|
|
|
|
Steven Emerson,
Executive Director
|
April 21, 2016
|
Make
or Break Moment for Palestinian Violence
by Yaakov Lappin
Special to IPT News
April 21, 2016
|
|
|
|
|
Share:  
|
  Be the
first of your friends to like this.
 The coming Passover
holiday represents a make-or-break moment that could decide whether
Palestinian violence and terrorism fizzles out, or escalates into a new and
more dangerous phase.
Israel's defense establishment is on alert to the possibility that tensions
surrounding Jerusalem's Temple Mount (known to Palestinians as the Al-Aqsa
holy site) could resurface and trigger a new outburst of terrorism, just as
a seven-month wave of largely unorganized terrorist attacks begins to draw
down.
The tensions could well appear again during Passover, when the number of
visits by religious Jews to the Temple Mount rises. There is no shortage of
elements in the Palestinian arena – from Hamas media outlets to social
media users – who will eagerly present such visits as part of an imagined Israeli conspiracy to take over the site.
As a result, Israel's defense establishment has advised the government
to prohibit any politicians, from any political party, to further inflame
tensions by visiting the site.
Against this background, the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency has
quietly thwarted a steady flow of mass-casualty, organized terror plots,
planned and orchestrated by Hamas. Any one of these plots could have
changed the strategic picture and led to an escalation on multiple fronts
had they materialized.
Hamas has been deeply disappointed by the recent decrease in terrorism
and by its failure to bypass Shin Bet's intelligence networks.
On April 18, a Palestinian bomb blew up on board a bus in Jerusalem and injured 21
civilians, including, possibly, the bomber himself. A media ban is in place
that prevents publication of further details on the investigation.
Israelis watched TV news broadcasts of scenes of a bus in flames and emergency
vehicles attending the site with much concern. They had hoped such
bombings, which tore through Israeli cities in the dark days of the second
Palestinian Intifada 15 years ago, were long behind them.
Unlike 15 years ago, Israel's security forces operate all across the
West Bank on a nightly basis to thwart attacks. Yet it only takes one plot
to slip through the cracks for the terrorists to achieve their goal.
The bus bombing goes to show the inherently unstable nature of the
security situation. On one hand, the number of terror stabbings, shootings,
and car ramming attacks – all part of the unorganized violence – have
plummeted in the past two months. On the other, such incidents could soon
resurge and be joined by organized, more lethal events.
Fatah's official Facebook account praised the bus attack, but this is only part of the
real picture.
Away from the rhetoric, on the ground, the Fatah-ruled Palestinian
Authority has actually improved its security coordination with Israel, and
has stopped 20 percent of organized terrorism plots brewing in the West
Bank, according to figures cited recently by Defense Minister Moshe
Ya'alon.
A senior Israeli military source said in April that "tensions in
Jerusalem, particularly in the context of Al-Aqsa, are there. It
characterizes the holiday period. We are going with the working assumption
that we will encounter this."
The source described seeing "a lot of orchestrated terror attempts
by [the large Palestinian] organizations. We can see many attempts being
made on a continuous basis." In West Bank raids, security forces
discovered ready-made explosive devices and high-quality assault rifles,
like M-16s and Kalashnikovs in the possession of would-be terror cells.
"The numbers [of such attempts] are high," the source said.
"But we are very effective. "The Shin Bet is a very significant
aspect of this. Although there are attempts, and there is very high
motivation [to carry out attacks], we succeed in thwarting them, and they
have not been able to reach a situation in which they can really launch a
quality attack."
Ten would-be kidnapping terror plots were thwarted since October, the
source added.
Israel's defense establishment also is improving in an area that it has,
until now, really struggled to deliver results – the ability to pick up
warning signs of a lone-wolf attack and stop it in time.
Improved social media analysis, using new big data algorithms, are part
of this improvement, defense sources say.
 Meanwhile, to the
south, the IDF announced this week the detection of a new Hamas cross-border attack tunnel,
stretching from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel.
It is the first tunnel discovered since the cessation of hostilities in
August 2014 between Hamas and Israel and represents the renewed effort by
Hamas's military wing to prepare attack options for when war breaks out
again.
Hamas views the current ceasefire as a tactical regrouping break. It has
no intention of stopping its multi-generational jihad against Israel's very
existence, and it views Gaza as its base of operations for this "holy
war."
The Hamas military wing, the Izzadin Al-Qassam Brigades, is readying
itself for future conflict. It is manufacturing rockets, mortar shells, and
digging tunnels for Hamas's elite Nuhba force of 5,000 heavily armed guerilla-terrorists
who make up one quarter of all of Hamas's armed members.
The plan was to inject these murder and kidnap squads into southern
Israel through tunnels. But Hamas's tunnel tactics are now in trouble.
Israel used new technological and intelligence capabilities to detect the
new tunnel, and has invested hundreds of millions of shekels in the
research and development of new detection systems.
If the IDF's Southern Command can begin to systematically detect tunnels
as Hamas digs them, and destroy them, Hamas would find itself wasting
treasure and blood (many workers die in tunnel collapses during the
construction stage) for very little return. Hamas would lose one of its
main investments in its future offensive capabilities.
That frustration could spur Hamas to try even harder to set up cells
remotely that sow death and destruction in Israeli
cities. Israel's intelligence personnel will continue to work around the
clock, away from the headlines and spotlights, to prevent that from
happening.
Yaakov Lappin is the Jerusalem Post's military and national security
affairs correspondent, and author of The
Virtual Caliphate (Potomac Books), which proposes that jihadis
on the internet have established a virtual Islamist state.
|
The IPT accepts no funding from
outside the United States, or from any governmental agency or political or
religious institutions. Your support of The Investigative Project on
Terrorism is critical in winning a battle we cannot afford to lose. All
donations are tax-deductible. Click here to donate online. The
Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation is a recognized 501(c)3
organization.
202-363-8602
- main
202-966-5191
- fax
|
|
Print
Send
Comment
RSS
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment