In recent days, a Palestinian drive-by shooting killed an Israeli man and injured another. On Tuesday, several Palestinian terrorists planting a bomb in the nearby village of Tammun were injured when a bomb they were planting exploded prematurely.

And on Wednesday, Israel assassinated a Palestinian terrorist who, working on behalf of Iran, directed weapons smuggling from Jordan. The smuggling is a significant reason for a surge in illegal Palestinian weapons — and it passes through their area.

“The situation is awful,” one valley resident told The Press Service of Israel. The resident, who will be identified as L. works in the military and did not want to be identified discussing a sensitive issue.

“Terror has been spreading to the valley and making its base here. Small Palestinian villages surrounding the Jewish communities now each have a Hamas squad in it. And this is only one of the dangers. From the east, the situation is as bad, or maybe worse. The border with Jordan is very penetrable, tons of arms are flooding the valley from there. And we hear news of Iranian militias concentrating on the borders. With 70 percent of Jordanians being Palestinians, and the border so easy to break, you can imagine how frightening the situation is,” L. told TPS-IL.

While the Israel-Jordan border is 482 km long, the Jordan Valley is the main smuggling corridor due to its proximity to Syria and Lebanon.

Image - Yonatan Sindel/Flash90