Commando knives apprehended amid shipment of plumbing materials destined for Gaza. Photo courtesy of Israel Ministry of Defense Crossing Authority
It has been busy for Israel’s counterterrorism efforts lately—apprehended weapons and arresting a gunman planning an attack—and the latest round got started by seizing two boxes of professional-grade commando knives being passed off as plumbing materials. The ominous-looking serrated knives were being smuggled by Hamas in a plumbing shipment, according to Israeli Prime Minister’s Office spokesman Ofir Gendelman’s Twitter feed. Also discovered was a plot to smuggle graphite, a raw material used to make rocket fuel, in a shipment headed to the Palestinian electric company, according to a press release from Israeli Ministry of Defense.
However, the knives and the rocket material never made it to Gaza, as Israeli security forces caught them both on Tuesday. And that wasn’t all the Israeli security forces managed to do to frustrate terrorism this week. The following night, six illegal guns were apprehended near Ramallah according to the Twitter feeds of the IDF Spokesperson account and Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, himself an IDF spokesperson. “Keeping Israeli lives safe,” tweeted Lerner about the effort.
Aside from intercepting weapons, Israel also caught a terrorist, a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The IDF Spokesperson Twitter feed on Wednesday said the operative had “planned shooting attack at an IDF crossing outside Jenin.”
Recently, a report from the IDF Blog highlighted efforts like the above as being influential in stemming the current wave of terrorism. As successful weeks like this one turn into months, the trend has a chance to shift from repeated attacks towards stopping them before they can even happen.
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, August 10, 2016)