eilat.  Maybe we’ll host a few extra tourists before they continue to Tel Aviv. – JW )

By JPOST.COM STAFF

07/23/2014 10:29

Transportation minister convened meeting of senior civilian aviation officials who recommended that Uvda airport be utilized to replace Ben-Gurion Airport beginning noon local time.

Transportation Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday instructed the relevant agencies to immediately open the Uvda airport, the country’s second terminus for air traffic which lies just north of Eilat, in the wake of the spate of flight cancellations announced by major foreign airlines.

Katz convened a meeting of senior civilian aviation officials who recommended that the Uvda airport be utilized to replace Ben-Gurion Airport.

Speaking to reporters at Ben-Gurion Airport, Katz said that Uvda would begin operating at noon local time. The minister said that efforts are also being made to provide service to some 4,000 Israelis who were left stranded in Istanbul after their airlines refused to fly into Lod in light of the FAA ban announced on Tuesday.

Katz said that his ministry had urged Turkish aviation officials to transport the Israelis back home, but that the Turks are hesitant to land their aircraft in Uvda.

Israel Radio reported on Wednesday that US Airways will renew its regular fights to Israel beginning on Thursday.

Air travel to Israel from all American carriers and several European ones came to a halt on Tuesday after the Federal Aviation Authority banned US airlines from traveling to and from Ben-Gurion Airport for 24 hours.

The decision followed the successful firing of a Hamas rocket into a house in Yehud, near Ben-Gurion Airport earlier in the day.

“The FAA immediately notified US carriers when the agency learned of the rocket strike and informed them that the agency was finalizing a [Notice to Airmen]” prohibiting the flights, an FAA statement read.

American aviation companies Delta and United Airlines said they were suspending flights to Israel “indefinitely,” while US Airways reportedly only suspended flights for the night.

Soon after the FAA decision, Lufthansa announced a 36-hour suspension, which included subsidiaries Germanwings, Austrian Airlines and Swiss, and Air France announced its own indefinite suspension.

“As soon as the FAA gives such an order to US carriers, in most cases it’s a domino effect, and most European carriers will be forced to suspend their flights,” said an industry source.

The European Aviation Safety Agency was also expected to release a “strong recommendation” against flying to Israel, according to several media sources.

Delta diverted flight 468 from JFK, which was already en route to Tel Aviv with 273 passengers and 17 crew members, to Charles de Gaulle in Paris “after reports of a rocket or associated debris near the airport in Tel Aviv,” and said that it was working to accommodate its customers.

Earlier in the conflict, Korean Air suspended operations for a week.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday evening, and asked him to help restore regular flights to Israel from the US.

Katz called on American aviation companies to return to normal functioning, stressing that Ben-Gurion Airport was safe for take-offs and landings, and that there was no security concern for passenger planes.

“There is no reason for the American companies to stop their flights and give a prize to terror,” he said.

Hamas has explicitly targeted the airport in hopes of stopping or slowing air traffic.

Earlier in the conflict, it lobbed a handful of rockets in the direction of the airport, suspending traffic there for nine minutes.

“The armed wing of the Hamas movement has decided to respond to the Israeli aggression, and we warn you against carrying out flights to Ben-Gurion Airport, which will be one of our targets today because it also hosts a military air base,” a statement by the group said at the time.

In an interview with Channel 2, Katz added that he believed the FAA decision was an automatic reaction to the rocket landing, and hoped to convince them to reinstate flights on Wednesday. Despite some foreign airlines’ concerns, El Al said that “There is no chance we will stop operations.”

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the FAA notice was motivated exclusively by security concerns and was being continually reviewed.

In labor disputes with the government, El Al has argued that it is the only airline the country can rely on to continue flying during tough security times, and that Israel should foot more of the bill for its security needs. During the 1991 Gulf War, every airline but El Al suspended service to Israel.

Asked whether Netanyahu had asked the FAA to rescind the order, a senior Obama administration official said he was not aware of the request, but added: “We’re not going to overrule the FAA, period.”

“If the FAA says this crosses our tripwires, we’re not going to say ‘Don’t warn civil aviation.’ We understand Israeli concerns. They don’t want to have a shutdown of air traffic into Ben Gurion. We can look at this every 24 hours, but (when) a rocket lands a mile from that airport, that kind of trips their wire.”

