PM says current counterterror efforts like Defensive Shield op

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu equates his government’s efforts to tackle attacks from the West Bank to Operation Defensive Shield, a major campaign to quash terrorism during the Second Intifada.

“In 2002,” Netanyahu says at an event commemorating Israel’s deceased heads of state, prime minister Ariel Sharon “decided to embark on Operation Defensive Shield, which received broad public support, to destroy the terror infrastructures in Judea and Samaria.”

He says that Palestinians learned during that operation that “we don’t hesitate to penetrate deep into the territory in order to bring back security to the citizens of Israel.”

Netanyahu asserts that his government acts according to the same principles, “entering everywhere, whenever it’s needed, west of the Jordan.”

He alludes to the marked drop in the number of Palestinian attacks over recent months, but cautions that Israelis shouldn’t take that drop for granted.

“This drop isn’t guaranteed,” he says. “We can anticipate the possibility of severe terror attacks at any moment, but the fact is that we are acting against terror hotbeds, so that the terror we are contending with is mostly terror [carried out by] individuals.”