JINSA Report #545 Peeking, II

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January 19, 2006

JINSA Report #545

Peeking, II

The Government of Israel has released the 2005 terrorism figures,
showing a significant decline in the number of Israeli casualties.
Forty-five Israelis (37 civilians/8 members of the security forces) were
killed in 2005, after 117 (76 civilians/41 members of the security
forces) in 2004, a decline of approximately 60 percent. Twenty-three
were killed in seven suicide attacks (55 Israelis were killed in 15
suicide attacks in 2004). There was a decline of 30 percent in the
number of injuries.

By comparison, in the 34 months from September 2000 through the
establishment of the Security Fence in July 2003, there were 73 suicide
attacks and/or car bombs killing 293 Israelis and wounding 1,950. In the
28 following months, there were 11 such attacks, killing 54 and wounding
358. From the beginning of the uprising in September 2000 through
December of that year, 42 Israelis were killed; in 2001 – 207; in 2002 –
452; in 2003 – 214.

What accounts for the decline? Certainly not restraint on the part of
would-be terrorists - witness the attack in Tel Aviv today. Despite
Israel's disengagement from Gaza and the self-declared "cease fire" of
Hamas, in 2005 there were 2,990 attacks against Israeli targets (not
including 377 Kassam rocket attacks). On a month-to-month basis, the
number of terrorism warnings ended about where it began - 61 in January,
dipping to a low of 27 in September and back up to 57 in December. The
decline in the number of casualties stems primarily from the foiling or
disruption of suicide attacks.

The Security Fence is a large part of this effort, lengthening the
amount of time it takes for bombers and their helpers to move from the
start point to the target. The longer that takes, the more likely it is
that Israeli security forces will find and stop them. How do they find
them? Peeking; also known as intelligence gathering.

Israel has a well-developed network of intelligence capabilities at work
in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel proper: no one is immune. The ISA
arrested 160 potential suicide bombers in the West Bank in 2005 and
targeted bomb factories planted around the West Bank.

Liberal societies have to realign the balance of rights occasionally -
we did after 9-11. In discussing intelligence gathering, the President
said, "If al Qaeda is calling you, we want to know why." It is a fair
statement of the priority he gives - and we give - to the right of the
public to be secure in a timely manner. And we accept his decision to
bypass the FISA courts - as President Clinton did before him, based on
what his Deputy Attorney General Jaime S. Gorelick called in her 1994
Senate testimony the President's "inherent authority to conduct
warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes." In
2002, the FISA review court concluded that the President had the
inherent constitutional powers that Gorelick defended

It is also fair to note (as readers did) that the President could have
gone to a judge after the fact of wiretaps. On political grounds we
wouldn't argue the lesser point, but it is the lesser point.

To view this JINSA Report online click on the link below.
http://www.jinsa.org/JINSAReports/3289

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