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How Israel Won The War Against The Suicide Bombers
By Yonatan Silverman
On September 29, 2000, the eve of the Jewish New Year, Israel was confronted with a new wave of Palestinian attacks. In the unprecedented wave of violence and terror that followed, Israelis faced more than 140 suicide bombings and hundreds more rocket attacks launched by Palestinian terrorists. More than 1,100 Israelis died (over 70 percent of them civilians), and 7,800 injured in more than 25,000 different terror attacks. Over the same period, more than 4,100 Palestinians were killed and nearly 30,000 injured—the vast majority of these in Israeli reprisals.
- Moshe Yaalon "Lessons From The Palestinian War Against Israel" 1
In the summer of 2005, then chief justice Aharon Barak opened his judgment on a petition brought by Palestinians who were appealing the legality of the separation fence near Alfei Menashe with the following statement:
"In September 2000 the second intifada broke out. A mighty attack of acts of terrorism landed upon Israel, and upon Israelis in the Judea, Samaria, and Gaza Strip areas (hereinafter – the area). Most of the terrorist attacks were directed toward civilians. They struck at men and at women; at the elderly and at infants. Entire families lost their loved ones. The attacks were designed to take human life. They were designed to sow fear and panic.
They were meant to obstruct the daily life of the citizens of Israel. Terrorism has turned into a strategic threat. Terrorist attacks are committed inside of Israel and in the area. They occur everywhere, including public transportation, shopping centers and markets, coffee houses, and inside of houses and communities. The main targets of the attacks are the downtown areas of Israel's cities. Attacks are also directed at the Israeli communities in the area, and at transportation routes. Terrorist organizations use a variety of means.
These include suicide attacks ("guided human bombs"), car bombs, explosive charges, throwing of Molotov cocktails and hand grenades, shooting attacks, mortar fire, and rocket fire. A number of attempts at attacking strategic targets ("mega-terrorism") have failed. Thus, for example, the intent to topple one of the Azrieli towers in Tel Aviv using a car bomb in the parking lot was frustrated (April 2002). Another attempt which failed was the attempt to detonate a truck in the gas tank farm at Pi Glilot (May 2003).
Since the onset of these terrorist acts, up until mid July 2005, almost one thousand attacks have been carried out within Israel. In Judea and Samaria, 9000 attacks have been carried out. Thousands of attacks have been carried out in the Gaza Strip. More than one thousand Israelis have lost their lives, approximately 200 of them in the Judea and Samaria area. Many of the injured have become severely handicapped. On the Palestinian side as well, the armed conflict has caused many deaths and injuries. We are flooded with bereavement and pain. 2
In Chapter Six of the book The Seventh War by Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff it states: "Suicide Terror was the most terrifying weapon the Palestinians employed in this war."
A website of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs documents the story in even greater detail.
There were a few terrorist attacks in the end of 2000, following the onset of the "Al Aksa Intifada". But the terrorists began suicide bombing in earnest in 2001 during which there were 36 such attacks. The year 2002 was the apex, with 44 suicide attacks. But the number went down to 22 in 2003; to 15 in 2004; to 10 in 2005; to 3 in 2006 and 1 in 2007.
What are the factors that caused the number of these dreadful suicide bombings to decrease year to year?
The most immediate reaction was to establish a net of road blocks throughout the Palestinian territories. An IDF document from 2005 states:
"For the past four years, the State of Israel and the IDF have been forced to confront an unprecedented series of terror attacks against Israeli targets. During this period of time, more than a thousand Israeli civilians and residents were killed and thousands more were wounded in more than 20,000 terror attacks.
"The IDF has been operating against the Palestinian terror infrastructure during the past four years, as it will continue to do in the future, in order to thwart terror attacks and to protect Israeli civilians. One of the numerous methods used by the IDF in order to prevent terrorists from reaching their goals and carrying out attacks against Israelis is conducting security checks in crossings that are located at the exits of Palestinian cities, and in other locations throughout the West Bank.
The policy of the road blocks and check points was clearly effective.
"The unit has uncovered over 2,000 attempts to smuggle wanted terrorists, explosives and explosive devices, illegal workers, false documentation and more.
"Since the beginning of 2005, 389 Palestinians, among these potential suicide bombers, have been caught attempting to smuggle weaponry from the West Bank into Israel, wanted terrorists and those suspected of terror activities.
"Over the past two months (since the beginning of April), 25 Palestinians have been apprehended at crossing points, including:
"Two Palestinian youths who were apprehended when they attempted to carry out a terror attack using three pipe bombs on April 5, 2005 southwest of Nablus, near Har Grizim.
