Middle East Monitor / April 25, 2023
Areas of the occupied West Bank have recently witnessed a fundamental change that Israel has not witnessed since the Second Intifada in 2000, an Israeli military analyst has said.
Alon Ben David, a military affairs analyst at Channel 13, said, according to the translation of Palestinian news agency Safa, that the occupation army is facing dozens or hundreds of Palestinians from the West Bank who have an unusual willingness to die.
“The most important matter that Israel is facing recently comes through the Palestinian arena, a matter we have not seen in 15 years, and it is characterized by the willingness of dozens or hundreds of young men to leave their homes to confront the army forces and are ready to die. We are talking about very large numbers of people who are ready to confront us.”
Ben David also touched on the recent change in the character of the Palestinian youth, “We meet with young saboteurs who spend their time on social media. They are interested in filming themselves before going out to carry out an operation, and they share this via Telegram and TikTok. They want to be influencers on social media, and therefore we see a young man come to Neve Yaakov on Friday evening, kill 7 people, get into a vehicle and hope to go back home.”
He added that it is difficult to pinpoint those who could potentially carry out attacks among the hundreds of thousands who express their hatred of Israel, and to figure out who among them will turn this hatred into actual action. He noted that there are partial solutions through technical algorithms linked to smart information collection systems and that the focus nowadays is on social media.
