Samaria Regional Council Head Yossi Dagan responded Tuesday to the operation in Shechem (Nablus) in which the IDF destroyed infrastructure belonging to the "Lion's Den" terror group and killed the group's leader.
The operation was carried out jointly by the IDF, Shabak (Israel Security Agency), and Israel's National Counter Terror Unit.
"The successful IDF operations last night and on Saturday night in Shechem are praiseworthy and prove that only widescale military activity will eliminate the terror," Dagan said.
"For the past month and a half, we have all been warning, screaming, and begging that the security checkpoints be replaced and that there be a widescale military operation against the Palestinian Authority's terror infrastructure. I call this Operation Defensive Shield 2 - not necessarily an identical operation but a large operation that will change the reality with the terror organizations, that will send them into defensive position and escape."
Slamming the current government, Dagan said that it "ties the hands of the IDF - they cannot return warfare - and approves its operations - too few and too late. Adopting our demand to put back the military checkpoints around the city of Shechem immediately led to a dramatic drop in the number of shooting attacks, but it came too late - after the terror attack in which IDF soldier Staff-Sargent Ido Baruch was killed. Replacing the checkpoints around Shechem and the operational activities deep in the city against the terror infrastructure - these are important."
"In order to defeat terror, the government must order a widescale and significant military operation in Shechem and replace the security checkpoints across all of northern Samaria, between Shechem and Jenin, in the area where the Jewish towns of Homesh, Sa-Nur, Ganim, and Kadim were uprooted and destroyed as part of the 2005 Disengagement, and since then terror infrastructure has flourished there.
"The IDF and the defense system have proven that they have the ability to defeat terror - the government needs to give the IDF the option and the command to begin an operation and win," Dagan concluded.