Op-Ed: Our Most Dangerous Enemy

Gershon Mesika, Shomron Regional Council Head

Hamas is an overt danger. So are Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations. The head of the Samaria Regional Council explains why the Palestinian Authority is a more subtle and even greater danger.

A well-known story tells of how  a Mukhtar (village chieftain) in an Arab village turned to his Jewish "settler" neighbor and asked him for help. The Mukhtar explained to the Jew that a PalestinianAuthority police officer was persecuting him and his family, and is now demanding that he be given the chieftain's daughters. The Israeli promised to help, and the PA officer soon stopped bothering the Mukhtar.

When the Israeli was asked how he managed it, he remained silent, but those who live nearby tell that he knocked on the PA officer's door in the dead of night and warned him that if the problem continued, he would have the Israeli to deal with. And it worked.

The location and the names of those involved are not for publication, but the story is absolutely true. It must seem almost like science fiction to anyone who gets his information from the mainstream media. After all, doesn't it sound as though the world turned upside down – a "settler" who rescues an  Arab from the Arab's own "security forces"?  

Life in proximity to Arab villages creates its own dynamic of contacts, some bloody and publicized, some peaceful, cooperative – and well-hidden [for the sake of the lives of the Arabs involved]. The positive initiatives were once visible, but ever since "Peace Accords" were signed, there hasn't been much peace.

As head of the Samaria (Shomron) Regional Council, I am party to quite a few meetings with Arab public figures from nearby villages. There was one large meeting with tens of participants, including officers in the PA Security Forces, whose main message was a plea to "get rid of the  bunch of corrupt gangsters who run the Terrorist Authority". The participants begged me to get the State of Israel to offer to protect them, promising to come out publicly against the PA if that happens.

I passed on the message in detail to the highest echelons of the IDF, but for some reason, they turned a cold shoulder to the request. The military, its Intelligence Corps and Israeli politicians are in love with the PA – our most dangerous enemy.

Yes, the Palestinian Authority is our most dangerous enemy – not Hamas, not Islamic Jihad, not IS. Those organizations are known murderers and the danger they represent is obvious to everyone, while Abbas and his cohorts are the only ones who understand the Jewish Diaspora mentality that is the 
They...easily blind the eyes of the Israelis, who, like battered-children, yearn to hear a good word from the goyim.
norm in Israel.

Cleverly, they do us a big favor by condescending to talk to us, publicize false "peace" announcements, tell the world how they oppose terror and easily blind the eyes of the Israelis, who, like battered-children, yearn to hear a good word from the goyim.

In actual fact, the PA developed a school curriculum that, for the last twenty years, has been raising generation after generation of young people who are consumed by hate and guided by murderous nationalism.  They go to schools named for terrorist murderers, where they are taught that Israel has no right to exist and that Beit Shean, Haifa, Yaffo, Ashkelon are Palestinian cities, and that King David, Abraham, Jesus and Moses were all Palestinians. History, geography and culture are all rallied – to the point of absurdity - to bolster the lies that make up the Palestinian "narrative".

The official PA media are filled with incitement, its representatives are proud of the fact the the PLO has murdered more Israelis than Hamas, it rewards Palestinian Arab prisoners in Israeli prisons with salaries that are proportional to the length of their sentences and the scope of their murders. The PA also turns to international forums in an attempt to isolate Israel and turn her into a pariah state.

The real face of the PA was exposed through facts on the ground: for example, the Oslo Agreements established a fair division of water sources in Judea and Samaria. The PA received permission to drill on the eastern side of the hilltop aquifer because any drilling on the western side would dry up the water sources within the Green Line (1949 Armistice Lines). They drilled at less than half the locations to which they were entitled, but encouraged at least 250 unlawful drillings on the western side.

The same approach repeated itself when it came to sewage treatment: the PA refuses to accept donations for constructing a sewage purification system, even though the waste continues to poison their "Palestinian homeland". The fact that most of it flows westward and pollutes the streams that continue to within the Green Line is seen by them as beneficial – because it does damage to Israel, and overrides the fact that the PA's citizens have to live with the lack of sewage treatment.

When we invested large sums of money to build a sewage pipeline the length of the Kaneh Reserve and sanitized it, we turned to the Mukhtar of one of the adjoining villages and suggested that he connect to the pipeline without charge. He was overjoyed at the offer of fresh water, but that pipeline is still awaiting his move to connect to it. Why is that? Because the PA warned him that if he connects his village to running water [provided by Israel], he will pay the price.

This only begins to explain the palpable disgust the Arab man in the street feels towards his leaders.

The thwarting of a Hamas takeover in Judea and Samaria that we were told about this past week, proves that Abbas survives due to IDF protection. Instead of being grateful for the mere fact that he is willing to talk to us, Israel should demand something in exchange for his continued survival: cooperation and de facto peace, an end to incitement, a change in the educational system and an end to terror in Judea and Samaria, all this guaranteed by the top leaders of the PA's infrastructure.