In recent weeks, Ben-Gurion Airport has rerouted flights’ landing and takeoff paths to the north in order to boost security in the face of rockets from the South.

Though the Iron Dome missile defense system has managed to shoot down about 90 percent of rockets headed toward populated or strategic areas, the FAA’s decision was likely fueled by the recent downing of a Malaysian plane in Ukraine, likely by pro-Russian rebels.

Should the suspension continue, it could have a significant impact on Israel’s economy.

Tourism accounts for about 5% of Israel’s exports and about 1.5%-2% of GDP.

Incoming tourism has already declined as a result of the rocket fire from Gaza, with organized groups canceling at a rate of about 30% for July and August.

Yet the cancellation of flights, should it continue for a significant period of time, could have a greater impact on the economy. A May report by the Bank of Israel found that business travel to Israel tends to be more resilient than leisure tourism in the face of security problems.

Without ways to get into the country, however, business travelers, who have historically accounted for 12%-20% of travelers to Israel, will also be kept behind.

Worse, the precedent of flights canceled due to security may deter them from future business dealings.

On the other hand, the economic effects of a oneday suspension would be negligible, according to the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce’s Uriel Lynn.

“Is it affecting Israel’s business now? No. It’s 24 hours. It’s not a big deal. We have telecommunications infrastructure that helps us get business done,” Lynn told The Jerusalem Post.

The chances of a longer suspension seemed unlikely, he added, given Hamas’s inability to strike at the airport up until now. America’s political stance on terrorism and alliance with Israel, Lynn offered, would likely affect the FAA’s decision.

“The moment they forbid flights to Israel, they strengthen Hamas, who say, ‘Great, we’re succeeding in isolating Israel, we’re fulfilling our goals.’ I don’t think the FAA wants to do that,” he said.

On Monday, the US State Department issued a travel warning recommending “that US citizens consider the deferral of non-essential travel to Israel and the West Bank,” but noted that “Ben-Gurion Airport is currently open and commercial flights are operating normally, although delays and cancellations can occur.”

MK Dov Lipman (Yesh Atid) said US demands for a cease-fire contradict its canceling flights and issuing travel warnings.

“If we are being asked to hold our fire, we must have already succeeded in restoring peace and quiet. If it is unsafe for flights and US citizens to come to Israel, then we clearly have more fighting to do to protect ourselves from Hamas. Some clarifications and explaining is certainly in order,” he said.

MK Danny Danon (Likud) pointed out that many airlines from countries that are less friendly to Israel than the US did not cancel flights.

“I hope this decision will be changed and will not help Hamas’s psychological warfare,” Danon said.

Obama to the rescue – of Hamas | JPost | Israel News.

By CAROLINE B. GLICK

 07/22/2014 21:03

Chances that Kerry will secure a cease-fire in near future are small; government will likely be able to buy time needed to complete mission in whole or large part.

Operation Protective Edge is now two weeks old. Since the ground offensive began Thursday night, we have begun to get a better picture of just how dangerous Hamas has become in the nine years since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. And what we have learned is that the time has come to take care of this problem. It cannot be allowed to fester or grow anymore.

Statements by PM Netanyahu and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon – YouTube.

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Six Reasons Why Americans Should Care About the War Between Hamas and Israel, Breitbart.com, Brooke Goldstein July 22, 2014

1. Because of 9/11

Hamas and al-Qaeda are of the same ilk. Brothers in arms, both Islamist terrorist groups are funded by Iran and theologically motivated to wage a violent jihad, or holy war, against the West. Both deadly organizations aspire to destroy those they consider “infidels” (Americans and Israelis included) while re-establishing a pan-Arab Caliphate and, in so doing, have killed too many innocents. While al-Qaeda can be credited for the deaths of thousands of Americans on 9/11 and in the Afghan and Iraq wars that followed, Hamas has murdered dozens of Americans abroad. A significant reason why Hamas has not been able to export its terror activities closer to home is the Israeli counter-terror naval, air and land blockade of Gaza, which is meant to prevent Hamas personnel from importing weapons and traveling internationally.

Israel is seen by Hamas—and all Islamist groups—as the outpost of the West in the Middle East. Today, Israel’s soldiers are literally on the frontlines of the battle against militant Islam. Since its founding in 1987, Hamas has attacked Israel with more than 8,000 rockets. This is not because Hamas is engaged in a civil and human rights struggle for Palestinian sovereignty and freedom. We know Hamas doesn’t care about the Arab people it governs because it uses their children as human shields, child soldiers, and suicide bombers. Rather, Hamas knows that if the West abandons Israel, if we allow Israel to suffer a defeat via terrorism, then Hamas and its allies can attack and defeat us. “First comes Saturday [the Jews], then comes Sunday [the Christians],” as the Islamist saying goes.

