Intelligence efforts bearing fruit - Nadav Shragai

by Nadav Shragai

The majority of the residents in the east Jerusalem area want to live their lives in peace, but in many cases they find themselves controlled by local criminals and terrorists, and Israel is doing little to help them defeat these thugs.

Nineteen-year-old border policewoman Hadar Cohen was murdered in February near Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem by a terrorist using a Carlo rifle, the Palestinian homemade version of the Carl Gustav submachine gun.

Cohen joined a long list of Jewish victims killed with that rifle, which is just the kind of weapon produced by the illegal weapons mills Israeli security forces raided on Monday night. Over 30 terrorist attacks that have taken place since the current wave of terrorism erupted last fall involved homemade Palestinian weapons. 

Monday's raid proved intelligence-gathering efforts by the Shin Bet security agency and the military have yielded good results, but security forces know Judea and Samaria is swarming with illegal weapons, some already produced and delivered, some stolen, and some procured through from criminal elements, Israeli and Palestinian alike, criminals who have no qualms about selling weapons to terrorists. 

The repeated raids, which have so far shut down 30 mills, seized over 350 weapons, and yielded over 140 arrests, can be credited with generating some deterrence among the Palestinians, who learn -- sometimes the hard way -- that the IDF will not hesitate to go into the heart of the population, hostile and dangerous as it may be, to seize these illegal arms.

One can only hope that the IDF and the Shin Bet continue with this line of action and that similar raids take place against criminals, arms dealers and weapon manufacturers even in the villages near east Jerusalem. 

The majority of the residents in the east Jerusalem area want to live their lives in peace, but in many cases they find themselves controlled by local criminals and terrorists, and Israel is doing little to help them defeat these thugs.

Any step Israel can take to assert its sovereignty over these areas and to counter what looks like a power vacuum is a welcome one. Israel must pursue and persist in such moves, to further curb the illegal weapons problem.

Nadav Shragai

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=17009

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