Ya’alon warns Hamas not to escalate terror, says Abbas ‘no partner’

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon issued a warning to the Islamist Hamas organization on Friday, saying Israel would exact a “heavy price” for its role in any increase in Palestinian terrorism.

“We are not turned toward war, but there will not be peace now either,” Ya’alon told Channel 2 news on Friday night. “We will fight terrorism with an iron fist. We are not looking to escalate the situation, but if they choose to, we will respond accordingly.”

Hamas’s Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh earlier Friday called on the Palestinian public to escalate violent attacks against Israel. A short time later six Palestinians were killed by IDF fire when hundreds of protesters approached the border fence between Israel and the Hamas-ruled Strip. A seventh man succumbed to his wounds and died Saturday.

“I hope [Hamas] remembers Operation Protective Edge,” Ya’alon said, referring to Israel’s 50-day war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip last summer.

The defense minister rejected Palestinian claims that Israel is planning to change the status quo on the Temple Mount, a site revered by both Jews and Muslims. According to an arrangement put in place by Israel when it captured Jerusalem’s Old City from Jordan in the Six Day War in 1967, Jews are allowed to visit the mount — the holiest place in Judaism, as the site of the biblical temples — but not pray there, while the Muslim Waqf administers the Muslim holy places at the compound.

“We are not harming the status quo,” Ya’alon said, adding that Israel would not play into the hands of the “propaganda of lies” on this issue.

He said that a 2002 IDF crackdown on the West Bank terror infrastructure — at the height of suicide bombing attacks on Israelis during the second intifada — had effectively crippled terrorist operations there, whatever Palestinian extremist groups might now intend.

“We are in the midst of a terror wave that is mainly characterized by stone throwers and people throwing Molotov cocktails and attempting to run over people with their cars. This wave comes from the fact that in Operation Defensive Shield [in 2002] we hurt the terror infrastructure to such a degree that they cannot instigate other [kinds of] terror attacks, despite the incitement by Hamas and the [Israel-based] Islamic Movement,” Ya’alon said.

By other terror attacks, he appeared to be referring to suicide bombings. He had made a similar assertion at a press conference on Thursday night.

He said that Israel was making efforts to outlaw groups that inflame tensions. The Islamic Movement in Israel “is not growing, we are dealing with it. Sheikh [Raed] Salah [the group’s leader] was in prison several times and I hope we take more steps to close in on this movement. Incitement is nothing new and has not started today – I have spoken about it still when I was head of Military Intelligence, with [then prime minister Yitzhak] Rabin.”

Repeating comments he made earlier in the day, Ya’alon blamed Hamas for the incident and fatalities on the Gaza border. Haniyeh’s words “were apparently interpreted by the rioters” near the Gaza border fence, “and this is the result.”

Two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would welcome the entry of Zionist Union into a well-sized unity government, Ya’alon declined to speculate on whether he would need to step down as defense minister if the opposition party demanded the portfolio as a prerequisite for joining the coalition. These are “hypothetical issues,” he said.

He also rejected claims by opposition parties that a diplomatic solution would be the answer to the current wave of terrorism.

“I do not need convincing that [PA President Mahmoud Abbas] and the Palestinian Authority are no partners for an agreement that includes recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” he said.

“We have come a long way to convince Israeli society that he’s no partner. Many have come to believe as much, and around the world too. There is a process, but you cannot forget the [misguided] statements inside Israel that we just need to give back land and then we’ll be on the way to resting on our laurels.

“You need to understand the context – this is a struggle for Israel as a nation-state, this has been the struggle since the establishment of the state,” he said.

“There will not be peace now and in the days of a diplomatic process there were far more severe terror attacks,” the defense minister said. “There will not be peace now, nor war now unless we must, and we are working with great deliberation.”

Repeating his warning to the Palestinian leadership, this time including Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, Ya’alon warned that, “this [terror] wave could develop, and they will pay a heavy price in Gaza and also in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]. They know this. Do you think that [Abbas] stopped his incitement this week because he became a Zionist? He understood that it hurts him too.”