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Police in southern Israel went on high alert yesterday following intelligence warnings about possible terrorist attacks in the region. The Jerusalem Post reports that security forces have placed roadblocks on routes throughout the area and that the police presence has increased substantially in major cities across the country’s southernmost Negev province.
A growing security threat in the south comes at an especially bad time for the Israeli government, which is already embroiled in the advanced stages of a military offensive in the West Bank and facing an increase in northern attacks across the volatile border with Lebanon by suspected Palestinian and Hezbollah militants. The last thing Israel wants is to have to send more forces to the south.
The sparsely populated southern Israel region – stretching from the city of Beersheba to the Gulf of Aqaba – has been relatively unscathed by the 17-month Palestinian intifada. The region is not rich in high-value targets and therefore not a key area of conflict. Although the exact details of the new alert and specific security concerns are still unavailable, there are several possible sources of a potential threat to Israel’s southern flank.
Most immediately, Israel may be prepping for an escalation in military activity in the Gaza Strip that could result in Palestinian retaliatory attacks in the south. Using tanks and armored bulldozers, the Israel Defense Forces began an incursion into a northern portion of the Gaza Strip yesterday near Beit Hanun, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Israel also just announced plans to reopen the infamous Ansar 3 internment camp in the Negev desert, 35 miles southwest of Beersheba near the border with Egypt. Israel held thousands of Palestinians in the camp from 1987 to 1993 during the first intifada, and the plan to house at least some of the more than 1,200 prisoners rounded up during the latest Israeli offensive is stirring bitter memories among Palestinians. The police alert may be aimed at raising the overall security level of the region in preparation for the delivery of the Palestinian prisoners.
The alert may also indicate that Palestinian militants could seek to retaliate against Israeli targets in the south as a means of complicating Israel’s overall security strategy. In that case, the most likely target would be Beersheba, which was hit in February when two Palestinian men with automatic rifles attacked the IDF’s southern command headquarters, killing two soldiers.
Another more troubling possibility for Israel is an incursion in the south from unknown groups either from neighboring states – Egypt and Jordan – or from the Gulf of Aqaba. If that is the case, beefed up security will emerge along the borders or in Elat, the main city on the Gulf of Aqaba.
Whatever the reason behind the alert, the result may be the same. Locked in a bitter battle in the West Bank, cautiously monitoring activities along the northern border and prepping for a Gaza campaign, Israel must now also secure its south. A diffusion of its attention and forces could place a growing strain on Israel’s overall military capabilities.
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