Strook and Mualem-Rafaeli touring Hebron
Strook and Mualem-Rafaeli touring HebronPhoto: Office of MK Mualem-Rafaeli

Jewish Home faction Chairman and member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, MK Shulamit “Shuli” Mualem-Rafaeli, conducted a tour of Hevron on Sunday.

The tour was initiated by Hevron resident and former Jewish Home MK Orit Strook, in order to study the complexity of the security of the Jewish community in the heart of a hostile population. Uri Karzen, the Director General of the Jewish community, accompanied the tour and surveyed the sensitive sites where there have been attacks as well as the locations which have been cautioned as possible future targets.

Upon completing the visit, Mualem-Rafaeli said that "the security of the Jews should precede the convenience of the Arabs. If opening of shops on the access road to the Cave of the Patriarchs endangers the lives of pedestrians - do not do it. If passages are repeatedly used to carry out acts of terrorism or incitement, Arab traffic should be banned there. The State of Israel is committed first and foremost to the safety and security of its citizens, and only after, worry about the welfare of the Arabs.”

Orit Struk said that the "political concept of security justifies the daily lives of Palestinians, often at the expense of the security of the Jewish community. Supervision under an erroneous concept that if we deluge the Arabs with benefits, our security will improve. We support Palestinian police as subcontractors to achieve security and peace, but as we have seen many times, the tool was used against us."

According to Karzen the "real political debate takes place between the political echelon and the executive military echelon. There is no intention to defeat terrorism. It simply does not exist. We are prisoners of how the world views us, and what the world will say”.