Months have passed since the murder of two IDF soldiers, Staff Sergeant Eliya Hilel and Staff Sergeant Diego Shvisha-Harsaj. The whirlwind news cycle in Israel, the ongoing fighting in Gaza, Lebanon, Judea and Samaria, and the specter of a full-scale war with Iran, coupled with US elections and an unrelenting barrage of news from Syria, Yemen, and other flashpoints have pulled our attention elsewhere, but this particular terrorist attack deserves a closer look. Aside from the tragic loss of two young lives, this incident speaks volumes about a larger issue that remains, quite stubbornly, at the top of the international agenda: the day after the Swords of Iron War.
The details of this particular terrorist attack and the identity of the perpetrator have been a matter of public record since the moment it occurred on May 29th: Abed al-Rauf Ashtayeh approached the IDF checkpoint outside Nablus, and when he had a clear line of sight, steered his minibus at the soldiers and ran them over at high speed. The soldiers were pronounced dead at the scene. Ashtayeh fled through the checkpoint into nearby Nablus. The IDF launched a manhunt; when Ashtayeh saw that his capture was imminent, he turned himself in to the Palestinian Police – the force created under the Oslo Accords to maintain law and order and to partner with Israel in the fight against terrorism.
The Oslo Accords dictate a clear script for what should have happened next: The Palestinian Authority Security Forces – trained, armed and supported by the US and a consortium of foreign governments – should have handed Ashtayeh over to Israel to stand trial. This process was created to forestall IDF incursions into PA-controlled areas and to de-escalate tensions following “incidents,” while at the same time providing an opportunity for the PA to build its credibility as a partner for peace.
Needless to say, Ashtayeh would not have turned himself in if he had any reason to believe that this would actually happen. In fact, he had every reason to believe that he, like many hundreds of terrorists before him over the past 25 years, would be protected by the Palestinian Authority. While in the early years of the Oslo framework the PA made perfunctory gestures, restricting terrorists’ freedom for weeks or even months before setting them free, as time went on even this farce was discarded. Ashtayeh remained in PASF custody (better described as protective custody) for only a few hours, and then mysteriously disappeared. As of this writing, he remains at large.
Ashtayeh’s case is not unusual. The PA no longer makes any attempt to peddle the myth of partnership against terrorism; in fact, astounding numbers of Palestinian Authority Security Forces officers are concurrently members of internationally-designated terrorist organizations who actively engage in terrorism. While this has always been the case, today the Palestinian Authority publicly and proudly encourages, funds and extolls this terrorism, in addition to its infamous “pay to slay” program of official and unapologetic “adoption” of terrorists – including the Nukhba perpetrators of the October 7th massacre – with a sliding- scale system of payment for anyone who kills Jews.
The time has come to stop burying our heads in the sand. The Palestinian Authority and its police and security forces are not, have never been, and, and by their own declaration, will never be partners in the fight against terrorism. The PA has never been a moderating force; it has used the decades since Oslo to hone its skills as a killing force. The brutal truth, exposed in a recent report (“Officers by Day, Terrorist by Night,”) is that, if anything, the involvement of Palestinian Authority “policemen” in terrorism has become even more pronounced and more deadly over time.
The State of Israel – and all civilized nations – can no longer afford to play along with this charade. While the perpetrators and proponents of the lie of Palestinian moderation – a veritable Who’s Who of Israeli has-beens, wash-outs, and wannabes – continue to peddle their wares to the US government and other deep-pocketed international concerns, the Israeli public isn’t buying it anymore. Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Yoav Gallant, Tamir Pardo, and the Beilinites of the messianic left have no constituency to speak of in Israel; support for their dangerous and delusional promotion of the Palestinian Authority as a viable partner for peace comes almost exclusively from foreign concerns because their great new idea for the future is the same imbecilic idea that has been killing Israelis for decades. Any further empowerment of the Palestinian Authority is nothing short of suicidal. Fool me once –for a quarter of a century – shame on you; fool me twice – shame on me. We won’t be fooled again.
An earlier version of this article appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
