TERRORIST ATTACK FOLLOWS CHECKPOINT REMOVAL

Check point Condi came to Israel and leaned on Olmert to improve Palestinian lives by removing check points. She succeeded. The result?

A terrorist attack merely hours after the Israeli army began easing security checks, and just a few kilometers west of a checkpoint that was removed. Fortunately, this attack ended justly. A quick thinking civilian, a high school principle, killed the terrorist before he did real harm to the victim.

After 5:30 p.m. on Monday afternoon, an Arab man approached the Shiloh Junction bus stop and began talking to two people, an adult and a teenager, who were waiting there. In an interview with Arutz Sheva, the teenager, Hillel Maeir, described the events which followed: After a short conversation in broken English and Hebrew, which aroused the suspicion of the two, the 16-year-old young man decided to move away, behind a concrete barrier at the bus stop while the older man placed his hand on his personal weapon.

At that point, the attacker suddenly pulled out a six-inch knife and tried to stab the adult Israeli. Because of his fear of getting entangled with the law for using his weapon, the would-be victim waited until the last second to draw his personal weapon. Hillel Maeir described that as the terrorist's knife was coming down toward the Jewish man, he managed to cock his pistol and shoot the terrorist all in the same motion of drawing his weapon.

The bullet knocked the Arab off his feet and wounded him. When the terrorist then reached into his shirt, the civilian interpreted the motion as a possible attempt to detonate an explosive vest, and he shot again, this time killing his attacker. It later turned out that the PA resident was reaching for a second, concealed knife.

Military and police forces alerted to the attack arrived at the junction and radioed for an emergency medical response unit. The responding Magen David Adom (MDA) team pronounced the terrorist dead at the scene.

Am I unduly pessimistic to suggest that there this is not going to be the last terrorist attack attributable to the"easing?" After all, we have seen this movie before:

Five years ago, the same Rimonim checkpoint was removed -- another"gesture." Two weeks later, in November 2002, Esther"Etty" Galiah, mother-of-seven from the adjacent Kochav Hashahar settlement, was murdered there. The following summer young Shuli Harmelech was murdered nearby, five hours before his son was born.

The barricade went back up.