Last weekend’s truck-ramming attack, which killed four Israeli soldiers, comes on the heels of more than a year of stabbings, car-rammings, and occasional shootings known in Arabic as the haba, or eruption. Consisting mainly of attacks by young people that require little advance planning or equipment, this wave of terror has been accompanied by thousands of incidents of mob-style violence. Nonetheless, the hopes of Hamas and some elements within the PLO that the haba will mushroom into a full-fledged third intifada have been unfulfilled, largely because Israel has found ways to respond systematically and without recourse to collective punishment. Violence is now on the decline, writes Ehud Yaari:

Palestinian elites’ efforts to capitalize on or direct the propagators of the haba toward catalyzing a larger and wider movement failed. No doubt that failure had something to do with the divisions and lack of political capacity within West Bank society. But a well-considered Israeli policy certainly played a role as well. The obvious Israeli priority [has been] to prevent a deepening and widening of the haba by avoiding actions that might draw the bulk of the Palestinian population into direct confrontation. . . .

[One component] of Israeli policy in dealing with the haba concerns social media. As Facebook—and to a lesser degree Twitter, YouTube, and other social-media platforms—became the favorite means of communication for would-be assailants and those inciting violence, Israeli intelligence diverted significant additional resources to monitoring the web, rapidly screening the flood of information to identify potential threats. The innovative software employed underwent continuous upgrades and adaptations, including methods to crack encrypted messages commonly used by Hamas and Hizballah operatives. . . .

[Another] component has been selective retaliation. In response to the haba, Israeli security agencies limited retaliatory measures to the immediate environment of the attackers. Family members of attackers, and sometimes their extended clans, were denied work permits in Israel, which are a major source of income throughout the West Bank. Some were also denied trade licenses and permits to enter Israel. Villages that produced several attacks were isolated, and temporarily put under lockdown with military checkpoints on all roads leading to them. . . .

Officers from the six Israeli territorial brigades in the West Bank also kept in constant communication with Palestinian notables, mukhtars (local leaders), and schoolmasters. . . . Gradually, these efforts helped create a powerful if quiet lobby among the Palestinian population against the expansion of the haba into something more pervasively violent. Towns and villages not drawn into the cycle of violence received various economic incentives, so carrots as well as sticks played a role in this highly targeted approach.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.