'Palestinian' violence in Judea and Samaria increasing

OC Central Command Nitzan Alon told Channel 2 on Tuesday night that violence by 'Palestinians' in Judea and Samaria has increased recently, but he stopped short of calling it another intifada.

On Tuesday, the IDF stopped a Palestinian in the Jordan Valley who carried four improvised explosives.

Near Bethlehem, Palestinians threw stones at soldiers, lightly wounding one. They also threw stones at soldiers near Ramallah.

Separately, in a raid on a Palestinian home in Hebron, the IDF found a cache of weapons, including bullets and night vision equipment.

“Our forces are working day and night,” Alon told Channel 2. The IDF has arrested Palestinians who have harmed Israelis such as those who threw stones at cars on Route 5 earlier this month, he said.

But he added that still, “there are scores of intelligence reports of attempts to execute terror attacks. I am happy that we ended 2012 and the last few months without fatalities [from terror attacks] in the region of Judea and Samaria.”

The IDF, Alon said, has also taken steps to help diffuse the tense situation in the West Bank such as deporting to Gaza earlier this month the Palestinian prisoner Ayman Sharawneh who had been on a hunger strike.

Alon who signed the deportation order said, “on one hand we have to maintain our legitimacy, refrain from rash moves and make arrests when necessary.” On the other hand, he said, “we need to know how to dismantle land minds.”

The IDF, he said, seeks to find a balance between these two objectives.

You have to wonder how much trouble Alon has keeping his job from his personal life. His wife is a member of Machsom Watch, a radical Leftist group that harasses IDF soldiers at checkpoints.  Remember Ehud Olmert?