The IDF's Tulkarm raid has big implications about the Palestinian Authority - opinion

• Published date: 24 April 2024
• Author: MOSHE PHILLIPS
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

On the evening of April 18, Israeli forces entered the Nur Shams neighborhood near the Palestinian Authority-governed city of Tulkarm to arrest terrorists. It should have been a standard police action. But 16 hours later, the Israelis were still there and four soldiers had been wounded by Palestinian Arab terrorist gunfire

Why? Because this ordinary Arab neighborhood in the Palestinian Authority has a tremendous amount of heavily armed terrorists. According to Al Jazeera – the pro-terrorist Qatari mouthpiece that masquerades as a media agency – "Palestinian armed resistance fighters" were "using small arms as well as explosives" against the Israelis.

Why as the Tulkarm raid so significant?

The reason the Israelis were there at all is that the PA's security forces weren't. That's the first lesson from this incident: once again, the PA refuses to fulfill its Oslo Accords obligation to arrest terrorists.

The text of Oslo II explicitly requires the PA security forces to "apprehend, investigate, and prosecute perpetrators and all other persons directly or indirectly involved in acts of terrorism, violence, and incitement." (Annex I, Article II, 3-c).

The PA certainly has the manpower to do the job. Over the years, its original 12,000-man police force has illegally ballooned into a 60,000-man de-facto army. That makes it the sixth-largest per-capita security force in the world, with a whopping 1,250 "police officers" per 100,000 people.

Yet the PA refuses to use its forces against terrorists, forcing Israel to enter danger zones such as Tulkarm and do the job.

In recent weeks, US State Department officials and J Street types have been claiming that the new PA cabinet represents a "revitalized," moderate, peace-seeking government. If that were the case, then surely the PA would be delighted at Israel's action in Tulkarm. After all, if the PA is anti-terrorist, then it should be overjoyed that Israel is arresting terrorists, right?

Wrong. Here's how the official PA news agency, WAFA, reported the incident: "The occupation army today unleashed a large-scale aggression against Nur Shams refugee camp," and "a young man was killed by the...