In the past year, there has been an increasing problem of violent crime within the Jewish state’s Arab communities, most of which is apolitical in nature. But the outbreak in May of Arab attacks on Jews has raised the frightening prospect of internecine conflict. Sean Durns explains the Islamic Republic’s role in aggravating these problems:
The Times of Israel recently reported that Israeli police have “noticed a significant increase in efforts to smuggle weapons into the country via the Lebanese and Jordanian borders.” The increase, police told reporters, has been “severalfold,” with numbers skyrocketing after the end of the war [with Hamas] in May. Further, “there has been a marked improvement in the quality of the weapons being sent.”
The weapons . . . were mainly being smuggled by Hizballah, the Iranian-backed, U.S.-designated terrorist group that de-facto controls Lebanon. The head of Israel’s northern-district police intelligence department, Yaron Ben-Yishi, told the country’s Channel 12 news team that as much as 95 percent of the smuggling from Lebanon is directed by Hizballah, with many of the weapons destined for organized crime families.
Iran could be hoping to spark a civil war. . . . Some Israeli military officials have speculated that the Islamic Republic is hoping to frustrate future Israeli deployments by bogging down troops before they reach the front lines. Internal Security Minister Omer Barlev has described police efforts to seize illegal firearms in Israeli Arab communities as a safeguard for future military deployments,
But if Tehran is hoping to foment civil unrest in Israel, it is likely to be disappointed.
Why? As Durns explains, most Israeli Arabs are too content with life in the Jewish state to want to participate in a civil war. But that doesn’t mean Iranian efforts can’t do significant damage.
Read more on Washington Examiner: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/is-iran-trying-to-spark-a-civil-war-in-israel