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At Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport,
security resides in a lot more than confiscating gels,
liquids and pointy objects. - This article, written from Linn’s perspective, is the second in a series based on Linn’s February trip to Israel as part of the Ultimate Counter Terrorism Mission.
- HSToday’s Anthony Kimery gets a first-hand look at Israel’s hundreds of miles of fencing
The data had also been analyzed by the Israeli General Security Service, which concurred with ITIC.
Between August 2003 and June 2004, “the terrorist infrastructures based in the northern West Bank succeeded in perpetrating as little as three mass-murder terrorist attacks in Israel proper,” killing 26 Israelis and injuring 76.
In two of those attacks, “the terrorists infiltrated into Israel proper through areas in the northern West Bank in which the security fence and the buffer zone [had not yet] been completed. In another incident, a female suicide bomber infiltrated into Israel proper through the Bara’ah crossing using a Jordanian passport while taking advantage of the IDF troops’ leniency toward women.”
“In contrast,” ITIC found that “in the course of the 34 months that passed since the beginning of the Palestinian-Israeli violent confrontation [on Sept. 29, 2000] to the end of July 2003 when for the first time the construction of a continuous obstacle between the Palestinian village of Salem and the Israeli settlement of Elkanah in the northern West Bank was completed, the terrorist infrastructure based in the northern West Bank perpetrated 73 mass-murder terrorist attacks in Israel proper, including in Jerusalem using suicide bombers or car bombs, in which 293 Israelis were killed and 1,950 were injured.”
“A comparative analysis of the aforementioned data clearly indicates a sharp decline in the scale and number of terrorist attacks perpetrated inside Israel proper by operative infrastructures based in the northern West Bank after the buffer zone was set up,” ITIC found.
Pursuant to the security fence’s “sole purpose of saving lives of innocent citizens who continue to be targeted by the terrorist campaign that began in 2000,” there has been more than a 70 percent drop in the number of fatal casualties – “an average of 103 people killed a year prior to the construction of the security fence and the establishment of the buffer zone, compared to 28 people killed a year after the security fence was constructed and the buffer zone was established.”
Concurrently, there also has been more than an 85 percent decrease in the number of persons wounded in terrorist attacks. There was an average of nearly 700 hundred persons wounded every year prior to the erection of the security fence, compared to the 83 injured a year after the fence was built.
The IDF report further emphasized that “it is worth mentioning that along with the sharp decline in the number of perpetrated terrorist attacks, there has been a remarkable number of thwarted attempts to carry out terrorist attacks after the security fence was constructed and the buffer zone was established.”
IDF said “security forces have thwarted dozens of terrorist attacks initiated by the terrorist infrastructures in the northern West Bank in their final stages of completion that were to be perpetrated in Israel proper. In the course of the preventative activities, terrorists and detained leaders of terrorist infrastructures handed over 24 explosive belts and charges that were supposed to be used for the perpetration of terrorist attacks.”
Meir told HSToday.us that 187 potential suicide bombers were thwarted in 2006.
An Israeli intelligence officer added that attacks are frequently thwarted due to interrogations of suspected and known terrorists who have been rounded up during counterterror operations and who provide information on other members of the larger terror cells to which they belong who are involved in planning the attacks.
"Where it is operational, the fence is working just fine, and for us it has changed everything,” Col. Aharon Haliva, the commander of the IDF's Ephraim Brigade, told HSToday during an exclusive, all-afternoon tour of his area of responsibility (AOR) for the April 2006 cover story, “Israel’s Hard-Learned Lessons.”
“Haliva's three battalions protect a large area north of Tel Aviv on both sides of the fence where Palestinian territory comes the closest to Israel's coastal population and industrial areas. The area used to have some of the worst terror statistics in Israel,” BC Kessner, a freelance journalist based in Tel Aviv, reported for HSToday, “but since stretches of the fence became operational there in July 2003, the number of bombings dropped instantly and continues to decrease each year,” Haliva said.
“Israel's new security fence incorporates years of lessons learned with the latest technologies and a hefty price tag, but by all accounts, it has enabled Israel to dramatically stem the flow of terrorism from the West Bank,” Kessner reported.
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