Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
31 December 09
“We told the IDF to come up with effective security arrangements”.
That’s the excuse that the High Court of Justice justices will tell themselves when Palestinian terrorists exploit their ruling to restore access to Highway 443.
But it will just be that.
An excuse.
The narrative of the Israeli Leftists celebrating the reopening of Highway 443 to common Palestinian use is that Israel cynically justified their exercise of the right of eminent domain to build the road by noting that Palestinians would benefit from using it and then barring them from the highway.
But Israel had no intention to bar Palestinian access.
Palestinians did, in fact, use the road alongside Israelis.
And this situation could have continued to this very day.
If the Palestinians didn’t start exploiting access to 443 in order to murder Israelis.
But they did.
Let’s make this clear.
Palestinian access to 443 wasn’t limited as some form of “collective punishment”.
It was done because Israeli security services couldn’t come up with a workable, reliable, alternative that would keep Israel’s second most heavily traveled route between the Coastal Plain and Jerusalem safe for Israeli drivers.
Back to the court ruling.
Now these judges may genuinely think that Palestinian use of Highway 443 is more important than the Israeli lives that could very well be sacrificed if their ruling is implemented.
But that’s not what they said.
Instead they covered their backsides by instructing the IDF to come up with effective security arrangements.
Now the onus is on the IDF and the other security agencies to bring the problem back to the court, explaining honestly and vividly the security risks their “solutions” carry with them.
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Better yet, write a law that forces the Israeli courts to follow the recommendations of security professionals in matters like highway security. The courts should not casually disregard their advice - in fact the burden of proof should be shifted so the courts have to prove their proposed solution is better the current best practice in the country. With such a standard in place, the Israel Supreme Court would never have opened Highway 443 to the Palestinians. The sooner such a law is passed, the more Israelis will be safe from such outrageous acts of judicial activism.
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