Despite the security failures leading to the Oct. 7, 2023, infiltration and massacre by Hamas from Gaza into Israel, recent media reports cite security officials’ estimations indicating that approximately 40,000 Arabs living under the Palestinian Authority sneak into Israel via the country’s porous security barrier every month.
While most are P.A. Arabs who breach the fence in search of employment opportunities, others have the nefarious goal of gathering intelligence on soft targets to launch future terrorist attacks, or cross over to carry out attacks themselves.
As an example of this reality, the Lachish Regional Council announced Monday that a large and serious infiltration was thwarted late Sunday night, involving the arrest of 122 Palestinian suspects from the Hebron area, who tried to illegally cross from Judea and Samaria into Israeli territory via the Lachish seam line.
The council said the incident represented “a complete collapse of the army in its mission, along with a shortage of manpower among police and Border Police forces on the ground.”
Authorities have not yet shared if those arrested were Arab laborers seeking employment or if their motives were terrorist in nature, but Boaz Shlomo, head of the Lachish Regional Council, said, “As far as I’m concerned, this should be treated as if a battalion of Nukhba [terrorists] infiltrated our territory.”
He added that the incident highlighted the ongoing security challenges Israel is facing and the failure of the country to prevent frequent infiltrations along the security fence east of Lachish.
Shlomo warned, “The writing is on the wall … Any such infiltrator could be a combatant coming to carry out an attack, and every such attempt must be treated that way!”
The council credited the “determined and swift action” of its security patrol teams, local emergency response squads and the council’s security officer for nabbing the 122 suspects, while notably failing to acknowledge any role that the IDF or border police had in the operation.
In contrast, the IDF news desk told JNS a report was received regarding an unauthorized crossing of individuals in the Idhna area, within the Hebron governate, with the IDF and Israel Border Police forces apprehending 122 individuals in the area.
Commenting on the incident, as well as the overall phenomenon of infiltrations by P.A. Arabs into Israel proper, a security chief from the Binyamin Region (whose name was withheld upon request) told JNS for years the government has failed to repair the gaps in the security barrier in the Hebron area.
He added that the area does not have the proper surveillance system set up along the fence to prevent these types of occurrences.
“It is government negligence whether you want to blame the prime minister or the various defense ministers over the years,” he said, adding, “They’re all guilty.”
Yishai Fleisher, the international spokesperson for the Jewish Community of Hebron, told JNS the problem runs a lot deeper than one specific security breach.
He said as long as Israel allows “jihadism” in Judea and Samaria to fester, “we’re just kicking the can down the road.”
Fleisher said the bottom line was that Israel has a neo-Nazi, anti-Israel network in its midst in the form of the Palestinian Authority’s education system.
At the same time, he said, Israel has what he termed a “wink, wink” policy allowing Arab workers to infiltrate into pre-1967 Israel.
Fleisher acknowledged that most of those who sneak across just want to find work and make some money to support their families, but others use the physical and metaphorical holes in Israel’s security system to gather intelligence or carry out terrorism.
Fleisher said Israel would continue to face the problems of illegal workers, infiltrations and terrorism, “until we start dealing with it at its root cause, which is jihadist education in Judea and Samaria.”
He added, “The Oct. 6 way of thinking is to wish jihadism away, even as it’s under our nose. But in the meantime, the monster grows and explodes into something like Oct. 7. Unfortunately, that type of thinking is alive and well, and we have not had the reboot Oct. 7 deserves.”
Israeli public diplomacy expert Avi Abelow, the host of the daily Pulse of Israel video podcast and CEO of the 12Tribe Films Foundation who has served as an IDF combat reservist continuously in Gush Etzion since Oct. 7, 2023, told JNS that Israel cannot afford to treat the threat emanating from Judea and Samaria as somehow remote or different from Gaza.
The same murderous jihadi ideology that produced Oct. 7 in Gaza lives among too many Arab Muslims in Judea and Samaria, Abelow argued.
He said that until Israel’s political and security services espouse the reality that the P.A. is an enemy, differing from Hamas only in strategy, there is no way to protect the entire country from the looming threats posed by P.A. Arabs.
“The only thing to do is internalize the basic fact that anyone who supports killing Jews must live somewhere else. [U.S. President Donald] Trump’s emigration plan for Gaza must also be implemented for the jihadi supporting population of Judea and Samaria as well,” Abelow said.
He added that those with a jihadist ideology “should not be living near Jews, where they are patiently waiting to launch more horrific terror attacks against Jews throughout Israel.”
Elie Pieprz, director of international relations for the Israel Defense and Security Forum, known in Hebrew as Bitchonistim, told JNS it is clear that while the IDF had uncovered a lot of the terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria, there remains an unacceptable number of attacks launched from the region.
“The vulnerabilities that have been exposed by illegal Arab crossings must be addressed,” Pieprz concluded. “Israelis who hire and facilitate the illegals must be prosecuted, but the IDF must prioritize eliminating this phenomenon before disaster strikes.”