2. Because the Two-State Solution is Being Called into Question

Longstanding U.S. foreign policy has been to support a “two-state solution” to the conflict in the Middle East. Successive U.S. administrations have promoted ceding land to the Palestinians, claiming this will result in peace between the Islamist and Western worlds. It was on this basis that Israel was pressured to remove its citizens and soldiers from Gaza in 2005. When Israel withdrew entirely, it purposefully left intact the economic infrastructure it abandoned with the hope it would be used to improve the Palestinian economy. Gaza was a testing ground for the concept of a sovereign Palestinian state. Israel and the world hoped the Palestinian people would use the opportunity to elect a government that respected their human rights and sought to live in peace with its neighbors.

Instead, Hamas, a designated terrorist group, rose to power and proceeded to destroy the economy, import weapons into Gaza, enforce a brutal version of Islamic law, advocate for the genocide of the Jewish people, and declare perpetual war on Israel, America, and the West. A cycle of armed conflict began, with Hamas launching attacks, Israel temporarily neutralizing the threat, civilian casualties and calls for restraint, followed by Hamas re-arming and firing rocket attacks again.  Such recent history calls into question the wisdom of supporting a Palestinian state in the West Bank, which, if led by the Palestinian Authority (which has recently entered into a unity deal with Hamas), is more likely than not to become another Islamist terror launching pad.  Moreover, the ongoing slaughter of Muslim and Christian civilians in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere debunks the notion that Israel’s presence in the West Bank is the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East.  If anything, Israel’s presence is the one thing that may secure peace in the region, at least in the territories under Israel’s control.

3. Because the Laws of Armed Conflict Are Being Endangered

The media, the UN, select politicians, and NGOs are purposefully manipulating the laws of armed conflict in order to vilify a democratic ally while it is engaged in a defensive war for survival. By all objective standards, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is unique in the world for its unprecedented measures aimed at minimizing civilian casualties in armed conflict. In Gaza, Israel has taken extreme measures to warn civilians of imminent counter-attacks. They have distributed leaflets, made phone calls, dropped non-explosive bombs on targets that make loud noises to scare away civilians, and aborted the destruction of Hamas rocket-launching sites when civilians were spotted therein. Israel has even alerted the very terrorists they are fighting of incoming fire, a precaution above and beyond the requirements of the laws of armed conflict.  It was this warning system that pre-alerted Hamas to the location of IDF ground troops in the Hamas stronghold neighborhood of Shejaiy and which resulted in the recent deaths of thirteen Israeli soldiers. When forced to choose between two evils—risking Palestinian civilian casualties to protect Israeli lives, versus compromising Israeli security to save Palestinian civilians—Israel has repeatedly chosen the latter.

Hamas, on the other hand, brags about its indiscriminate targeting of both Israeli and Palestinian civilians and has coerced Palestinians into acting as human shields for its rockets.  Hamas leaders appear daily on Palestinian Authority TV, inciting genocide against the Jews and encouraging Palestinians to ignore Israel’s advance rocket warning systems. Hamas refuses to allow Palestinian civilians to take cover in its bomb shelters, permitting only Hamas leadership to enter. Palestinian youth have taken to YouTube to tell the world how Hamas is preventing its people from evacuating their houses to seek refuge in safe areas. Hamas has rejected two ceasefire offers and has chosen to continue firing even during a temporary humanitarian pause in hostilities, impeding the delivery of medical aid to injured Palestinians. By all objective standards, Hamas is guilty of war crimes and engaged in the collective punishment of the Palestinian people by holding them hostage to its deadly jihad.

Yet no matter how far Israel bends to adhere to the laws of armed conflict (while Hamas thwarts them), Israel’s Operation Protective Edge is portrayed by the Western media and the UN as a criminal enterprise. Even the Arab world has come out strongly against Hamas. Egypt has publicly criticized Hamas for failing to save Palestinian lives and refusing to accept the ceasefire offers. In an unprecedented act, the Palestinian Authority’s own representative to the UN, Ibrahim Khraishi, condemned Hamas for perpetrating war crimes, stating on Palestinian Authority TV, “[T]he missiles that are now being launched against Israel, each and every missile, constitutes a crime against humanity, whether it hits or misses, because it is directed at civilian targets.”