"A 14-year-old Palestinian youth who arrived at the Hawara checkpoint, south of Nablus, on May 22, 2005 with two pipe bombs strapped to his body and a lighter with which he intended to detonate the bombs at the soldiers at the crossing.
"A Palestinian carrying an explosive belt concealed in a bag arrived at a security crossing near Beit Eiba on May 27, 2005. The belt was constructed of four pipe bombs and weighed 2 kg. 3
In a May 21, 2001 press briefing, Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, then head of the IDF Operation Branch said:
"If you remember, until three or four months ago the main criticism was against the Israeli ways of using force, what the journalists used to call the Israeli assassinations.
Through this kind of targeting, the specific targets, all of them behind a specific terrorist capability or a specific terrorist operation, we managed to reduce a significant number of planned operations. I don't want even to imagine what could have happened if we didn't take these kind of steps.
"So we know that there is no one military way to reduce this violence.
But there are certain ways that we can reduce the other side's capability, in some ways to reduce the other side's motivation, in some way to cause a cost to the other side and not a way to be in a situation where the only thing we have to do is to suffer terrorist activities that, as I said, are fully sponsored and encouraged by the Palestinian Authority. 4
In 2001, the IDF, under the leadership of then prime minister Sharon carried out 14 "targeted assassinations" of terrorist leaders. In 2002, the number stayed the same. There were 16 targeted assassinations in 2003. The number rose to 20 in 2004.
There were 8 in 2005; 15 in 2006 and 4 in 2007. Credit must be paid of course to the intelligence gathering capabilities of Israel's Shin Beit, which locates the terrorist targets and then pinpoints their exact locations to make it possible for IDF soldiers or IDF pilots to eliminate them.
Harel and Issacharoff argue in The Seventh War that the policy of targeted assassinations in fact caused an escalation in the violence, because they heightened the determination of the terrorists for revenge, and led them to commit even more suicide bombings. But the tactic was effective it seems.
In a June 4,2004 article in The Jerusalem Post, Arieh O'Sullivan 5 asked:
"Is this sense of a lull in Palestinian suicide bombings an optical illusion, or have the tactics employed by Israel led to irreversible success as terrorist groups are decapitated and devastated again and again? While there have been lulls before, this three-month period since a serious suicide bombing (which could be shattered even today) is different."
This shows that as early as three years ago, there was a dramatic decrease in the plague of suicide bombings in Israel. O'Sullivan surveys the whole picture. Massive arrests of terrorists for example:
"The situation is such that the number of Palestinians currently being held by the IDF and Prisons Authority has reached the highest level since the violence broke out 44 months ago.
"According to figures by B'tselem (The Israel Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), the IDF in May was holding 3,939 prisoners and the Prisons Authority held 2,687 for a total of 6,626. These included over 700 held as administrative detainees without trial. In comparison, figures show that during May 2002 - the peak of Operation Defensive Shield, there were 2,368 prisoners."
O'Sullivan quotes Nimrod Amzalak of B'Tselem:
"There is a great wave of arrests to put pressure on the Palestinians and get information out of them. It is a very wide circle,"
O'Sullivan adds:
"It has been nearly three months since the last serious suicide bombing. There were three major suicide bombings inside Israel in the first five months of 2004 that killed 28 and wounded some 120 people...
"Security officials say that in the first months of this year there has been a steady rise in the number of attacks thwarted. According to their statistics, Israel has successfully intercepted and prevented 60 suicide attacks so far this year. Most of these were planned by Tanzim terrorists and not Hamas. Intelligence from interrogations of detained Palestinians is key to thwarting attacks."
According to O'Sullivan:
"The main factor in the decline of their capability is the killing and capture of their leadership."
He finishes by quoting Dr. Shimon Bar, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya.
"Their rotating leadership is expending all its energy hiding. They are afraid of Israel hitting them which makes any sort of sophisticated planning difficult…When an organization loses its head it cannot operate as a unified organization and loses its strategy," Bar said. "They have a communication problem and a command and control problem."
But O'Sullivan's survey of Israel's winning tactics in the war against suicide bombings also includes the most significant factor, which is the separation fence.
"Certainly the security fence is a visible and effective reason for the reduction in successful attacks in Israel."
As recently as November, 2006, the leader of Islamic Jihad, Ramadan Shalah, expressed agreement in an interview on Al Manar television:
"There is the separation fence, which is an obstacle to the resistance, and if it were not there the situation would be entirely different."
