After discovering a 25-meter-deep tunnel in Qalqilya near Kfar Saba, Samaria Governor Yossi Dagan sent an urgent letter to the Defense Minister, the IDF Chief of Staff, and the Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, warning: “Prepare for a ‘turning of guns’ scenario. The ‘Palestinian’ Authority and Hamas do not conceal their intentions for a second October 7—the tunnel is the warning.”
Dagan is demanding that defense leadership urgently formulate an operational plan addressing a scenario in which armed ‘Palestinian’ Authority security apparatuses—ostensibly serving as policing forces—turn their weaponry, capabilities, and personnel against Israel, launching raids into Samaria communities, border-seam towns, and major cities across the Sharon and central Israel in an assault mirroring October 7.
The demand follows the discovery of an excavation tunnel plunging at least 25 meters deep in Qalqilya on September 23, carried out in a joint operation by the Judea and Samaria District Police Crime Suppression Unit and Border Police forces. Alongside the primary tunnel, which was in advanced stages of digging, forces uncovered the initial excavation of a second shaft. Troops located an arms cache including an M-16 rifle, a sniper rifle, ammunition, magazines, communication devices, fertilizer used for manufacturing improvised explosive devices, and DVR recording equipment. Four suspects were apprehended on site. Rafi Saar, Mayor of neighboring Kfar Saba, addressed the discovery as a “grave incident,” underscoring that the security threat facing seam-line residents is “tangible and immediate. This is not a theoretical warning—this is an operational security reality that demands decisive action.”
2+In his appeal, Dagan cautioned that alongside familiar terror organizations led by Hamas, Israel must scrutinize the military buildup of the ‘Palestinian’ Authority’s security services. According to updated figures, the PA force numbers approximately 60,000 armed personnel, including specialized formations trained in urban combat and rapid assaults, outfitted with RPGs, sniper rifles, heavy machine guns, and armored vehicles.
The apprehension is grounded in history: over the years, multiple members and officers of the ‘Palestinian’ security apparatuses have carried out or aided terror attacks against Israelis. Furthermore, Dagan argued that this military buildup occurs within a toxic political and social ecosystem fueled by official incitement, glorification of terror in schools and media, and Ramallah’s institutional policy of paying financial stipends to incarcerated terrorists and families of attackers.
2+Public sentiment in Judea and Samaria further accentuates the risk. A PCPSR poll from October 2025 indicated that 53% of respondents across Judea, Samaria, and Gaza believed Hamas’s decision to launch the October 7 assault was correct, with support reaching 59% in Judea and Samaria alone. Furthermore, 41% favored armed struggle as the primary means of confrontation.
Dagan warned against complacency, saying a sovereign state cannot assess only what an armed force is doing today, but what it could do tomorrow: “The uncovering of the tunnel in Qalqilya must trigger every red alarm across the State of Israel,” Governor Dagan said. “We are talking about a ‘Palestinian’ city sitting mere meters from Sharon communities, inside of which an advanced 25-meter deep shaft was excavated alongside sniper rifles and bomb-making materials.
“October 7 demonstrated in the harshest possible way the consequence of allowing an armed force across our border to steadily amass capabilities, training, weapons, and infrastructure over years—Hamas is the primary example. The State of Israel cannot allow itself to wake up in a few years to discover that a force of tens of thousands of armed men in the heart of Judea and Samaria, right on our doorsteps, has transformed into an army turning its gun barrels toward us.
2+“Therefore, I demand that the Defense Minister, the Chief of Staff, and the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman prepare an immediate counter-plan against a ‘turning of guns’ scenario—a structured operational doctrine addressing the risk of PA security services acting as a military force against Israel. We must evaluate their numbers, training, weaponry, intelligence capabilities, infrastructure, and proximity to Israeli communities and IDF bases.
“The lesson of October 7 is that you do not wait for the threat to mature fully. You identify it during its buildup and prepare the operational answer in advance. I do not want us to be told years down the line: ‘We saw the tunnels in Qalqilya, we saw the buildup, we saw the drills—but we didn’t believe they would attack.’ The State of Israel must be ready.”