Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad issued a joint statement Monday claiming responsibility for the bomb that blew up in the backpack of the terrorist carrying it Sunday night in Tel Aviv, and pledging suicide attacks “as long as Israel continues its massacre and policy of assassinations in Gaza.”
The purpose of the statement is clear: to instill panic and evoke haunting memories of the Second Intifada, a period when suicide attacks were a frequent and devastating reality for Israel for nearly five years.
Some in the media fell into this trap, reporting on the statement in breathless, panicky tones that conveyed a sense of impending doom, warning, “Beware, we are on the cusp of a Third Intifada.”
That, of course, is what the terrorists want: they want that panic, they want the country to quiver at the thought of a third intifada, they want the country to remember the suicide bombings of the early 2000s and fear that this is what awaits them again.
There is, however, something almost absurd about this approach. On October 7, Hamas burst into the country, committed Nazi-like atrocities, murdered, raped, pillaged, burned, and kidnapped. For the last three weeks, the country has been living under the cloud of threats from Iran and Hezbollah to spray the country with rockets and missiles and wreak a type of vengeance on Israel that the country has never experienced.
Country-wide panic?
And a statement of intent by Hamas and PIJ is supposed to send the country into panic?
For some, this psychological warfare will have an impact. This new threat, replacing the now seemingly passé Iranian and Hezbollah threats, will come to the forefront of the news cycle and become the latest bête noire.
But what is needed is some proportion.
Hamas, in its ridiculous statement, vowed to carry out suicide attacks “as long as Israel continues its massacre and policy of assassinations in Gaza.”
As if the suicide attacks did not predate Israel’s response to the October 7 atrocity by decades – they started in the mid-1990s as an attempt to torpedo the Oslo Accords.
Efforts to carry out suicide attacks will continue as long as there are Palestinian terror organizations, and these attacks are independent of anything Israel does or does not do.
The infrequency of these attacks “succeeding” is not due to a lack of desire to carry them out, but rather a lack of capability to do so. If they could, Hamas and Islamic Jihad would launch a suicide bombing attack against Israeli civilians twice a day.
But they can’t, and therefore Hamas and PIJ will not be able to frighten the country with the specter of a wave of suicide bombings. It won’t work. That such a wave does not wash upon our shores is because the IDF and the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) prevent those attacks, not because the terrorist organizations are not trying to carry them out.
Suicide bombings were a feature of the Second Intifada, a feature that the 2002 Operation Defensive Shield neutralized to a large degree.
Prior to Operation Defensive Shield, Israel – in accordance with the Oslo Accords – stayed out of the large Palestinian cities. As a result, a terrorist infrastructure took shape there that turned out one suicide bombing attack after the next. Labs were built to make the explosives, workshops popped up to put the bombs on suicide vests, and a terrorist network developed to recruit the suicide bombers, train them, and find people to ferry the murderers into Israel.
In April of 2002, the IDF moved back into the Palestinian cities in the West Bank to dismantle the labs and disrupt the terrorist network. It took a couple of years, but it worked, and the suicide bombings largely disappeared. It takes a great deal of planning and preparation to carry out this type of attack, planning and preparation disrupted when the IDF went back into the cities.
Further, it has taken nearly 20 years of vigilance – of IDF soldiers going back into the cities and towns week after week, sometimes night after night, to make sure that the terrorist infrastructure does not become reestablished.
The last two to three years saw a noticeable resurgence of terror activity inside the refugee camps in places like Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus, right under the IDF’s nose. Israel did not take strong enough measures to stamp them out, partly because of the same security doctrine that held sway in the country at the time and on October 7 – it did not want to ignite the area, it wanted to keep everything calm.
As the terrorism from the West Bank increased, however, this policy shifted a bit, and in July of last year – Operation Bayit VeGan – the IDF, for the first time in months, carried out a mission inside the Jenin refugee camp that signified a more aggressive policy.
Then October 7 hit, and even as the IDF has been fighting in Gaza and trading lethal blows with Hezbollah in Lebanon, it also understands that this is the time to dismantle the resurgent terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank.
According to various reports, since October 7 some 600 Palestinians have been killed in Judea and Samaria, most of them engaged in firefights with the IDF, or terrorists carrying out attacks, or rioters clashing with the IDF.
In addition, an estimated 4,500 militants have been arrested, including more than 1,800 affiliated with Hamas. While heavy fighting is taking place in Gaza and on the northern border, the IDF is daily operating inside Judea and Samaria to thwart attacks that are in the planning stage, and to disrupt attacks even before they are launched.
The main tool for doing this is not to wait on the roads for something to happen, but rather to act on a daily basis inside various Palestinian towns and villages – to keep terrorists preoccupied with having to deal with the IDF daily so that they are unable to have the time or the freedom of movement to plan larger attacks.
These daily actions are critical in preventing attacks like the one attempted by the suicide bomber in Tel Aviv on Sunday. Understanding this is important because the media reports about Sunday’s incident suggested that only by a miracle or luck was tragedy averted. Perhaps, but in past cases – and they have been numerous – the IDF and the Shin Bet have prevented these suicide bombers from committing their atrocities.
All of that is worth remembering when Hamas and Islamic Jihad warn of a new wave of suicide bombings or a Third Intifada. These groups have long yearned for this, and their inability to make it happen is not due to a lack of intent, but rather because Israel’s security measures are largely prevent them from succeeding – something to keep in mind when hearing the terrorist organizations’ most recent threats.