Israel's Double Trouble: An Intel Blind Spot and an Invisible Enemy

The series of terrorist attacks that has upended the national agenda and returned a sense of fear to the streets of Israel’s cities, begins with a certain blind spot of the defense establishment. In the past few years the most extreme fringes of Islamist terror, in Israel and the territories, stopped being the chief concern of the country’s intelligence agencies. The defeats sustained by Al-Qaida’s branches and especially by the Islamic State organization in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere reduced the fear of terrorism perpetrated by “lone wolves” or by small cells under the inspiration of those groups. There was no advance warning of the killing sprees by three Arab citizens of Israel who support the Islamic State.