Israel Has Crushed One Terrorist Group, but Attacks Are Unlikely to Stop

Last week, the IDF and Shin Bet carried out a decisive raid against the Lions’ Den, an upstart West Bank-based terrorist group that, although financed by Hamas, operates outside of the framework of the major Palestinian organizations, and has been responsible for several attacks during the preceding weeks. But informed observers believe it unlikely that terror will abate—as evidenced by the stabbing a police officer in Jerusalem yesterday. Yaakov Lappin writes:

Moshe Elad, one of the founders of security coordination between the Israel Defense Forces and the Palestinian Authority, and a lecturer at the Western Galilee College in northern Israel, told JNS: “We will apparently hear more about other groups . . . who succeed the Lions’ Den, because Palestinian history points to imitation as a central motive in this society.”

In previous years, he noted, “There were the ‘Hawks of Fatah’ and the ‘Eagles of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,’ and other Lions’ Dens of Fatah—in other words, the [use of animal imagery] is a winning and prestigious message.”

“Lions’ Den is perceived as a winning organization” by Palestinians despite its leading members killed and arrested and some of its members turning themselves in, he said. “In Palestinian tradition, failure becomes dazzling victory,” he added.

With regard to the Palestinian Authority (PA), he continued, its decision to place some members of the Lions’ Den in protective custody is part of “the old revolving-door policy, and it is likely that news will soon emerge of their release” following public pressure.

Yet the PA is in an unenviable position. The Lions’ Den is openly opposed to the PA’s leadership, but efforts to suppress it—beyond behind-the-scenes coordination with Israel—will only further undermine President Mahmoud Abbas’s popularity. At the same time, the further success of terrorist groups will eventually provoke a large-scale Israeli response, which will be equally damaging to Abbas and his supporters.

Read more at JNS

More about: Israeli Security, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terror

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF