Another read for the weekend, find Avi Melamed ’s insights about the explosions in Jerusalem, quoted in the All-Israel News online newspaper in the article by NICOLE JANSEZIAN | November 23, 2022.
Two explosions rocked Israeli capital – are we on the verge of a new intifada?
(…) However, two Israeli security analysts said that the coordinated double bombing today does not indicate Palestinian plans for a long-term escalation or a new intifada.
Yet.
“It’s not done by somebody that just woke up this morning and decided to detonate bus stops, but it’s yet not the second intifada. We’ve been to these places, and we’re going to be more in these places,” said Avi Melamed, a senior Arab affairs analyst and former IDF intelligence official. “It’s not the first time and it’s not the last time.” (…)
(…) “I would expect the Israeli intelligence services to be able to quite rapidly know who is involved in these attacks and act accordingly. But we should all be very clear about it – it’s not something that is going to disappear regardless of the government in power,” Melamed said in an interview with the JPC – The Jerusalem Press Club (…)
(…) Melamed also said it would be “unwise of Israel to further destabilize the Palestinian Authority which already is struggling.”
Melamed assessed that “one of the hopes of the perpetrators is that there will be some sort of rash reaction suggested, like Mr. (Itamar) Ben Gvir,” who called for targeted assassinations of Palestinians. Ben Gvir, head of the Jewish Power party, has requested the public security portfolio.
Such actions, Melamed warned, “will further destabilize the current very fragile reality of the Palestinian Authority.”
It is in Israel’s best interests, he said, to avoid that.
“From both operational as well as political and diplomatic perspectives we shouldn’t expect something in that scale [Operation Defensive Shield]. We have to remind ourselves, that’s not the second intifada, it’s nothing like what happened in the second intifada when we dealt with the challenge of massive suicide bombers attacks,” he said. (…)
Avi Melamed ’s insights originally quoted in the All-Israel News online newspaper in the article by NICOLE JANSEZIAN | November 23, 2022.
