PM touring Judea and Samaria command
PM touring Judea and Samaria commandAmos Ben Gershom

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, and IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot held an assessment of the security apparatus and the security situation in Judea and Samaria, together with Central Command Chief Gen. Roni Numa, government coordinator Gen. Yoav Mordechai, and representatives of the Shin Bet and the Israel police.

The Prime Minister and the Defense Minister were shown weapons which were seized in counter-terrorism operations in Judea and Samaria over the past year. The campaign was jointly conducted by the IDF, the Shin Bet, and the Israel police, which seized over 450 weapons and closed more than 40 weapons-producing workshops.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said: "I finished the assessment with the Defense Minister, the Chief of Central Command, and the police. I'm impressed with the great work being done here under the leadership of the Chief of Staff with the GOC and all professional bodies. There is a great deal of work to fight against Palestinian terrorism - intelligence, arrests, raids, and operations. It is done with tremendous resourcefulness and a lot of energy to reach the goal [of stopping terrorism]."

"I want to give one example which you have seen before: In 2015, almost no weapons-producing workshops were captured. In 2016, there were 43 operations against those workshops, including the confiscation of equipment, arrests, and the closure of the workshops. There is an extensive effort to prevent the production of and distribution of weapons which of course lead to huge disasters, " Netanyahu said.

He continued: "There was a dramatic increase in the seizure of weapons, guns, and the like, but we still have a great challenge ahead of us. We are aware of the fact that the Palestinian Authority, unfortunately, not only does not condemn terror, like with the most recent terrorist attack, but there are those in Fatah who praise it. We know we are facing dramatic political change - some I believe are good for Israel. Unfortunately, we have not yet reached stabilization of the situation."

Netanyahu said that despite the success of the IDF, the police, and the intelligence community in combating terrorism, the threat was not eliminated. "There is no such thing as hermetically sealed and we still, unfortunately, have periodic attacks in Judea and Samaria. But the system here works, and it works very quickly. And I have to say, it works with great creativity and with innovative methods, some of which I did not know. I am glad I came to meet them today."