The State Department Does not Get It

The State Department has recently made pronouncements on the violence in Samaria, calling on “both sides” to refrain from “provocations” and “return to the peace process”. This is peculiar since the Palestinian Authority is certainly not behind the violence and the parties which are, namely the designated Jihadist terrorist organizations of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad officially do not even pretend to be interested in a peace process. The State Department continues to claim that indigenous Israeli restorative construction in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem is provocative and leads to violence despite the Palestinians themselves not claiming that Israeli construction is the cause of violence. It is deeply disturbing that the State Department is describing Israel and designated Jihadist terrorist organizations as “both sides”. How would the United States feel if Israel used this kind of language with respect to “the relationship” between the US and al Qaeda? With all due respect to the State Department; Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are not destabilizing Judea and Samaria because of Israeli indigenous restorative construction, they do so because they object to Israel’s very existence. Furthermore, there has been a change of strategy in Hamas and PIJ away from weekly rocket attacks against the Gaza envelope to increasingly destabilizing Judea and Samaria and so far successfully so. No official pronouncements by the State Department will change that. The only thing that will calm things done is continued daily Israeli security operations since the PA security forces are unable or unwilling to do the job. If this is difficult to comprehend then the State Department would be particularly well-advised to consult their colleagues at the Pentagon to have this confirmed. Terrorism is squashed with counter-terrorism. Israel knows how to do this. Israel’s successful record speaks for itself.