The Religious Zionism Party on Sunday installed new directional signs across northern Samaria pointing to Jewish communities in the region, aiming to prevent drivers from mistakenly entering Palestinian Authority-controlled areas. According to the party, the signs direct drivers to emerging Jewish communities, including Mevo Dotan, Emek Dotan, Homesh and Sa-Nur.
The initiative follows an attempted lynching last week of an Israeli mother and son who accidentally drove into Jenin. The pair narrowly escaped after a mob threw rocks and bricks at their car and attempted to open the vehicle’s doors before the two fled to an Israel Defense Forces checkpoint.
Jews who travel into Area A of Judea and Samaria face a “danger of death,” Religious Zionism Party lawmaker Simcha Rothman told JNS on Sunday, arguing that attention to alleged “settler violence” had obscured the threat. Rothman told JNS he lives in the mixed Israeli city of Lod, where “Arabs and Jews live side by side.” An Arab who enters a Jewish neighborhood in the city comes to no harm, he said.
“But if someone Jewish drives to Jenin, we are starting to see that they can be blamed for the fact that immediately, tens, if not hundreds, of Arabs want to kill them because they are Jews,” he continued.
It was unacceptable, said Rothman, that Jews cannot safely enter Palestinian cities such as Jenin in Samaria, adding that the danger they face is rooted in antisemitism. He questioned why the international community tolerates the restriction, saying that if Jews risk being killed for entering an Arab city, “this is apartheid, this is racism.”
Fellow Religious Zionism Party MK Ohad Tal told JNS on Sunday that Israeli withdrawals inevitably invite Arab terrorism. New Jewish communities and an increased Israel Defense Forces presence have stabilized northern Samaria, Tal said.
“Israel has learned the hard way that there are no power vacuums: Wherever there is an Israeli withdrawal, Arab terrorism moves in,” the lawmaker told JNS.
The Religious Zionism Party, he said, has led a historic change by working to apply de facto Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.
“Instead of northern Samaria remaining a hotbed of terrorism, extremism and violence, new Israeli communities and IDF presence have changed and stabilized the reality on the ground,” Tal explained.
“This is one of the key lessons from Oct. 7: not to wait for your enemies to strengthen, but to be proactive and counter the threat,” he said, in reference to the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel, which killed some 1,200 people, primarily Jewish civilians.
Palestinian terrorists targeted Israeli Jews in Judea and Samaria at least 5,051 times in 2025, according to figures published by the Rescuers Without Borders (Hatzalah Judea and Samaria) NGO.
The figures do not include the hundreds of violent attacks on Israeli security personnel occurring during ongoing counter-terrorism operations in Arab towns under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
Twenty-four Israelis were murdered in Judea and Samaria in 2025, and more than 400 others were wounded, per the group’s annual report.
The findings, which were cross-checked against official data from Israeli security agencies, included 3,299 instances of rock-throwing, 458 firebomb attacks, 655 attempts to blind drivers with laser pointers, 286 attacks involving explosives and 19 shootings.
