Today, The Jerusalem Post reported, "Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad warned on Wednesday that IDF operations in the West Bank were hampering his administration's effort to improve security in the territory." In my view, Mr. Fayad's complaint is rather hollow and Israel should ignore it.

To date, the Palestinian Authority has not outlawed Hamas in the West Bank and it has not carried out sustained operations aimed at shutting down Hamas' operations and infrastructure, including its "charitable" activities.

Among the facilities closed down was a Hamas-run girls school. However, Hamas does not run schools to provide students with the skills and knowledge. Instead, Hamas seeks to make its schools into propaganda factories that churn out radicalized individuals who will support and carry out that terrorist organizations extreme objectives.

Article 15 of the Hamas Charter declares, "It is necessary that scientists, educators and teachers, information and media people, as well as the educated masses, especially the youth and sheikhs of the Islamic movements, should take part in the operation of awakening (the masses)." Article 18 of the Hamas Charter states that girls should be taught "to perform the religious duties in preparation for the role of fighting awaiting them. That is why it is necessary to pay great attention to schools and the curriculum followed in educating Moslem girls, so that they would grow up to be good mothers, aware of their role in the battle of liberation."

Finally, some of the terrorists who were apprehended by Israel were developing chemical explosives.

Hamas' running schools aimed at indoctrinating impressionable youth into violent radicals and its working to develop chemical explosives constitute serious threats to Israel's national security, its civilian population, and any prospects for bilateral Israel-Palestinian peace. Mr. Fayad should be working to curb those threats. Given his failure to launch the kind of meaningful campaign required to try to eliminate Hamas' operations and infrastructure in the West Bank and the growing threat to Israel posed by Hamas' activities in the West Bank, Israel's operations were wholly justified.