Nadene Goldfoot
JERUSALEM — Israeli security forces captured two Palestinians on Sunday who were suspected of perpetrating an ax attack that killed three Israeli Jews in the central town of Elad on Thursday night. Their arrests ended an intensive search but left Israel’s fragile government grappling with how to combat the recent surge in terrorist attacks. So even Israel has to review its methods to cover new terrorism plots.
“Capturing the murderers is not enough,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel said Sunday at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting, adding, “We are at the start of a new stage in the war on terrorism.”The search, involving hundreds of soldiers and police officers as well as helicopters and drones, had closed in on an area near a quarry, less than a mile from Elad.
Because Israel has had so many years to deal with terrorism, ever since the 1920s, they have been forced to develop innovative counterterrorism strategies. Israel is now respected as a global expert in the field, and its policies have become a model for other democracies that are also committed to upholding humanitarian standards even while they face terrorists who operate among civilians.
They have dealt with wars and terrorism since 2000 and sought ways to defend its citizens and, at the same time, protect the lives of innocent Palestinians and Lebanese who were also victimized by those who want to destroy Israel. It must be remembered that their enemy holds no such feelings towards their own people and have often used them as chattel, weapons to use against Israel.
The guiding principles of Israel's policies are:
1. Humanitarian
A. Save the lives of Israeli citizens
B. Protect the lives and well-being of innocent Palestinians
C. Uphold civil and human rights with Supreme Court review of contested policies
Israel chose not to use its full military power to eliminate the terrorists in order to limit the loss of innocent Palestinian lives. One strategy was to try to block the terrorists' ability to access Israeli population center. There are no natural barriers between Israel and the West Bank (Judea Samaria).
There were man-made barriers when Jordan occupied the West Bank, but Israel removed them when it gained control of the area in the 1967 War. For the next 33 years people traveled more freely between the 2 regions. However, this free movement ended when the terrorist campaign erupted in 2000. Israel had to prevent terrorists from simply walking or driving into Israeli communities to maim and murder men, women and children.
2. Defensive
A. Stop terrorists and dismantle their infrastructures
1. Checkpoints: are temporary legal and part of the Oslo Accords. They inconvenience Palestinians and Israelis though Israel has progressively introduced improvements to ease the transit for Palestinians.
a. Security checks within pre-'67 Israel: All Israelis and visitors must go through metal detectors and bag/body checks when they enter public places such as malls, bus stations, museums, clubs, cafes, hotels and religious sites.
b. Border-Crossings; have had 26 checkpoints between Israel and Territories in Sept. 2005. Like border crossings between countries.
c. Security checkpoints within West Bank, control movement of terrorists, built around cities known to be terrorist centers like Nablus. As the fence went up, Israel reduced the number of checkpoints from 25 to 12 and the roadblocks from 87 to 66.
B. Prevent the success of terrorist missions
C. Root out terrorist leaders and their supporters
Mossad-Intelligence Gathering: is a defensive force. Israel's most effective and important weapon is its intelligence operations, which allow it to monitor and preempt attacks against its citizens.
Update 8/5/22: The IDF remains on high alert along the Gaza border and has redeployed reinforcements and called up reserves to the area. The IDF continues to maintain road closures in the border area. This comes after security forces arrested an Islamic Jihad commander, al Saadi, earlier this week in Jenin. The IDF says that it has intelligence that the Islamic Jihad terror group in Gaza is planning attacks on Israeli targets in the border area.
According to a report in the Palestinian al Quds news paper in Jerusalem, Islamist Jihad told Egyptian moderators that they demand to see proof that al Saadi was unharmed by his Israeli captors as well as a resolution of the 144 day hunger strike of another member of the Islamic Jihad held in prison in Israel. The terror group also said that they were not interested in a violent conflict but reserved the right to respond to the "the crimes perpetrated by the enemy occupiers." This, coming from the people who beheaded Daniel Pearl.
Resource:
Israel 101 magazine of 2010, by Stand with Us. p. 28-29,
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/08/world/middleeast/israel-suspects-arrested-attack.html
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