Op-Ed: The Palestinian ‘Police’ Has Become An Army Which Could Threaten Central Israel

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — The danger of a massacre in central Israel is greater than ever, according to Ynet reporter Boaz Ha’Etzni.

Haetzni, the son of one of the founders of the settlement movement in Judea and Samaria, is concerned less about Hamas’s capabilities in the region and more about the Palestinian Authority’s  “Police”, who are trained abroad, armed under the Oslo Accords, and study Israeli defense methods.

This week there was a significant occurence in Samaria. The IDF Spokesperson dared to report that a terrorist who was killed after injuring one of our soldiers in Nablus was “an operative in the Palestinian Police”. Such “policemen” have been killed before, so what’s different this time? Well, this “police force” is defined by the security establishment as “partners” who are meant to cooperate with us on security matters. Therefore, in all previous numerous cases, Israel made sure not to mention the bitter truth that these are Fatah members.

The former IDF Spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, turned himself into a joke by reporting on operations in which terrorists from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and “other organizations” were killed or captured, while at the same time, these so-called “others” were being given official funerals by the PA establishment, and all specific details were published on social media.

Eventually, after journalists pushed him into a corner, Hagari was forced to admit that the information came from the Shin Bet, meaning the cover for Fatah originated in the Shin Bet. Is the change in reporting a result of a newly appointed Shin Bet chief, or does it reflect the accumulation of increasingly worrying intelligence published recently about the depth of the “partners’” preparations for a large-scale war?

It turns out that the “Palestinian Police” has a “General Military Training Committee,” and last week its official Facebook page posted that in the advanced officers’ course of this sophisticated police force, participants receive lectures on “the Israeli national security concept and methods to understand it, to improve participants’ leadership abilities,” as well as “learning real-world models of Israeli security methods enabling officers to understand surrounding risks and challenges.”.

In practical terms, they study how to overcome Israeli methods for defending settlements, IDF bases, and the security barrier – that is, preparation for the next massacre. In recently published disturbing footage, members of PA security forces can be seen training in tactical uniforms identical to IDF combat uniforms, armed with rifles used by the IDF.

This “police force”, which was supposed to include about 18,000 officers, now, according to estimates, numbers around 60,000 soldiers. Their commanders train abroad, in Jordan, Pakistan, and Algeria, in classic military combat that includes standard infantry training but also tank training, artillery, sniping, heavy machine guns, and parachuting.

This “police force” also includes commando units, intelligence bodies, a military academy, and cyber capabilities. Their most significant training is received in Jordan with joint instruction from the U.S. Army and the CIA, as part of the Oslo Accords. It is a force developing atop the PA’s poisonous antisemitic education system and its terror-reward mechanism.

Israel, in its folly, goes along with the growing threat and recently even allowed them to receive armored vehicles, sniper rifles, machine guns, and possibly RPG rockets seen in their possession, all supplied with Israel’s consent. All this has accumulated into a significant army that threatens hundreds of communities beyond the Green Line and population centers within it – larger and less protected – from the 350-km seam line all the way to the country’s center.

The furthest point reached by the Hamas murderers on October 7th was Ofakim, about 23 km in a straight line from the Gaza border. Such a distance from the Green Line reaches central Tel Aviv and includes the largest population centers and some of the most critical strategic facilities, including Ben-Gurion Airport, Air Force bases, IDF camps, and other sensitive security installations that must not be named.

As part of the peace delusion with “the Palestinian people,” with Israel’s approval, a highly dangerous army has developed in the West Bank – one we are supposed to trust to fight Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the barbaric mobs, from youth to the elderly on crutches, the same full spectrum seen flowing into the Gaza envelope in security-camera footage. If, to our great surprise, this army does not exhibit goodwill, and acts contrary to the solemn promises made in White House-lawn ceremonies 30 years ago, we will meet it, together with those it is supposed to fight, on the front confronting all of central Israel. This is a very realistic scenario, in comparison to which the massacre of 7.10 in the southwestern margins of the country may appear limited.

The only missing component for activating this force is heavier weaponry and in larger quantities. This explains the attempts at land smuggling across borders and the airlift of heavy drones transferring unprecedented amounts of weapons from Egypt and Jordan. The large quantities of machine guns, RPG rockets, and apparently explosive drones allow the arming of the PA army and other organizations to a level that could cause Israel to lose control.

Additionally, PA security personnel move freely throughout Israel, some using VIP permits provided by Israel to the leadership, and some crossing the fence easily, as revealed in the investigation of the major bus bombing plot in Bat Yam that ended miraculously without casualties. It demonstrated the terrorists’ ability to move back and forth from Nablus to Tel Aviv, where they rented an apartment, and were caught by chance and late.

This is not a matter of Right or Left, but an ancient Jewish blindness – the denial of a looming disaster. Countless Jews could have been saved before the Holocaust had they read the map and left, similar to today’s situation in Western countries – Europe, Australia, Canada, parts of the U.S. – where dangerous levels of antisemitism are developing and Jews are repressing the reality.

Yitzhak Rabin, who brought upon us the Oslo disaster, understood his mistake too late and was about to cancel the agreement, according to Moshe Ya’alon’s book, and also according to what I personally heard from Shabtai Shavit, Mossad chief during Rabin’s term, when he toured Samaria with me about 12 years ago. In contrast, Benjamin Netanyahu, who fought Oslo furiously, has become its greatest preserver, and the reckless cover-up of this growing danger has continued throughout his long tenure. Sadly, here there are no clashes between the government and the security establishment, and no objections from the Left.

The Palestinian issue has become a sacred religion in the world and in the Israeli Left, parallel to the erosion in Zionist ideology in the Israeli leadership and in belief in the justice of our cause, to the point of recognizing the Palestinian movement, established to destroy us and inherit our land, importing the PLO gang, equipping it with weapons, territory, resources, and international legitimacy.

This is also what prevents defining the malignant Palestinian Authority as an enemy, even though it drains our blood, our money, and our international legitimacy through false identity and justice claims that we do not dare refute. This is the source of the gap between the excellence of Israel’s security-political system against Lebanon and Iran, and its failure regarding Judea and Samaria Gaza, and the takeover of the Galilee and the Negev.

Anyone who has learned navigation knows the basic rule: if you get lost, return to the last point where you knew where you were. Why not return to the point before the Oslo collapse? Why insist on missing every opportunity to remove this terror regime of the PA and turn it into a harmless autonomy? What are we waiting for – another massacre that will “recharge the legitimacy reservoir”…?