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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Israel's had success against 'lone wolf' terrorists — here's how |
| 2016-07-30 |
| [IsraelNationalNews] "Lone wolf" terrorism in Europe is making headlines around the world. But in Israel, the phenomenon of angry or troubled individuals taking up arms is old news. Since October, Israelis have endured a wave of violence that has been carried out largely by individual Palestinians without backing from terrorist groups — so much so that some have called this the "lone wolf intifada." As of the end of June, 38 people had been killed and 298 injured by attackers, according to the Shin Bet security service. Yet the violence appears to be winding down, at least for now. In October, when the wave of violence is said to have started, the number of attacks against Israelis spiked to 620. In June, there were 103 attacks, lower than in September, before the wave of violence began. A large majority of the attacks — some 1,500 out of 2,000 — were in the West Bank, where the Israel Defense Forces is responsible for protecting Israelis. Here are five key methods the army used to turn the tide of violence. Keep the terrorist groups out of it The wave of violence may be considered a lone wolf intifada, but that's because the army has put a lid on the terrorist groups, a senior IDF officer told reporters during a briefing this week. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of his job. Since the second intifada, the last major Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s, the Israeli army has managed to largely dismantle the networks run by Hamas and other terrorist groups in Judea and Samaria, according to Shlomo Brom, a retired brigadier general and an analyst at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies think tank. "Basically the terror networks are dismantled, and basically the security forces are dealing with maintenance," he said. But that doesn't mean terrorist groups have stopped trying to launch attacks against Israelis. In the past three months, the army has thwarted dozens of attempted attacks by Hamas alone in what the senior official called the "old war" against organized terror. “We're still having day-to-day indications of them trying to find people in Judea and Samaria, fund them, give them weapons, give them explosives and tell them to shoot Jews," he said. "This hasn't changed." More at the link |
| Posted by:badanov |