Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman was not about to be left out of the offensive launched by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against the states that on Dec. 23 supported UN Security Council Resolution 2334, condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as a violation of international law. On Dec. 24, Liberman instructed Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, who heads the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), to sever ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and avoid working sessions with its senior officials on civilian-diplomatic matters.

COGAT, the military unit tasked with ensuring the smooth daily routine of the Palestinian population in the West Bank (and also in the Gaza Strip), deals with a variety of issues, such as transferring goods and raw materials into the West Bank, providing energy, developing infrastructure, coordinating with the PA, issuing transit permits for Palestinians traveling to and from the West Bank through Israel, allocating permits for Palestinians wishing to work in Israel, handling humanitarian issues, and more. The office of the coordinator deals with matters intrinsic to the daily lives of the more than 1.5 million Palestinians residing in the West Bank under PA control.

Liberman’s instructions do not relate to COGAT’s activities in the territories per se, but will make carrying them out more difficult, cumbersome and inefficient. To prove to the Israeli public that he, too, has the authority to retaliate and the punitive measures with which to do so, Liberman is acting against the Israeli defense policy of maintaining routine life for the Palestinians in order to ease tensions and reduce security threats to Israel.

In light of the lessons learned from the second intifada, which rocked Israel between 2000 and 2005, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) opted to avoid collective punishment in the West Bank during the recent wave of terror that swept Israel, in order to prevent large swaths of the Palestinian public from joining in the violence. The pervasive approach was and remains to pinpoint perpetrators of terror and act against them in the West Bank, while at the same time relaxing restrictions on other Palestinian civilians, making their lives easier.