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Former Israel Security Agency Director: PA Will Not Protect Israel from Palestinian Terrorism

(Jerusalem Post) Yonah Jeremy Bob - Yoram Cohen, 58, who headed the Israel Security Agency from 2011 to 2016, said in an interview that his experience taught him that the Palestinians' capability to take over counter-terrorism efforts is very weak, even if Israel gives them land. Cohen states that PA counter-terrorism forces "do not have anything remotely similar to Israel in professionalism, technology and motivation" for protecting Israel from Palestinian terrorism. He asks how PA security forces can be trusted when the PA pays salaries to Hamas terrorists in Israeli prisons. Moreover, "No one can be sure that Hamas will not take over the West Bank by force or by election." For this reason, he is opposed to full Palestinian statehood and would only support Palestinian "autonomy plus in Judea and Samaria or a state-minus," noting Yitzhak Rabin had endorsed a state-minus (where the PA would govern nearly all internal issues but would lack formal sovereignty, since the IDF would still provide external security). He says, "It is in Israel's national interest to get to a final agreement with the Palestinians and its representative the PA. In the near future, we cannot get to a final agreement between us and the Palestinians" due to unbridgeable gaps in positions about what that deal should look like, chronic instability and religious extremism in the Middle East. "No external force has an interest in conquering Gaza and freeing the residents there from the burden of the murderous terrorist organizations, led by Hamas, that want to destroy Israel." Israel is not interested in conquering Gaza because of the inevitable cost in Israeli soldiers' and Palestinian civilians' lives as well as the absence of someone else to hand over control to. He opposes any kind of sea or naval port in Gaza or an artificial port off the Gaza coast, viewing this as "a big open door to bring in a much higher quantity and quality of weapons and military equipment and hostile actors."
2019-02-15 00:00:00
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