Ministry of Defense documents from 2003 and 2004 state 6:
"A comparison of the number of attacks within Israel carried out by Samaria-based terrorists after the anti-terrorist fence was built, and the number of attacks carried out by the same terrorist groups before the building of the fence, reveals a drop of some 90 percent in the ability of these terrorist groups to perpetrate attacks within Israel."
And it cites the following examples:
"In the first case, two terrorists, members of the Islamic Jihad, came from Zbubeh but were unable to cross into Israel directly and had to make a detour of 45 km to try and infiltrate in the Beit Shean area where there is no fence, in order to carry out a suicide bombing at the ORT high school in Yokne'am. This long march provided the IDF and the Security forces who were chasing them, time to trace them hiding in a mosque in Bardaleh and capture them thus preventing the terror attack.
"The other suicide bombing was planned to take place in Rosh Ha'ayin. Two of the three members belonging to the Fatah Tanzim infrastructure in Nablus left Nablus in one car and the third member, a 40 year old mother of seven children left in a separate vehicle carrying the explosive belt with her.
"Their meeting point was Kfar Kasim, a spot chosen because there is no security fence in that area yet. The explosive belt was transferred and the woman returned back to Nablus undetected.
"The large presence of Israeli security forces in the area of Rosh Ha'ayin prevented the two terrorists from reaching their destination and they tried to get back but, later on they were caught heading towards Habla. The woman was arrested in Nablus...
"The conclusion is inescapable that a major factor in the sharp drop in the number of attacks carried out in Israel by Samaria-based terrorists in the past few months is the effect of the anti-terrorist fence on their operational patterns. This is in addition to the various preventive actions taken by the army in Judea and Samaria, particularly since Operation Defensive Shield."
March, 2002 was a particularly bloody month in Israel's war against the suicide bombings.
Mar 2, 2002 - Eleven people were killed and over 50 were injured, 4 critically, in a suicide bombing at 19:15 on Saturday evening near a yeshiva in the ultra-Orthodox Beit Yisrael neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem where people had gathered for a bar-mitzva celebration. The terrorist detonated the bomb next to a group of women waiting with their baby carriages for their husbands to leave the nearby synagogue. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade took responsibility for the attack.
Mar 5, 2002 - Maharatu Tagana, 85, of Upper Nazareth was killed and a large number of people injured, most lightly, when a suicide bomber exploded in an Egged No. 823 bus as it entered the Afula central bus station. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mar 7, 2002 - A suicide bomber blew himself up in the lobby of a hotel in the commericial center on the outskirts of Ariel in Samaria. 15 people were injured, one seriously. The PFLP claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mar 9, 2002- 11 people were killed and 54 injured, 10 of them seriously, when a suicide bomber exploded at 22:30 PM Saturday night in the crowded Moment cafe at the corner of Aza and Ben-Maimon streets in the Rehavia neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mar 17, 2002 - A suicide bomber exploded himself near an Egged bus no. 22 at the French Hill junction in northern Jerusalem. 25 people were lightly injured.
Mar 20, 2002 - Seven people, four of them soldiers, were killed and about 30 wounded, several seriously, in a suicide bombing of an Egged bus No. 823 traveling from Tel Aviv to Nazareth at the Musmus junction on Highway 65 (Wadi Ara) near Afula. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mar 21, 2002 - Three people were killed and 86 injured, 3 of them seriously, in a suicide bombing on King George Street in the center of Jerusalem. The terrorist detonated the bomb, packed with metal spikes and nails, in the center of a crowd of shoppers. The Fatah al-Aqsa Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. 7
The suicide attack on March 27, 2002 at the Passover seder in Netanya's Park Hotel, however, was the straw that broke the camel's back.
In this attack a Hamas suicide bomber from the city of Tulkarm walked into the hotel's dining room minutes before the 250 guests were going to read the Passover Hagada and blew himself up. Thirty people were killed and 140 were injured, 20 seriously. The terrorist was on the list of wanted terrorists Israel had presented to the Palestinian Authority for arrest, but this was ignored.
IDF Operation Defensive Shield was launched two days later on March 29, and continued intensively through April 21.
A reserve force of 30,000 was called up and they occupied the major cities of the West Bank, including Tulkarm, Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Qalqilya, and Bethlehem.
According to Hirsh Goodman, in his essay: "Operation Defensive Shield:
A Post Mortem The Operation, Its Goals and Results"8 the goal of the operation was fourfold:
"to destroy as much of the terrorist infrastructure as possible; to re-establish Israeli deterrence; to place the terrorist organizations on the defensive, and to isolate Arafat and weaken his authority."
