Frontpage Mag
How Israel’s counterinsurgency operation left Islamic Jihad battered and bloodied.
The three-day Gaza border clash between Israel and Islamic Jihad has come to an end with an Egyptian brokered ceasefire going into effect late Sunday evening. Objectively, Israel’s Breaking Dawn counterinsurgency operation was a resounding success, with Israel achieving all its objectives and Islamic Jihad being left battered and bloodied.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad is an Iranian proxy group with no political echelon. It is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States and most of the free world. Unlike Hamas, which is also an Iranian proxy and a terrorist organization, Islamic Jihad has no community roots and does not partake in any Palestinian political processes. The relationship between Hamas and Islamic Jihad is part symbiotic and part adversarial. Hamas refrained from firing rockets at Israel in this round and Israel reciprocated in kind.
Islamic Jihad’s main military presence is in Gaza, but the group also maintains cells in Judea & Samaria (also referred to as the West Bank). Last week, Israel succeeded in nabbing Islamic Jihad’s West Bank chieftain, Bassem Saadi, and his deputy, Ashraf al-Jada, in a daring joint operation carried out by the Shin Bet, the Israel Defense Forces and the Border Police.
Following their seizure, Israel obtained concrete evidence of a plan by Islamic Jihad’s Gaza branch to execute an anti-tank missile strike at Israeli civilian traffic along Gaza’s periphery. Israel responded by closing roads near Gaza, but such a state could not be maintained indefinitely as it would result in severe disruption to normal day-to-day living.
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