On Monday at noon, IDF troops arrived at the Rimonim checkpoint near the settlement of Kochav Hashahar in Samaria and began dismantling it. Less than five hours later, and a mere 15 kilometers (10 miles) away, a Palestinian tried to stab hitchhikers outside the settlement of Shilo. One of the intended victims shot him dead on the road.
Members of Abbas's own Fatah movement claimed responsibility for the Shiloh attack. The Fatah connection does not instill confidence about the fate of weapons, equipment and armored vehicles Defense Minister Ehud Barak has earmarked, under US pressure, for pro-Abbas forces, without any quid pro quo.
Barak himself two weeks earlier had warned against dismantling checkpoints. Appearing before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, he defended Judea and Samaria roadblocks as essential impediments to terror. "Each removal of any roadblock is tantamount to gambling with Israelis' lives," he said. "No roadblock was positioned where it was without a very cogent reason. No roadblock is without clear security value. Each roadblock is there only because it's necessitated by indisputable security contingencies."
What changed between then and now? Condi came to town.
The sequence of events dramatically demonstrated -- this time at minimal cost (except to the would-be murderer) -- the risks of loosening the tight security cordon that the IDF has created in the West Bank in recent years, a protective envelope that has virtually ended the phenomenon of suicide bombings and other attacks in Israel and in Judea and Samaria.
The removal of the Rimonim checkpoint, which regulates traffic from Ramallah with Jericho has multiplied the headaches and the risks for the IDF's Central Command and its commander, Maj.-Gen. Gadi Shamni. The checkpoints have provide a crucial instrument in the war against terror, with troops catching Palestinians on a daily basis trying to cross them concealing weapons, explosives or other contraband.
Officials close to Barak admitted that the removal of the Rimonim roadblock, and others, was fraught with security risks. But, they said, the risks were "calculated." Israel's primary objective with such "gestures" is to bolster PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his government in Ramallah, especially in the face of what is perceived to be the growing Hamas threat in the West Bank to complete the terror group's takeover of the Gaza Strip last June.
The lifting of 50 dirt roadblocks, and removal Rimonim Checkpoint, will allow Palestinians to
travel freely on roads they could not in the past, raising the risks of smuggling, drive-by-shootings, and infiltrations of bombers. "The Palestinian people in the West Bank only care about one thing, and that is having a better quality of life," a top IDF general explained on Sunday concerning the need for the gestures, the Jerusalem Post reported. "The hope is that once their lives improve they will begin to appreciate Abbas more and Hamas less."
Unfortunately for Israel, there are also Palestinian terror groups who care about something very different: easier opportunities to attack Israelis. The submission of IDF generals to political "gestures" is a phenomenon that has come back to haunt Israel since the wide spread politicization of the upper ranks of the Army since the Oslo accords in 1993.
Five years ago, the same Rimonim checkpoint was removed -- another "gesture." Two weeks later, in November 2002, Esther "Etty" Galiah, mother-of-seven from the adjacent Kochav Hashahar settlement, was murdered there. The following summer young Shuli Harmelech was murdered nearby, five hours before his son was born.
The barricade went back up.
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