The West has failed to show the same moral courage. The UN remains silent on Hamas’s targeting of Israeli and Palestinian civilians, instead opting to hold an emergency session focusing on Israel, and only Israel, which is expected to produce the regular anti-Israel vitriol and implicitly grant Hamas immunity. The media routinely refers to Hamas as “militants”, though they are a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and places the organization on equal moral footing with the Israeli Defense Forces, even though the latter is a military held to the highest ethical standards in human history. World leaders, save Canada’s Prime Minister Steven Harper, have found it difficult to criticize the Iranian-backed Islamist terror organization Hamas without, in the same breath, criticizing Israel though Israel is in fact exercising great restraint.

This double standard teaches us that no matter how strictly a democracy adheres to the laws of armed conflict, that democracy will nonetheless be vilified if the terrorists they are fighting flout the same laws.  There is a telling absence of any UN General Assembly resolutions condemning Hamas’s use of Palestinian children as suicide bombers and human shields.  There has been no International Criminal Court prosecution of Iranian leaders for incitement to genocide, and no International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Assad regime’s ongoing slaughter of over two hundred fifty thousand of its own civilians.  Instead, war crimes charges have been filed against American, British, and Israeli officials in numerous countries, while leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria are seemingly above the law.  Such precedent sets a dangerous disincentive for coalition forces engaged in the asymmetric battlefield to risk their lives in order to adhere to the laws of armed conflict.

4. Because the Western Media is Being Duped by Hamas

There are multiple unverified death counts from Gaza. The UN is claiming a disproportionate number of Palestinian children have died, while Al Jazeera is reporting most of the deceased are adult males. All sources agree there have been more deaths on the Palestinian side than on the Israeli side, though the IDF death toll is climbing with the ground offensive.  Despite the lack of accurate information, the media has been obsessively reporting unconfirmed casualty figures without mentioning the context in which Palestinians civilians have been killed, often while being forced to act as human shields. The UN is publishing a Hamas-provided death count without any verification, and has failed to identify any Hamas terrorists among the casualties or even mention the fact that Hamas fighters disguise themselves as civilians (a violation of the laws of armed conflict). The contrasting numbers are being used to proffer a perverted theory of disproportionate force. Such theorists argue that since Palestinians are dying in greater numbers than Israelis, Israel no longer has the right to defend itself– that it is not fair or just for Israel to have the Iron Dome, to use the best technology to save the lives of its own citizens, while Hamas offers up its civilians to protect its rockets.

After ordering its civilians to ignore evacuation calls, Hamas spokesperson Abu Zohari bragged that its “human shield policy is effective” because it both averts IDF fire and gives the international media more material with which to malign Israel.  Hamas knows it will not win this war against Israel, the militarily superior side. Rather, it is firing rockets at Israeli civilians from civilian-populated areas to score public relations points with the Arab world and Western media.  Hamas knows that, despite the fact that it started this war by firing rockets into Israel, despite its direct responsibility for the tremendous number of casualties, the Western media will report on the conflict by publishing pictures of corpses without mentioning the brutal ways Hamas is forcing its civilians into the line of fire.

When it comes to Gaza, the Western media is simply unable to report the facts on the ground accurately and has outright failed to expose how Hamas is working to increase the Palestinian civilian death toll. Some in the media have even gone as far as accusing Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians, attributing a blood-lust to Jewish state. Only when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does the media so regularly cast aside journalistic integrity and engage in deceptive reporting designed to elicit sympathy for terrorism.  This point was made very clear by Sky News correspondent Jessy El Murr, who tweeted that she will have “failed as a reporter” if she is seen “as objective on issue of “#israel aggression…”

The media’s careless reporting, coupled with constant delegitimization of Israel’s sovereign right of self-defense, has fueled an alarming rise in anti-Semitism in Europe, Canada, and the United States. France is witnessing levels of anti-Semitism not seen since the Holocaust.  Jewish-owned businesses are being vandalized and looted, and Paris synagogues have been attacked by pro-Palestinian demonstrators wielding bats, and trapping over one hundred Jews inside. In Germany, pro-Palestinian demonstrators have shouted “gas the Jews” and, at a pro-Gaza protest in Berlin, and Israeli tourist was so viciously attacked the police were called in to provide protection. In Los Angeles and Boston, pro-Israel demonstrators were violently assaulted by thugs armed with iron rods, who shouted “Jesus killers” and threatened to burn the Jews. The hashtag #hilterwasright is rapidly gaining momentum on Twitter. As citizens of the free world, we should be concerned with the rising tides of anti-Semitism as well as any kind of race-based hate, which is indicative of a terroristic and genocidal element within.

