Former Chief of the GSS Counter-Terrorism Bureau Brig. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Nuriel told Israel Defense Sunday that he expects 2017 to be a “particularly bloody year, especially for the western world.”
Noting that after decades in which the world has grown accustomed to uncontrolled terrorism in Iraq, Syria and Africa, Nuriel believes that Islamist terrorism will now flood Europe as a result of ISIS’ defeat in Iraq and Syria. He points to the ambition of ISIS to convince the world that the “Islamic State concept is invincible,” which will intensify attacks in Europe.
ISIS’ European infrastructure already exists, Nuriel explains, with sufficient arms in their possession and the capacity to replenish them independently when needed. He believes “it is no longer a question of ‘whether’ but a question of ‘when and how much,'” since the Caliphate has already issued its directives for the attack on the West.
The retired counter-terrorism expert also anticipates renewed Hezbollah activities in the West against Jewish and Israeli targets following the anticipated end of the civil war in Syria – where the Shiite Hezbollah ahs been fighting alongside the Assad regime against the Sunni rebels.
Incidentally, Nuriel does not expect that increasingly brutal Islamic attacks on European civilians will necessarily generate more sympathy for Israel. However, he expects professional cooperation among state security experts to improve, as the Europeans will have better and better reasons to rely on Israel’s vast experience of dealing with Islamic terrorism.
At home, Nuriel predicts that the nationalist uprising among Israeli Arabs would eventually force the Israeli government’s hands and it could be pushed to resort to control methods that have been abandoned as far back as 1966.
Under an uninterrupted succession of Labor-led coalition governments, Israeli Arabs were subject, from 1949 to ’66, to martial law. Travel permits, curfews, administrative detentions, and expulsions were common. The Absentee Property Law of 1950 facilitated taking control of fleeing Arab land owners, and the Land Acquisition Law of 1953 authorized the Ministry of Finance to transfer expropriated land to the state. Other common legal expedients included the use of emergency regulations to declare land belonging to Arab citizens a closed military zone, followed by the use of Ottoman legislation on abandoned land to take control of the land.