Hirsh Goodman goes on:
"The scope of the operation, and the decision to enter Arafat's personal headquarters in Ramallah, the Mukata, took the Palestinians by surprise. It had commonly been assumed that the IDF would be deterred from entering Palestinian-controlled cities and refugee camps because of the potentially high cost in human terms of fighting in a dense urban environment."
In an April 8, 2002 address to the Knesset prime minister Ariel Sharon said:
"The Government of Israel has thus decided to instruct the IDF and other security forces to embark on Operation Defensive Shield, which has one goal: uprooting the terrorist infrastructure which Arafat built to continue attacking us.
"IDF soldiers and officers have been given clear orders: to enter cities and villages which have become havens for terrorists; to catch and arrest terrorists and, primarily, their dispatchers and those who finance and support them; to confiscate weapons intended to be used against Israeli citizens; to expose and destroy terrorist facilities and explosives, laboratories, weapons production factories and secret installations.
The orders are clear: target and paralyze anyone who takes up weapons and tries to oppose our troops, resists them or endanger them - and to avoid harming the civilian population."
And toward the end of the Operation, Maj. Gen Aharon Ze'evi Farkash, the head of IDF Military Intelligence had these observations:
"First of all, it was proven that wherever IDF forces entered, the wave of terror stopped.
Second, the huge terror infrastructure was uncovered, deployed very extensively throughout the West Bank. It included large quantities of arms, numerous laboratories for preparing explosive charges, and many experts in the handling of explosives and the preparation of explosive charges.
Third, the Hamas infrastructure in the West Bank that produced Kassam rockets was severely damaged. Dozens of rockets and rocket parts were discovered, and the main experts who produced the rockets were arrested or killed.
Fourth, more than 2500 senior wanted terrorists of the Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and the Fatah as well as others with blood on their hands, who masterminded suicide attacks, were arrested or killed - among them, 80 from the medium level and higher, and 15 terrorist leaders in Judea and Samaria.
And finally, all in all, the terror infrastructures suffered a severe blow in several focal points such as Jenin, which will considerably hinder its reconstruction. At the same time, wanted terrorists are still at large, and they are capable of carrying out attacks in the immediate term from any place from which the IDF pulls back.
For example: immediately after we pulled back from Tulkarm and Kalkilya, the wanted terrorists returned there and started to prepare terrorist attacks. As you know, the attack in Yagur, east of Haifa, was from Tulkarm. The terrorist arrived in the Yagur area from Tulkarm, one day after we pulled back from Tulkarm.
"In the final account, one can't ignore the fact that the IDF has undermined the Palestinian operational rationale, which sought to create a balance of blood and terror and to break Israel's stamina and spirit. May I say that the last two and a half weeks, only 4% of the Israelis who were killed are civilians; the others are soldiers. The picture before our operation was completely different: 75% civilians, 25% Israeli soldiers."9
Former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon has written:
"Operation Defensive Shield thus heralded a watershed in the conflict, marking a significant change in Israeli attitudes toward the Palestinian Authority, and the military’s switch from defensive to offensive operations. From March 29, 2002, the number of Israeli casualties from terror attacks dropped precipitously."10
And he goes on:
"The primary operational lesson I drew, among the host of lessons I have learned during the war against terror, is that the best defense is a good offense. Israel succeeded in reducing the threat of Palestinian terror and the number of Israeli casualties only by moving from the defense to the offense.
"Until Defensive Shield, Israel was seen by many Arabs as a "spider web," to quote Lebanese Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah. This phrase was used to denote the fact that like a spider web, Israel’s military and society seemed strong, but were actually very weak when put to the test. The Arabs concluded that Israelis were tired of wars and unwilling to fight and sacrifice their lives for cause and country.
Like some Israelis, they believed that the reservists would not be ready to go to war with the same resilience they had exhibited in the past. Yet the performance of the IDF, and especially that of the reservists, proved otherwise.
Their impressive mobilization, in which many volunteered to go to war (without being called up), coupled with Israeli popular support for the operation, had a significant strategic effect. It demonstrated the strength and resilience of the IDF and Israeli society even before a single shot had been fired.
"All these lessons emphasize the importance of relying first on offense, then the fence, and finally defense.
This strategy, wherein the best defense is a good offense, proves just as advantageous in other arenas of the war on terror, specifically the political, economic, psychological, cultural, and legislative arenas. Seizing and maintaining the initiative and maintaining a credible offensive posture is more effective than merely responding."11
Operation Defensive Shield exhausted itself in a few weeks. But it was quickly exchanged for Operation Determined Path, in the middle of June, 2002.
