An entire country was sitting in front of the TV last night, watching a terrorist attack live: the pursuit of the terrorist, images of the wounded, waves of rumors, and a growing sense of anger and concern, as well as demands for a solution.
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The attack came at a particularly sensitive time. Not only because of the place and the time – Tel Aviv on Thursday night, the first night of the schools' Passover vacation, full of people enjoying themselves – but also because of the broader context. It was the eve of the first round of Friday prayers of the Ramadan holiday, a week before Passover, and Israel is trying to do everything it can to stop the latest wave of attacks while also attempting to refrain from collective actions.
Until Thursday night, it seemed as if the approach might be bearing fruit. The IDF and the police flooded public spaces with personnel, and the Shin Bet security agency focused its activity, managing to thwart several attacks moments before they were perpetrated. Meanwhile, the political leadership decided to adopt security officials' recommendation to allow Ramadan to go on as usual and carry through on the economic benefits and freedom of movement promised to the Palestinians. Entry to the Temple Mount compound was to be restricted as minimally as possible.
All that will certainly change now. As of Thursday, it still wasn't known who was behind the Tel Aviv attack and where they came from [the shooter was a Palestinian residing illegally in Israel], but Israel doesn't have much choice. Given that experience teaches us that one terrorist attack inspires others, significant steps will now need to be taken to reduce the risk and attempt to create as much deterrence as possible.
Naturally, the main thrust of the effort will concentrate on Judea and Samaria and east Jerusalem, and will entail additional deployment of forces, as well as a measure Israel has avoided in every wave of terrorism in the last few years – a lockdown. That is a move that is inherently risky, because if the livelihoods of Palestinians from Judea and Samaria are affected, it could propel some of them to extremist acts. Still, on Thursday that seemed to be the right court of action, partly because the West Bank will be under lockdown during Passover anyway, like it is every year, and putting it in place sooner could help calm things down.
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Parallel to the military-security efforts, Israel was probably using all its diplomatic leverage on Thursday to calm down the Palestinians. These efforts are underway with the Palestinian Authority (both directly and via the Americans and Jordanians) and with the Gaza Strip (through Egypt). Gaza has been very quiet recently, but we shouldn't count on it staying that way. Hamas has no interest in escalation, but it's not certain it will be able to restrain every rogue actor who wants to join the party.
Meanwhile, all this is unfolding as the Arab Israeli sector still hasn't recovered from the fact that the terrorist attacks in Beersheba and Hadera were carried out by Arab Israelis, and the ensuing arrests of Islamic State supporters. This is forcing the Shin Bet to divide its efforts, and the security establishment as a whole to try to isolate different sectors. Last year, during Operation Guardian of the Walls, Israel failed to do so, and now it has to exert much more effort to ensure that none of these sectors explodes during the volatile concurrence of Ramadan and Passover.
This is a complicated challenge, one that is becoming more complicated because of the political chaos into which Israel has been thrown in the past few days. For that reason, all officials must act responsibly and with restraint, and remember that with all due respect to politics, security and life take precedence over everything else.
