The Yesha Council of Settlements on Friday said that Israeli cooperation in the efforts to create a Palestinian state were to blame for the attempted terrorist attack on the West Bank settlement of Beit Haggai earlier in the day.

A knife-wielding Palestinian infiltrated Beit Haggai Friday morning, and was shot dead by local security guards, preventing his apparent plan to carry out a terror attack, according to the Israel Defense Forces. One Israeli civilian was lightly wounded in the incident.

"The pressure being applied on Israel to help establish a state for these terrorist organizations only encourages the terrorists," Yesha Council leaders said in a statement on Friday.
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"Immorally, and outrageously, comparing the threat of a nuclear Iran to the pioneering settlement operations in Judea and Samaria affirms the criminal actions of the terrorist organizations," said Yesha Council spokesman Yishay Hollander.

Yesha Council heads said that the "The attack on the eve of Shabbat proves the importance of the settlement-protection apparatus, which, together with the settlement's emergency unit, prevented a major disaster."

The Yesha Council urged those organizations entrusted with the settlements' security to immediately halt plans to reduce settlement defense.

The head of the Mount Hebron council, Tzviki Bar Hai, said that the incident proves "that both the Arab world and the terrorists haven't grasped the fact that there's a new government in Israel."

"We understood a long time ago that the only explanation for the persistence of terror attacks is Israel's checkpoint concessions, and talks of peace agreements, which contribute nothing to Israel's security and only serve to weaken us. The terrorists are only further motivated by this," Bar Hai added.

The Benyamin settlers' commission said in response to the attempted attack that "the continued 'Wild West' of terrorism - from the attack in Bat Ayin, through a rocket fired on Sderot and to the attack on Beit Haggai - is a direct result of the removal of checkpoints in Judea and Samaria."

The committee of Yesha Rabbis said that the "multiple attempts to harm Jews stem from the ongoing delusional peace chattering, and prove that there is not, nor will there ever be, peace with a blood-thirsty enemy."

"The Jewish heroism demonstrated by Bat Ayin and Beit Haggai residents, fearlessly inhabiting isolated areas, is the true strength of the state of Israel that will vanquish all evil, both within and without," the Rabbi council added.

The right-wing Women in Green group announced that the "infiltration of a terrorist into the Beit Haggai settlement proves that the talk in the Israeli media of 'two states for two peoples' encourages cross-country terror."

"Today it's Beit Haggai, two weeks ago it was Bat Ayin and before that the car bomb outside the Haifa mall, which failed to explode only thanks to a miracle," the group added.

Women in Green called for the government to "respond to every attack or attempted attack with the establishment of a new settlement or new neighborhoods in existing ones."

"Such a Zionist response will eradicate, once and for all, the enemy's hopes of conquering our homeland," the group added.