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Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has issued a blunt warning to the Palestinian Authority: If its security forces decide to "turn their guns" on Israelis and IDF troops, Israel will respond by going to war with the PA.
There is, however, an awkward detail standing between that warning and a full-scale West Bank war: Israeli military and Shin Bet officials say they have no concrete intelligence indicating that such an attack is actually being planned.
Katz's warning came Tuesday during a security briefing on IDF preparations in Judea and Samaria. He described a scenario in which PA security forces and Fatah-affiliated Tanzim elements could suddenly decide that their uniforms and weapons are better suited for attacking Israelis than maintaining order.
Given the history of the region, it is not exactly an imaginative exercise.
"The reference scenario defined for the IDF regarding Judea and Samaria determines that preparations must be made for the possibility of an attack by jihadist elements against the settlers and IDF soldiers, as a lesson from the events of October 7 in Gaza," Katz said.
And there is the October 7 lesson.
Israel was told for years that Hamas was deterred. The threat was manageable. The border could be secured. The worst-case scenarios could remain worst-case scenarios.
Then thousands of terrorists crossed into Israel and carried out the deadliest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust.
So when Israeli officials now say they are preparing for an extreme scenario, it is difficult to blame them for refusing to place their faith in comforting assumptions.
Katz reportedly based his warning on an IDF presentation to the cabinet Monday concerning the military's preparations for extreme scenarios. When IDF sources pushed back by noting that there was no concrete intelligence indicating a PA rebellion was being planned, Katz essentially made the obvious point: October 7 was also an extreme scenario, right up until it happened.
That does not mean a PA uprising is imminent. It does mean Israel has considerably less reason than it once did to dismiss unpleasant possibilities merely because they are unpleasant.
Still, the IDF and Shin Bet apparently aren't seeing the specific threat Katz described.
Additional IDF sources told The Jerusalem Post that the military has no concrete intelligence pointing to a planned rebellion by PA security forces or Fatah-affiliated Tanzim elements. Shin Bet sources similarly said they were unaware of any concrete threat from the Palestinian Authority.
In other words, Israel's defense minister is warning about a potential Palestinian Authority insurrection while the security establishment is essentially saying, "We don't see it."
That disagreement matters.
Katz did not coordinate his remarks with the IDF, and military sources did not indicate that they supported his decision to publicly outline the scenario.
But Katz went considerably further than merely saying the military should prepare. He said that if PA forces attack Israelis or IDF troops, Israel will declare war on the Palestinian Authority.
"In such a case, war will be declared against the Palestinian Authority, and the IDF will launch a comprehensive offensive in accordance with an organized plan that was formulated and approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and by me, according to the principles outlined for the IDF," Katz said.
That is not a diplomatic warning written by committee. That is a declaration that Israel has already contemplated exactly what it would do if the PA security apparatus decides to become another enemy army. And the proposed response would be anything but symbolic.
Katz said an Israeli campaign would be "short and powerful."
"The campaign will be short and powerful and will include the use of ground and air forces and the use of special means, the targeting and expulsion of senior officials, the destruction of weapons and military equipment, and the extensive evacuation of residents and destruction of terrorist infrastructure inside the cities and in all refugee camps in Judea and Samaria, in accordance with the Gaza and Lebanon model, alongside reinforcing forces and defending the Israeli communities," he said.
That would mean bringing the Gaza and Lebanon playbook into the West Bank.
Ground forces. Airstrikes. Targeted senior officials. Weapons destroyed. Terrorist infrastructure demolished. Large-scale evacuations.
The sort of military campaign that tends to make the international community suddenly discover an urgent interest in Israel's restraint.
Katz also said the IDF was conducting "powerful activity against terrorist centers on the ground, including the evacuation of refugee camps in northern Samaria," while claiming that terrorism had fallen to its lowest level in decades. Yet he warned that the situation could deteriorate dramatically if PA forces themselves became combatants.
That possibility is precisely why the IDF has changed its thinking since October 7.
Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir has said the military will increasingly prepare according to enemy capabilities rather than relying primarily on assessments of enemy intentions. That may be one of the most important lessons Israel learned from October 7.
Intentions are difficult to read. Capabilities are not.
A government can convince itself that an enemy has no intention of attacking. It can issue reassuring intelligence assessments, hold meetings and point to the absence of obvious warning signs.
Then the enemy attacks anyway, like history has show us.
Israel has therefore conducted surprise readiness exercises designed to test whether the military can respond to a large-scale assault without the luxury of advance warning.
The stakes in Judea and Samaria are particularly high now. Tensions have increased around the third anniversary of October 7, the upcoming elections at the end of the month, continuing clashes surrounding settler violence and the broader regional confrontation involving Iran.
An IDF source told the Jerusalem Post that the military would not publicly describe an all-out war with the West Bank in the same terms Katz did because such a conflict remains an extreme scenario.
Fair enough, but Israel has already learned the price of treating extreme scenarios as somebody else's problem.
The real question is not whether a PA rebellion is currently underway. It isn't. The question is what happens if the Palestinian Authority's security forces, which possess weapons, training and organizational structures, ever decide that Israel is the enemy rather than the security partner they are supposed to be.
Katz has made his answer clear.
Israel will not wait for another October 7 to discover that the "unlikely" scenario was sitting in plain sight.
Do you blame him?
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