http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/the-palestinian-authority-a-continuing-breeding-ground-for-terror/
Except for rockets from Gaza—which, meanwhile, have stopped since Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense in November—you haven’t been hearing much about Palestinian terrorism. But it’s not for lack of trying.
Israel’s Shin Bet (domestic security agency) has released its figures for 2012. It says it thwarted 100 “serious” terror attacks over the year, a third of them planned kidnappings, four of them attempted suicide bombings. The Shin Bet also arrested 2,300 terror suspects in 2012, leading to 2,170 indictments.
For the first time in four decades, no Israelis were killed in terror attacks in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) in 2012. But the number of attacks there rose sharply, from 320 in 2011 to 578 in 2012. That included a steep, 68% rise in Molotov cocktail attacks, which are intended to burn victims to death.
These are big numbers—100 attempted serious attacks, over 2,000 suspects arrested, 578 attacks in one year in the West Bank. Considering that perhaps two million (the figure is disputed) Palestinians live in the West Bank, it would justify calling it a terror entity. As for Gaza, it numbers about 1.5 million Palestinians and fired 2,327 rockets into Israel during the year, finally necessitating Pillar of Defense.
Meanwhile, as Evelyn Gordon details, the Palestinian Authority is in dire financial straits. When PA president Mahmoud Abbas went to the UN General Assembly last November to seek—and obtain—recognition for the PA as a nonmember observer state, he was warned of consequences by both Israel and the U.S., since his move was a direct flouting of Israeli-Palestinian agreements—signed under U.S. auspices—requiring issues to be settled solely through negotiations.
Two months later the PA, says Gordon, “faces the worst financial crisis of its crisis-filled history.” Israel has been withholding about $100 million a month in tax revenues it collects for the PA. Salam Fayyad, the PA prime minister, calls this “piracy,” but actually Israel is using the funds to pay off the PA’s enormous debt to the Israel Electric Corporation.