Something good may come out of the rioting after all, and it is not deterring terrorists.

 

There is nothing unexpected in the shocking murder of the two brothers, our so dearly beloved Hillel and Yagel Yaniv. The handwriting was on the wall, written in black letters on the Arab homes in the hornet's nest of Huwara, the hostile Arab village through which thousands of Israelis drivers are forced to travel every single day on their way to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and back again to their homes in Samaria.

Route 60 passes through this crowded, large village. It is the main north-south highway along the length of the mountain ridges of Samaria and Judea. At peak travel hours, there is a traffic pile-up there that stretches for miles. At any moment, thousands of Jewish and Arab vehicles crawl along it, and there is nothing easier than sneaking out of one of the alleys adjoining the road to identify Israeli cars and attack those in them. The traffic congestion does not allow for passengers to escape or for the car to swerve, making the murderers' work easy for them. (It was reported that Israeli Arabs, who have Israeli license plates, actually got instructions from terrorists to put a keffiye on their dashboards so they will not be shot at.).

Terrorists do not need any special reason to murder, but it stood to reason that for the days following the IDF's operation in Shechem in which 10 terrorists were eliminated, they would attempt to take revenge. That means that the fact that this horrific murder did take place despite that understanding is an operational failure. Beginner MK Tzvi Sukkot, who lives in the area, said that there should have been blockades and checkpoints around Shechem during this tense period, and he has a point.

If we knew how to govern unhesitatingly and to create effective deterrence, both the IDF and security forces would have long ago put the fear of God into the hearts of Huwara's terrorists and those who help them. Since we are not good at that, the partial solution in most places of this type, and there were several, is to build roads circumventing these towns and villages. In Huwara's case, it makes sense traffic time-wise as well. However, despite the problem being obvious for a long time, for some reason, the work on a road circumventing Huwara from the east began making serious progress just a few years ago, this after a long battle with the authorities.

Perhaps it is another example of budgetary discrimination, as in the case of the entire neglected traffic infrastructure in Judea and Samaria, or maybe it is due to someone (cf. previous Transportation Min. Michaeli – head of the labor party) who felt it a waste to invest in a road for outlying mountain ridge communities that they want to uproot anyway.

I highly doubt that the acts of hotheaded, unlawful revenge that occurred in Huwara yesterday will deter the Arabs significantly and prevent further attacks. With their hands tied by law enforcement authorities, Jews are unable to frighten their neighbors any more than the security force's operations can. Paradoxically, however, these unflattering pictures of Jewish violence that hits both terrorists and non-terrorists indiscriminately, may enhance security from another direction.

Those heading national security, who find themselves able to live with murder of Jews at the hands of Arabs from time to time in Huwara, find it much more difficult to live with Jewish acts of violence against Arabs. Perhaps that will cause them to put Huwara high up on their list. Maybe there will be a more concerted effort to prevent the next murder, if not motivated by the desire to protect Jews from terrorists, then to protect Arabs from the angry response of their Jewish neighbors.

Emanuel Shilo is Editor-in-Chief of the weekly Hebrew newspaper Besheva.

Translation: Rochel Sylvetsky