Tel Aviv terror attack foretold
Op-ed: Government must cancel work permits given to Palestinians, locate all illegal aliens immediately
The number of Palestinian laborers working in Israel and in Judea and Samaria settlements has soared in the past two years, reaching 100,000 - in addition to 50,000 illegal aliens already residing in Israel.
Arab villages in Israel are flooded with illegal aliens – and the weapons they bring along. The Israel Police are well aware of this problem and of its extent, but for some reason are doing almost nothing to stop it. For the sake of comparison, in 2000, on the eve of the Second Intifada and the height of the Oslo illusion, there were 110,000 Palestinians working in Israel legally.
The illusion in the current Israeli government was that these laborers and illegal aliens would work here and prevent the collapse of Abbas' failed Palestinian Authority. But what about Israelis' security? On the criminal level, the number of burglaries is on the rise and the Israeli government is not doing much about it, and now another bus explodes in central Tel Aviv. What did the people in charge expect at times of security tensions in Gaza?
This delusional policy is sometimes flabbergasting. At the end of the recent month of Ramadan (in August), the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria permitted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to visit Israel. Thousands of them didn't even bother returning to their homes, but stayed here as illegal residents. The person responsible for this staggering permit is Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who served as prime minister when the Second Intifada broke out, with a complacent defense establishment behind him.
Palestinian women are already crossing freely into Israel through the Qalandiya checkpoint, the age of men permitted to visit Israel has gone down, and a significant number of the roadblocks has anyway been removed. The security fence, which cost billions, is breached in important parts as per the instructions of the High Court of Justice, which is driven by "human rights" organizations and ordering the State to move the fence and return the fence, here and there, at a very high cost, leaving no budget to complete it in the south.
Isn’t our citizens' existence more important?
And here we have a similar picture to that of 2000: Israel is transparent to the Palestinians, and the result was soon to come in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. Now it's the same illusion as the one we had then: Then it was to bolster the Arafat government; now it's to bolster the Abbas government. Then the concept failed, and now it's on the brink of collapse as well, because it's an illusion.
In the Middle East, which is being washed by a Salafi wave, Israel is a target from all directions. Just imagine what would happen if the IDF had not been in Judea and Samaria now. Could we have lived a normal life in Israel? And so the illusion of a Palestinian state alongside Israel collapses as well.
The PA government these days is engaging in political terror against Israel at the UN, and the Gaza government is engaging in military terror against Israel's citizens. What is worse? Israel has enough tools to defend its borders. After all, a lot of money has already been invested. Past experience shows that one terror attack attracts additional terror attacks, as terror organizations are competing against each other.
The work permits of Palestinian laborers working here must be canceled immediately, and the dozens of illegal aliens residing in Israel must be located and deported. The security fence must be tightened right away, out of the understanding that the era of disregarding Israeli citizens' lives must come to an end.
Israel is not the Palestinian Authority's caretaker, and its laborers will always be able to find work outside Israel. A "social protest" agenda is important for those who thought or pretended to think that we are already living in Western Europe. Construction and agriculture are important and respectable too – but isn’t our citizens' existence more important?
