According to the decision, “Israel will act to prevent the collapse of the Palestinian Authority,” while demanding that the PA cease its anti-Israel activity.
By World Israel News Staff
Israel’s security cabinet – by a majority of eight to one, with one abstention – voted Sunday evening to prevent the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, adopting a draft decision submitted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“In the absence of a change in the national assessment, Israel will act to prevent the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, while demanding that it cease its anti-Israel activity in the international legal-diplomatic arena, the incitement in its media and education system, the payments to the families of terrorists and murderers, and the illegal construction in Area C,” the statement reads.
However, PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah party has called for an “armed intifada” that would include indiscriminate attacks on Israeli targets all over the country.
In a recently published announcement, the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Fatah’s military wing, told members that the organization has received orders to escalate tensions with Israel and to prepare for “open warfare…
“We call on all of our fighters and military cells, in every place in the West Bank, to attack the Zionist enemy and all of its components, including within the fragile heart of the entity, Tel Aviv.
The Palestinian Authority is reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy. According to Israel’s assessment, the collapse of the PA, despite its hostility, would lead to greater instability in Judea and Samaria.
“We need the Palestinian Authority. We cannot allow it to collapse. We also do not want it to collapse. We are ready to help it financially. We have an interest in the PA continuing to work. Where it succeeds in operating, it does the job for us. And we have no interest in seeing it fall,” Netanyahu stated last week.
‘Calls for refusal to serve condemned’
According to a Security Cabinet statement Sunday evening, the other proposals raised by Prime Minister Netanyahu were accepted unanimously:
– The security services will continue to take determined action to thwart terrorism.
– The prime minister and the defense minister will submit, to the Security Cabinet, steps to stabilize the civil situation in the Palestinian sector.
Furthermore, regarding protests against the government’s planned judicial overhaul, “the Security Cabinet unanimously supports the defense minister’s statement that the calls for refusal to serve severely harm the security of Israel and must be condemned, and that the security services must be left out of the political discourse.