A senior officer in the IDF Central Command said the army is “prepared for every eventuality,” the IDF stated on its website but played down media reports of riots.
“The newspaper headlines are more dramatic than the reality in the field, even if recent months have been characterized by more significant events with a higher scale of violence,” the unnamed senior officer said. “The wave of incidents has not ended, but the intensity that we saw last weekend and during the course of recent days has quieted significantly.”
He added that the low number of casualties, without fatalities, suffered from the incidents, fulfilled the IDF’s target of maintaining calm.
The officer said that most casualties were in locations where the level of violence was particularly high, such as the incident at Rachel’s Tomb where rioters hurled improvised grenades and explosive devices at IDF forces.