Settlement leaders call on Israeli government to 'turn the table' on PA

West Bank settlement leaders organized a press conference protest, outside the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, to demand action in light of the current security situation.

“Our friends in the government, we are asking you to turn the table. Because, if you don’t do it, we will. And we will demonstrate against you,” Shomron regional council head Yossi Dagan declared.

Dagan said he is “ashamed” to sit in front of the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, with his compatriots Shlomo Neeman and Israel Ganz from the Gush Etzion council and the Binyamin regional council, speaking of these issues “while there is a full right-wing government.”

The settlement leader went on to accuse Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas of being behind the recent wave of terrorism, saying “he is the one who should be afraid.”

The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, part of Abbas’s Fatah party, claimed responsibility for a terror attack near the West Bank city of Hebron on Monday. Batsheva Nageri, a mother of three, was murdered and an additional man was severely wounded.

“Instead the government continues to transfer huge budgets to him [Abbas] every month that go to terrorism. The PA gives terrorists much higher salaries than what is customary in the PA, for prisoners or families,” Dagan told Arutz 7, adding that “according to the length of the sentence, that is, the more massive the murder, the greater the terrorist's salary from the Palestinian Authority.” 

Dagan accused the PA of being the source of terrorism, through its educational system and its pay-for-slay policy for terrorists.

“The swamp is the PA, while the mosquitoes are called Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Unfortunately, in recent years Israel is only trying to catch the mosquitoes and not dry up the swamp,” the West Bank settlement leader stated.