One person was killed and more than thirty were injured when a truck rammed into a bus stop near Glilot on Sunday. As of Sunday afternoon, the motive for the attack was still being investigated. This incident reflects the trend of increased internal terrorist attacks facing the citizens of Israel.
Aside from its external wars on its northern and southern borders against Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel is facing many internal attacks.
The ramming incident on Sunday was carried out by a Palestinian resident of Israel. About three weeks ago, six people were stabbed in Hadera, with one killed, by a resident of Umm El-Fahm, a large Arab town in a bloc of Arab towns and villages. The suspect had a criminal background, possibly showing the intersectionality of criminal gangs, criminality, and terror that has increasingly underpinned rising violence in Israel.
The reason this is a pattern worth pointing out is that the last several years have seen a massive increase in gun violence in Israel by armed gangs who use stolen and smuggled weapons, including M-16s. Police have been relatively ineffective in halting this, and the number of casualties from these attacks has been steadily increasing.
Last month, in Ramle, four civilians were killed in a bombing attack by criminals. Over the past few years, killings have occurred approximately every few days by men using illegally obtained guns. The insecurity in many parts of the country, caused by criminal gun fights and assassinations, is a part of the terrorism that affects Israeli society as a whole, particularly the sectors in which it manifests itself.
Not all the attacks are nationally motivated, but some are. Another source of terrorist acts comes from people who entered Israel from Gaza or the West Bank and remained there illegally. Two weeks ago, an Ashdod police officer, Adir Kadosh, was murdered by a terrorist on Highway 4. The terrorist was a Palestinian from Gaza who had resided in Israel and carried out the attack with an illegally obtained weapon.
Rising lawlessness across southern Israel
Another area where the rise in lawlessness has been felt is the Negev. Border Police officer Sgt. Shira Suslik, 19, was murdered and ten were wounded in an attack at the Beersheba bus station earlier this month. The perpetrator came from an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev near Hura. Local leaders immediately decried the attack.
For years, the government has neglected to authorize and manage dozens of unrecognized villages in the Negev; they now control massive swaths of the entire area. In these towns, some homes are built illegally and off the grid, and there is little to no oversight or authority.
As such, some of these communities have become part of a larger trend of lawlessness that has come to characterize the Negev, where armed gangs sometimes threaten people who have to pay protection money to open a business. Similar to the Ramle attack, the combination of terror, lawlessness, and the flow of illegal weapons in Israel contributes to widespread violence.
While lawlessness and criminal gangs are part of the milieu of terrorism and its rise, some of the recent attacks have been more organized and less haphazard. The attacks in Hadera, near Ashdod, and Beersheba would appear to be “lone wolf” attacks.
But an October 1 stabbing attack in Tel Aviv and Jaffa was carried out by two men from Hebron, both armed with at least one M-16-style rifle, showing again how illegal weapons provide more deadly capabilities to the terrorists.
The two murdered seven people and wounded dozens. The fact that the men were able to enter Israel and carry out such a serious attack with relative ease illustrates the rising threat of terrorism throughout Israel. This was the worst attack in Israel since October 7, 2023.
Sadly, Israel is growing accustomed to these attacks. The war, which has dragged on for more than a year, has left society numb and accustomed to daily reports of casualties. There was a time in Israel when an attack killing seven would be a national emergency. Now, weekly attacks, along with the near-daily murders by armed gangs, have taken on a normal level of urgency and are accompanied by the daily death toll from Lebanon and Gaza.
Israel will have to tackle the internal threat of terror and the massive number of illegal weapons flowing to Israel and the West Bank if it intends to stop this trend.