A strategic look at the recent fighting in Judea and Samaria invites an examination of the significance of the turnaround taking place in the intensity of terrorism and the methods of its operation. With the outbreak of terrorism from the Jenin area in March 2022, the IDF led a continuous series of daring and precise operations deep into Jenin and Nablus in the heart of the refugee camps and the Kasbah. These nightly operations, dubbed "Breakwater," were directed by the goal of thwarting the wave of terrorism. The chosen logic of action was tactically expressed in raids and arrests to thwart infrastructure and terrorist operatives. In other words, IDF forces deliberately avoided occupying the area and staying there for a period beyond the raid mission. However, at the core of the intention, the conditions required for a deep dissolution of the problem do not begin to exist.
This was indeed an operation with precise intelligence, at a high level of execution, with the expectation that the very daring and display of operational superiority in hand-to-hand combat against the terrorists would lead over time to a decline in terrorism. However, despite the operational excellence and despite the more than 150 terrorists killed, when the expectation of achieving security and stability in the region is not really realized, the Central Command and the General Staff are required to take a critical look that gives room to a basic question: Isn't it time to examine a different approach?
Recalculate route, IDF force in Jenin during Guardian of the Walls,
Much to the frustration, instead of a substantive clarification of the growing trend of terrorism, the interpretive-security discourse cynically rejected the call by residents of Judea and Samaria and political leaders for a different and broader campaign. Even the prime minister's speech, which after every deadly attack promised that the security establishment would reach the terrorists, did not help in establishing the necessary systemic clarification. This fight is a very different matter from fighting crime. The terror infrastructure that has been established in Jenin and Nablus requires much more than thwarting, bringing them to justice or eliminating them. In this challenge, as a struggle with existential content, the State of Israel is required to conduct a campaign with a broad strategic purpose that goes beyond bringing perpetrators to justice and a local aspiration to calm the area.
We must strive to calm the area, Netanyahu and Galant, Photo: Alex Kolomoisky
In light of the turning point, Netanyahu's government must set a simple strategic goal: to prevent a terrorist network in the Gaza Strip from spreading throughout Judea and Samaria. Such a purpose should be presented as stemming directly from the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's perception of the logic of the Oslo Accords. By transferring all Palestinian towns and villages in Area AB to the control of the Palestinian Authority, which was completed in January 1996, Rabin expected a process of reciprocity of goodwill, with the basic demand that in the transferred territory – except for weapons for internal security purposes held by PA apparatuses – the area would be demilitarized. What is happening in Jenin is a fundamental violation of this lawsuit. By virtue of the Oslo Accords, when the PA also long ago lost all control over what is happening in Jenin and to a large extent in Nablus as well, the State of Israel has the full right and duty to act to comprehensively eradicate the organization of terrorist concentrations in these cities.
At the same time, Israel's hold on Area C of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley should be defined as a necessary security condition for defending the state for the future. In these vital areas drawn by Rabin, IDF installations and all Israeli settlements are deployed. At this time, the existence and development of settlement in this area must reflect that Israel is there to stay and exist there as well under security conditions.
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