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Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Office
Scene of Monday's terror attack near Shvut Rachel
Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Office
Yossi Yehoshua

IDF and Shin Bet can do better

Analysis: The same creativity demonstrated by Israel's security organizations against terror infrastructures in the second intifada is needed as part of a new plan to stop the recent wave of terror.

The recent wave of terror attacks, which has claimed two victims in less than two weeks, finds Israel's defense establishment not only helpless and clueless, but also confused in terms of the messages it is conveying. While both the IDF and the Shin Bet have failed to find a link between the different incidents, which all took place in the Binyamin region, they are also failing in laying their hands on the terrorists.

  

 

Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon surprised reporters during a briefing in the north on Tuesday, when he said that the shooting attacks were executed by an organization of Hamas members in Istanbul.

 

He said that the money behind Hamas' activity in the West Bank was Iranian money and detailed the recent attacks that this organization was responsible for, including the attack in Shvut Rachel, which left Malachi Rosenfeld dead, and the murder of Danny Gonen near Dolev. According to Ya'alon, theses attack were carried out by the Hamas headquarters which moved to Istanbul after being banished from Syria.

 

Drive-by shooting attack which killed Malachi Rosenfeld. We can't accept this as a predestination (Photo: Tazpit News Agency)  (Photo: TPS)
Drive-by shooting attack which killed Malachi Rosenfeld. We can't accept this as a predestination (Photo: Tazpit News Agency)

 

Several hours later, a senior officer briefed military correspondents and claimed the exact opposite. He stressed that the recent attacks were carried out by local organizations and that they had nothing to do with each other. There is no infrastructure guiding terrorists in the Jordan Valley, near Dolev, at Rachel's Tomb or in Qalandiya.

 

However, Hamas has settled permanently and in a significant manner in Judea and Samaria. It's already clear that Monday's attack near Shilo was not part of the phenomenon defined as "lone-wolf terrorists." It's clear that carrying out an attack in a vehicle with a firearm and at a specific point allowing the terrorists to choose three different escape routes, requires preparation and organization, even if it's not institutionalized.

 

And yes, it's time to demand better results from the IDF and from the Shin Bet against those lone terrorists, because we can't accept it as a predestination. These two organizations already proved, in the height of the second intifada, that they are capable of eradicating much more dramatic threats than lone terrorists and thwarted terror infrastructures which sent suicide bombers to buses and terrorists who turned the traffic routes in Samaria into bloody roads on a daily basis.

 

Those days, the method was called "lawnmower" and it was formulated by then-Central Command chief Moshe Kaplinsky and implemented by a young brigadier-general named Gadi Eisenkot, who served as the Judea and Samaria Division commander. Now the chief of staff, he should demand that same creativity from his subordinates and from the Shin Bet as part of a new plan which will stop this wave of terror. It's not a predestination.

 


פרסום ראשון: 07.01.15, 17:12
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