Operation Determined Path was an IDF Operation that was undertaken in Judea and Samaria beginning on June 22, 2002, for the purpose of combating Palestinian terrorism with the goal of reaching some of the un-reached objectives set forth for Defensive Shield, especially in the northern West Bank. In contrast to Operation Defensive Shield in which large concentrated forces of soldiers were employed, in Determined Path the forces were employed in a decentralized way, in hundreds of pinpoint actions that were undertaken intensively and repeatedly.
While Operation Defensive Shield severely undermined the offensive capabilities of Fatah and Hamas and eliminated or captured most of their military leadership, many objectives were abandoned due to international pressure and false allegations of a massacre in Jenin.
During Operation Determined Path, the following measures were taken:
- Curfews of all major cities in the West Bank, to prevent Palestinian militant movement and civilian casualties
-
- Dozens of targeted raids for arrests and intelligence gathering
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- Assassination of important terrorists and terrorist forces
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- Raids on Palestinian Authority offices and seizure of incriminating evidence confirming its ties with various terror groups
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- Acting on intelligence to prevent terrorist acts within Israel
- House demolition
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- Raids on weapon and bomb laboratories
Although it never officially ended, the operation was deemed a relative success, both in the short and long term. 10 The key elements of Operation Determined Path are essentially the same ones that characterize the IDF's anti-terrorism actions today. And above all, the element that matters the most is that the IDF remains in the West Bank, at arm's length from terrorist fugitives and their operations.
To recapitulate, the tactics Israel employed between September 2000 and the present to defeat the terror of suicide bombing were the following:
A. IDF Road blocks and check points around major Arab West Bank cities.
B. Targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders and bomb makers.
C. Massive arrests of terrorist fugitives, based on accurate and ample intelligence.
D. The security fence
E. Taking the offensive in battles with the terrorists (as in Defensive Shield and Determined Path, and every other encounter with the criminals).
Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon was IDF chief of staff from July 9, 2002 through June 1, 2005, which means that it was on his watch that the IDF succeeded in gradually snuffing out the suicide bombing problem that plagued the country.
His comments and observations deserve the last word:
"Any surrender to terror generates more terror; defeating terrorism thus requires resilience on the part of one’s own society to withstand and confront terrorism. By withstand terrorism, I mean that a society must be able to absorb terror’s costs— economically, emotionally, and in terms of lives lost—rather than surrender to it. Israeli society demonstrated a great deal of resilience in the face of unremitting terror attacks.
"Any society challenged by terrorists should be ready to sacrifice—never to surrender. Western societies should be ready to absorb casualties and the economic costs of war—never to surrender. Endurance and resilience are more important in this kind of warfare than aircraft, artillery, or any other weapons systems."11
FOOTNOTES
1. Moshe Yaalon "Lessons From The Palestinian War Against Israel" Policy Focus #64 | January 2007 Washington Institute for Near East Policy
2. H.C.J. 7957/04
3. Security Crossing Improvements in Judea and Samaria 09/06/2005:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/crossings.html
4. Press Briefing by Major General Giora Eiland- Head of the IDF Operation Branch 20-May-2001 Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2001/5/Press%20Briefing%20by%20Major%20General%20Giora%20Eiland-%20Head
5. Is Israel winning the war on suicide bombers? Arieh O'Sullivan. Jerusalem Post June 4, 2004
6. http://www.seamzone.mod.gov.il/Pages/ENG/news.htm#news19
http://www.seamzone.mod.gov.il/Pages/ENG/news.htm#news15
7. http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-%20Obstacle%20to%20Peace/Palestinian%20terror%20since%202000/Suicide%20and%20Other%20Bombing%20Attacks%20in%20Israel%20Since
8. Operation Defensive Shield: A Post Mortem The Operation, Its Goals and Results
Hirsh Goodman, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies Tel Aviv University, June 5, 2002
9. Briefing by Maj. Gen Aharon Zeevi Farkash - 16-Apr-2002
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Speeches%20by%20Israeli%20leade/2002/Briefing%20by%20MajGen%20Aharon%20Zeevi%20Farkash%20-%2016-Apr-2
10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Determined_Path
11. Moshe Yaalon "Lessons From The Palestinian War Against Israel" Policy Focus #64 | January 2007 Washington Institute for Near East Policy
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Submitted December 26, 2009 here:
Yonatan Silverman is a professional Hebrew to English translator living in Tel Aviv. He also edits and publishes an electronic mail newsletter called SARTABA.