5. Because U.S. financial support of the Hamas-Palestinian Authority government and UNRWA undermines our negotiating position with Iran

Hamas is an Iranian proxy. It fights under Iranian and Muslim Brotherhood guidance and is using Iranian weapons to do so. Obama is now engaged in nuclear talks with Iran, attempting to persuade the Islamic Republic to abandon its nuclear pursuits and calls to annihilate Israel and the West. Ideally, the United States would be walking into these negotiations from a position of strength, yet our position is made much weaker given Obama’s defiant refusal to end U.S. financial support for a Hamas-Palestinian Authority unity government.

How the Obama administration has dealt with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is indicative of its broader appeasement of militant Islamism. Choosing to continue funding the Palestinian Authority, after it has partnered with the designated terrorist group Hamas, may not only be unlawful under U.S. law, but means our taxpayer dollars may be used to illegally wage war on an ally while facilitating Hamas’s murder of its own people. Hamas officials have told the media that Fatah (Palestinian Authority) members have joined in firing rockets at Israeli civilians.  Further, by funding the Palestinian Authority, U.S. tax dollars are financing television, radio and other media programming such as Palestinian Authority Television (PATV), which airs cartoons, music videos, and daily talk shows that incite violence against the West and genocide against the Jews.  On April 9th a PATV children’s program instructed its young audience to grab machine guns and “defeat America and Israel.” Another program aired on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV on May 2nd used a cuddly bee to motivate children to “shoot Jews” and “smash them.”

The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) is the arm of the UN tasked with providing aid and education to Palestinians in Gaza. UNRWA-operated schools hire members of Hamas as faculty and allow their classrooms to be used as recruiting grounds for Hamas’s child soldiers and human shields.  UNRWA teaches from an U.S.-funded curriculum that advocates for genocidal war against Israel, and UNRWA employees have delivered weapons to Hamas. Hamas has launched rockets from the roofs of UNRWA schools and hidden rockets in their basements. UNRWA spokesperson Christopher Gunness recently promoted terror-apologist Dr. Mads Gilbert despite his support of the “moral right” of al-Qaeda to attack the United States on 9/11. Despite UNRWA’s direct assistance to terrorism, and repeated requests by Congress for audits of the UN agency, the Obama administration refuses to end its unconditional funding of UNRWA.  Financing Islamist incitement to violence, while demanding Iran cease doing the same, is minimally an inconsistent position to take.

6. Because people are dying

Americans should care about the current war between Israel and Hamas because lives are being lost. Hamas is systematically endangering Palestinian lives while inciting and engaging in acts of genocide against the Jewish people who are still, after 2000 years, fighting for their survival. Innocent men, women, and children are being killed in Gaza and Israel, just as they are being killed in Syria and Iraq, and everywhere else Islamist terrorism resides. We are living in an age of globalized conflict where we are no longer afforded the historic excuse of geographic distance. Every life lost in the war between Israel and Hamas is one lost in the global war on terror, and the bodies are too quickly mounting.

First Gaza, then the West Bank, Foreign Policy.com (registration required), Danny Danon, July 22, 2014

Why Israel can no longer let the Palestinian Authority be responsible for security in Judea and Samaria.

Once again, the Israel Defense Forces have been forced to enter the Gaza Strip to fight for the safety of our citizens. We understand the risks of the current ground operation. Despite the fact that it cost me my position as deputy defense minister, I was willing to pay this personal price and vocally advocate for this operation. It was clear to me that the alternative of leaving Hamas’s rocket operation and terror tunnels intact would have been disastrous for the safety and security of all Israelis.

In addition to our fight with Hamas, it is high time to reassess our relationship with the Palestinian Authority (PA). While we have no desire to control the daily lives of the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria — the historical name for the West Bank — the fact is that we can no longer continue to withdraw our security forces and rely on the PA to ensure the safety of Israelis. Numerous events throughout our region, from Israel to Iraq, have proven time and again that when Western forces withdraw and rely on local despots, militias, or even puppet regimes, the forces of Islamic fanaticism quickly fill the void — and put us all at risk.

