Erdan: Israel will not bend to extortion from an ambitious terrorist.

Democracies around the world are searching for ways to protect their citizens from the threat of terrorism. As Israel’s public security minister, I hardly go a week without a foreign official turning to me to learn from our experience. For better or worse, the thousands of attacks carried out by Palestinian terrorists against Israel have made my country a world expert in combating this threat.

As a result of its counterterrorism operations, Israel now holds 6,177 terrorismrelated prisoners. Many of these prisoners were involved in the wave of violence initiated in September 2000 under Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader at the time, following his rejection of an American-Israeli peace offer. The terrorist campaign that began then has so far led to the murder of some 1,300 Israelis — mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, children of every faith and background.

Of the 6,177 security prisoners, about 1,200 have recently begun a hunger strike. The strike leader is Marwan Barghouti, who was behind several deadly attacks.

Since his arrest in 2002, Barghouti has become adept at rebranding Palestinian terrorism as legitimate “resistance” and casting himself as a “moderate.” (Palestinian groups like to use language calibrated to make their actions more palatable to Westerners: incarcerated terrorists are called “political prisoners,” and cold-blooded attacks against civilians in restaurants and buses are whitewashed as a “struggle for freedom.”) He would prefer that his Western audiences not know that he was convicted of ordering or approving three attacks that cost the lives of five people. These victims, Jewish, Christian and Druze, were simply going about their daily lives, sitting in a Tel Aviv restaurant, driving along a road, pulling into a gas station. Barghouti denies the charges but, saying he doesn’t recognize Israeli courts, declined to defend himself.

Barghouti would like his audience to believe that the hunger strike is a reaction to the mistreatment of prisoners like him. In fact, it has nothing to do with their conditions, which meet international standards. This is reflected in the list of demands presented by Barghouti to the Israel Prison Service: the option to obtain university degrees, more family visits, access to more television channels, public telephones and private doctors.

The true motivation behind this strike is political jockeying. From prison Barghouti has become a major player in Palestinian politics, releasing regular statements on Palestinian affairs and backing candidates in elections. He is now involved in the infighting over who will succeed Mahmoud Abbas, the aging president of the Palestinian Authority and leader of the Fatah party.

Barghouti seems to hope that being chosen to succeed Abbas will lead to his release from prison. But he faces competition from several rivals and recently failed to secure a senior position in a round of political appointments of Fatah leadership. The hunger strike is another step in his campaign to position himself as Abbas’s successor. The political nature of the strike is a main reason the leaders of Fatah’s rival, Hamas, have not backed the strike.

Fortunately, it appears that in capitals from London to Paris to Berlin to Washington there is less patience for attempts to rebrand and justify terrorism, and a greater awareness of the need to take a strong stance against violence and incitement. As I was told recently by the ambassador of a northern European country facing a growing terrorist threat, “Now we get you.”

Israel will not give in to extortion. The conditions and regulations in Israel’s prison system are determined according to Israeli law and international standards, not by pressure tactics. Surrendering to such a strike would constitute a surrender to terrorism and would only embolden terrorist groups, weaken our deterrence and lead to further conflict and bloodshed.

Instead, we are working with our partners and allies to address the factors that sustain and encourage terrorism. We believe that the international community must insist that the Palestinian Authority immediately cease its widespread incitement to violence. While some Israeli-Palestinian security co-operation exists, the Palestinian Authority plays a central role in fuelling the epidemic of “lone wolf” attacks on Israelis.

The Palestinian Authority must also stop the most insidious form of encouragement to violence: payments to convicted terrorists and their families. The authority has enacted official legislation guaranteeing monthly stipends to every incarcerated terrorist and their families. The worse the attack and the longer the sentence, the higher the payout.

Because the Palestinian Authority’s budget depends heavily on foreign aid, these payments are, for all intents and purposes, paid by the taxpayers in the countries of foreign funders. While the Palestinians seem to have engaged in accounting tricks to blur the money trail — the money has now been funnelled through the Palestine Liberation Organization — the billions of dollars in international aid enable the authority to continue lining the terrorists’ pockets with cash. Both politicians and ordinary citizens must demand an end to this gross abuse of international funds.

This is one of the most important lessons of the Israeli experience in fighting terrorism.

While disrupting terrorist activity, we must also work together to combat the incitement that drives it.

When Palestinian leaders cease to glorify terrorists and reward violence, security prisoners will become a thing of the past, and a viable peace will become the hope for the future.