The incidents of organized terrorism by the terrorist groups in the North Bank continue as well as the terrorism of the individual terrorists.
According to the assessment of the intelligence division of the IDF and the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, the terrorist incidents will escalate, this is what we can expect in the coming months.
PA chairman Abu Mazen opposes an armed intifada against Israel, but he supports what he calls “popular resistance”, namely demonstrations, setting up roadblocks and throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, therefore the decision made this week by the revolutionary council of the Fatah movement headed by Abu Mazen is very worrying.
At the end of its tenth convention in Ramallah, it called for the expansion of “popular resistance” against Israel and participation in it, this will certainly not contribute to calming the security situation.
According to senior security officials in Israel, one of the alarming phenomena in the West Bank, in addition to the armed terrorist groups that have arisen in northern West Bank, is the presence of tens of thousands of illegal weapons in the hands of the residents of the West Bank.
These weapons are bought on the criminal black market in the Israeli Arab sector or smuggled into the West Bank from Jordan, with the encouragement of Iran, and reach the Palestinian residents.
The massive equipping of the West Bank residents with weapons is mainly for self-defense due to the security anarchy that has begun to spread in the West Bank, but some of them also reaches the terrorist groups and individual terrorists for the purpose of carrying out terrorist attacks against the IDF and the settlers.
In several places in the West Bank, local workshops have also sprung up that produce improvised weapons called “Carlo” and sell them on the black market.
The use of live shooting in the West Bank has increased three times over the past year compared to last year, shooting incidents have spread from Jenin and Nablus to Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Ramallah and Hebron and to the Arab villages around East Jerusalem.
The weapon has become the status symbol of the younger generation just like the cell phone, and many young Palestinians are purchasing weapons and taking pictures with them as part of the new phenomenon of the Palestinian “resistance”, these are young people who were born after the second intifada.
The phenomenon of illegal weapons endangers IDF soldiers who operate in areas where there is terrorist activity, almost every entry of IDF forces into Palestinian cities and villages for the purpose of arresting wanted terrorists is accompanied by intense live fire from armed terrorists, this phenomenon requires extensive activity by the IDF for the collection of the illegal weapons, which has not yet happened.
If we go back to the security officials’ assessment that terrorism in the West Bank will escalate in the near future, we can find several reasons for this.
A. A new right-wing government is about to be formed in Israel, with some members considered, in the eyes of the Palestinians, to be extremists and fascists, and the terrorist organizations intend to challenge this government through terrorist attacks so that it loses security control over the West Bank.
B. The terrorist organizations are encouraging the wave of terrorism in recent months and they see it as a great success and they want to preserve and even increase its momentum.
The terrorist incidents have already begun to spread from the north of the West Bank to its center and to the south.
C. The Palestinian Authority’s weakening process continues, it has lost security control in Jenin, Nablus and Hebron and is unable to regain security control in these areas.
Restoring relative calm in the territories of the West Bank is one of the main tasks of the new Netanyahu government, the security escalation in the West Bank employs about half of the IDF’s regular forces in the field and harms its training routine and readiness for war.
Immediately after the eradication of the terrorist groups in the northern West Bank, the IDF must focus on operations to collect the huge quantities of illegal weapons in the cities and villages of the West Bank.