Hamas is not a lone organization acting in a vacuum.

Hamas is not a lone organization acting in a vacuum. It is a fellow traveler with extreme forces throughout the Middle East working to overthrow Western-allied governments and replace them with an Islamic caliphate operating under sharia law. Over the past few years, Western diplomats’ high hopes for the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring proved short-lived. Leaders who on the surface appeared Western-oriented turned out to be either frontmen for Islamic extremists or weak leaders who could not hold onto power in this harsh region.

The current situation in Iraq is the latest example of this phenomenon. Our American friends meant well: They defeated an evil dictator with a history of horrid human rights abuses, a proven record of using weapons of mass destruction, and a record of threatening regional stability. In the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the United States invested billions of dollars in rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure and paid an unfathomably high price in terms of American soldiers killed and wounded while attempting to rid the country of Islamist terrorists.

Despite these best efforts, the Iraqi government that the United States left behind has failed to retain even a semblance of law and order. The moment American forces began to withdraw from Iraq, groups like the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which had been waiting in the wings, moved in. With Kurdish autonomy in the north and Iran exerting increasing influence in the south, it is apparent that the Iraq we had known for the past century no longer exists.

Our experiences here in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean are not that different. Beginning in the 1990s, successive Israeli governments signed and implemented a series of agreements with the Palestine Liberation Organization. These agreements set up the PA as an autonomous entity tasked with administrating the daily lives of the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip. The PA was also supposed to uphold law and order in these territories, while aiding Israel in its fight against murderous terrorist organizations.

In retrospect, Israel’s decision to withdraw from the main Palestinian population centers did not bring security and stability, let alone peace. Instead, each Israeli redeployment allowed the Islamist extremists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to increase their strength. This eventually led to a murderous wave of suicide bombers in the mid-1990s originating from the territories under PA control, and then an all-out war on Israeli civilians in the first decade of the 21st century. In both instances the PA was either too weak, or unwilling, to confront and halt the terrorists.

Our disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005 was even more problematic. The PA did not take advantage of its newfound sovereignty and create a “Singapore of the Middle East,” as many naively hoped. Instead, Hamas seized power by force, literally throwing their rivals off the roofs of Gaza’s buildings. Today, with hundreds of rockets and missiles fired daily at our population centers and dozens of attack tunnels burrowed from Gaza into Israel, the scope of this mistake is clear to all. Every day during this operation, we are reminded what terrorist organizations like Hamas are capable of when our attention is focused elsewhere.

Since 2009, it has been Likud Party policy to strengthen the civil aspects of the PA and allow its security forces to reign as freely as possible in Judea and Samaria. The events of the past few weeks have proven that successive Israeli governments were mistaken to allow such a free hand. The Hamas terrorists who murdered the three Israeli teenagers on June 12 planned their attack from, and then returned to, areas that are fully controlled by the PA. It is not far-fetched to see how Judea and Samaria could easily turn into a full-fledged terror base like Gaza is today.

Those among us who naively thought we could outsource the security and safety of our citizens to the Palestinian Authority should now understand that this was a dangerous gambit. While we will continue to encourage the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria to take responsibility for their day-to-day civilian lives, we can no longer allow the PA even the smallest amount of autonomy when it comes to anti-terror efforts. Only by allowing the Israel Defense Forces and our other security services to operate freely in every corner of Judea and Samaria will we be able ensure that all the residents of this land receive the level of security they deserve.

The events of the past 15 years do not bode well for those who hope for stability in the Middle East. As much as Israel and our Western allies would like the world’s Muslim and Arab countries to transform overnight into liberal democracies, we know this is unlikely to happen.

The lesson here is simple, both in terms of Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians and the international community’s engagement with our neighbors. We must do all we can to provide support to those who truly fight for democracy but at the same time, we cannot compromise one iota on a wide-ranging and in-depth security involvement.

This is true even when it means more boots on the ground, deep in dangerous territory. Israel is discovering this once again during the current round of fighting with Hamas.

Wishful thinking will not make the world a safer place. Only hard work and a daily battle against international terrorism will inch us closer to a day when the people of the Middle East — and the world — will live in the peace and security they so deserve.