Is Israel in the midst of another wave of terrorist violence? Five Israelis were killed in a terrorist incident on Tuesday evening. The attack struck the adjacent cities of Bnei Brak and Ramat Gan; one shooter has so far been identified, a second person has been arrested and the security services reportedly suspect a third might still be at large. It is the third terror attack in a week. Two Border Police officers were shot dead in Hadera on Sunday and four Israelis were stabbed to death in a terrorist incident in Beersheba last Tuesday. That is 11 people killed in seven days and the Jerusalem Post counts the latest killings as the tenth attack this month.
What is particularly concerning for the Israelis is the character of the attackers. The Beersheba assailant, 34-year-old Mohammad Abu al-Qi’an, was from a Bedouin town in the Negev. He had previously served four years for attempting to join the Islamic State. The Hadera killers, cousins Ayman and Ibrahim Ighbariah, were also Israeli Arabs and lived in the city of Umm al-Fahm. Ibrahim was arrested by police in Turkey for trying to join Islamic State in 2016 and later served a year in an Israeli prison. Ayman was arrested by the Shin Bet in 2017 on suspicion of possessing illegal weapons.
Two attacks, in a short space of time, both carried out by Arab or Bedouin Israelis with allegiances to the Islamic State. This is why Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, announcing measures in response, spoke on Monday of ‘a new situation’. Other than Hamas rockets from Gaza, Israelis still tend to think of terrorism as something that comes from Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Although their number is far diminished from the heights of the Second Intifada, the last 20 years have seen a string of attacks on victims living in the Israeli-run Area C by terrorists from the Palestinian-run Areas A and B. There has also been a series of terror-motivated slayings by Palestinians infiltrating Israel. The ‘new situation’ Bennett and Israel’s security establishment fears is a wave of terrorism emerging from Arab towns within Israel.
Read the article by Stephen Daisley in The Spectator.