On Friday, Israeli police apprehended four of the six Palestinian prisoners who had escaped from prison a few days earlier. They reportedly sought shelter and food in Arab villages, but the locals were unwilling to help them, and in fact assisted in their capture. Although the past few days have seen rocket fire from Gaza, and stabbing and shooting attacks from the West Bank, there has been no outbreak of mass demonstrations—contrary to the grim expectations of Israeli security officials, who feared a repeat of the rioting in Arab communities last summer. Aaron Lerner writes:

When [the] terrorists escaped from an Israeli prison Islamic Jihad called for Israeli and Palestinians Arabs to take to the streets to interfere with efforts to recapture them. The grand total of Palestinians across all of Judea and Samaria who answered the call of Islamic Jihad numbered well less than a thousand, with the largest incident accounting for half the total. Only around ten Arabs were seen chanting their support at al-Aqsa mosque after Friday prayers.

As for Israeli Arabs, when four of the terrorists were recaptured thanks to Israeli Arabs who tipped off the police, we learned that the terrorists couldn’t find any Israeli Arab who was willing to help drive them across the Green Line [into Palestinian-controlled territory].

Why did the security experts get it so wrong? I suspect that they took the terrifying riots earlier this year as their model. But, apparently, there is a key difference between the two situations. The rioting took place because the people on the streets bought the line that “al-Aqsa is in danger.” The escape of six terrorists had nothing to do with al-Aqsa.

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.