This week, during the operation of the IDF forces in the city of Jenin for the purpose of arresting wanted terrprists, an IDF armored vehicle of the “Panther” type carrying soldiers went up on a large explosive device that had been planted in advance on the route of travel.
As a result of the explosion, 7 IDF soldiers were injured and were taken for treatment in the hospital.
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The IDF was surprised by the incident and it seems that this was an intelligence failure of the army which did not correctly assess the enemy’s intentions and was not prepared for this possibility.
In recent weeks, the armed terrorist groups have gone to war using sophisticated explosive devices that are activated remotely using cell phones against IDF forces entering or leaving Area A.
This is a process of Lebanonization of the Jenin area, the security officials estimate that the terrorist organizations are trying to implement the fighting methods of Hezbollah in Lebanon and of Iran in the civil war in Syria, the Palestinians are changing the rules of the game that have been used until now in an attempt to cause the IDF casualties after more than 100 deaths of Palestinians since the beginning of the year and hundreds of wounded in the cities of northern Samaria.
The wounding of 7 IDF soldiers from the large IED in Jenin is considered by the Palestinians as a “great victory” over the IDF and they glorify the armed terrorist groups in the media and social networks.
A senior official of the Islamic Jihad, Khaled Albatsh, compared the explosion of the explosive device in Jenin to the battle of Wadi Al-Hujir in Lebanon in 2006, during the Second Lebanon War, in which Israeli tanks, including “Merkava” tanks, were damaged.
It is not impossible that the Hezbollah organization has already transferred its knowledge of producing large explosive devices to the terrorist operatives in Jenin, as I recall, the Hezbollah organization recently infiltrated from southern Lebanon into Israeli territory a terrorist who detonated a large and sophisticated explosive device at the Megiddo junction.
The terrorists who assemble these explosive devices are the members of the engineering unit of the Islamic Jihad, who in recent months have produced several such devices in explosive laboratories.
Changing the rules of the game is not only in the field of explosive device production, but also in the attempt to establish terrorist infrastructures for the production of rockets in the Jenin area.
The intention of the terrorist organizations is to produce rockets, even primitive rockets in the first stage, to threaten the Israeli cities like Hadera and Afula.
The Israeli Shin Bet recently thwarted several attempts by operatives of the Islamic Jihad to establish a terrorist infrastructure in the Jenin area for the production of rockets. The person responsible for this project was Tarek Izz a-Din, the senior Islamic Jihad who was killed by Israel during the “Shield and Arrow” operation against the Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.
The Islamic Jihad in the Jenin area is also trying to turn ordinary drones into attack drones by attaching explosive charges to them for the purpose of attacking IDF forces.
Changing the rules of the game by the armed terrorist groups in the Jenin area also requires the IDF to change the rules of the game.
The IDF should reexamine the ways in which it enters Palestinian cities and refugee camps to avoid stepping on mines or explosive devices planted by terrorists.
To this end, the IDF should increase its intelligence effort and locate in advance the laboratories where the charges are prepared and also the exact location where the charges were planted.
Security officials recommend increasing the activity of undercover units so that they carry out the arrests and that any entry into the territory by visible forces will be closely accompanied by bulldozers and engineering equipment to clear mines and explosives.
A senior security official says that at the same time as changing the IDF’s methods of operation, the army and the Shin Bet must also act decisively to change the consciousness of the young Palestinian generation that is being recruited into the armed terrorist groups.
This generation is called in Arabic “the generation of 2000”, it does not know the Oslo agreements from 1993 and it was born after the outbreak of the second intifada.
This generation does not know the IDF closely and its great military power, it suffers from high unemployment and hates the Palestinian Authority and its security mechanisms.
The armed terrorist groups arose on their own initiative in the Jenin and Nablus regions after the “Guardian of the Walls” operation in May 2021, only then did the terrorist organizations begin to cultivate them and finance their activities in order to determine their agenda and ride the wave of their success.
Therefore, says the senior security official, the IDF must take off its gloves and act very hard against the new armed terrorist groups in order to build a balance of deterrence against the new young Palestinian generation.
