MK Dr. Steinitz Demands: Disarm the PA – Rejects Call for Ceasefire

On Tuesday, May 8th, MK Dr Yuval Steinitz addressed a packed audience at the Israel Center in Jerusalem, at a news forum hosted by the Israel Resource News Agency.

Steinitz, a former Peace Now leader and now an influential force in the Likud, rejected any cease fire idea, demanding that Israel disarm the PLO and its armed forces that continue to attack Israel on all fronts.

Speaking in his capacity as the chairman of special Knesset Foreign and Security Relations subcommittee on Defence Planning and Policy, Dr. Steinitz stated that the PA has engaged in a policy of smuggling enough weapons to cripple the state of Israel.

Dr. Steinitz warned that “national security is much more important that personal security”, and asserted that any cease fire achieved in the short run would come at the expense of the need to strike at the source of the problem.

According to Dr. Steinitz, Israel had ignored the growth of the Palestinian security forces, from the agreed upon number in the 1993 “declaration of principles” of 9,000 to the agreed upon number of 24,000 under the second Oslo agreement of 1995, to 60,000 Palestinian soldiers are now under arms.

However, Steinitz asserted, the days of Israel ignoring the PA military preparations are over, since the PA is engaged in a well planned war of attrition that could last for many months and years – if Israel does not act immediately to stem the flow of weapons smuggling into the PA, by closing every artery of supplies, from the the PA airport in Gaza to every roadblock that can act a port of illegal arms supply.

Dr. Steinitz demanded that Israel increase its military pressure on the Palestinian security services, and called for the IDF to immediately attack PA army bases, PA ammunition dumps, PA officers and all the bunkers where weapons can be stored.

Dr. Steinitz conveyed a message to the media: to relate to the Palestinian Authority as a state in the making that is engaged in a low intensity war with Israel and not as a terror group firing pot-shots at civilians.

Dr. Steinitz indicated that the PA had crossed a “Cassus Belli” when it launched attacks on Jerusalem’s capital, and indicated that the time has come for Israel to consider a formal declaration of war against the PA.

In conclusion, Dr. Steinitz quoted peace process advocate Dr. Yose Beillin, who said from the rostrum of the Israel Knesset only nine months ago that an armed PA attack on a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem would as “unthinkable”, a red line that the PA would never cross, since an attack on a nation’s capital would be understood all over the world as an act of war.

Dr. Steinitz’s message: Israel is in a state of war and must act like it.