Israel’s success against terror a model for the US Army against ISIS?

JERUSALEM POST – The success in pinpointing and stopping “lone wolf terrorists” will be a major issue brought up in IDF chief’s upcoming visit to the United States.

The month of July 2016 saw six recorded terror attacks, according to the IDF – a drastic decline in the number of monthly attacks from October, when there were 70 recorded attacks.

In fact, July saw one of the lowest rates of attacks in the ten months since the beginning of the terror wave, which has resulted in the deaths of 41 Israelis and foreigners and about 250 Palestinians.

A senior IDF officer told The Jerusalem Post that this number indicates that the state’s recent security tactics are working. The tactics consist of a combination of precise intelligence from the Shin Bet Israeli Security Service and daily, as well as nightly, IDF operations that work to distinguish the difference between terrorists and the majority of the Palestinian West Bank population.

The operations allow the rest of the population to continue with their normal day-to-day routines, including the 100,000 holders of Israeli work permits.

The success in pinpointing and stopping the terror, most of which has come from “lone terrorists,” will be a major issue brought up in Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot’s upcoming visit to the United States.

Eisenkot will be a guest of US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford. This is set to be the third meeting between the two since Eisenkot entered his position just a year and a half ago. Dunford has been a guest in Israel twice.

The American hosts are also interested in discussing with Eisenkot the war against ISIS. The US army is interested in the strategy used by the IDF known as “military campaigns between wars.”

The Israeli army has been involved consistently and systematically, for nearly a decade, in clandestine operations against terrorists and their efforts to smuggle weapons far from Israeli borders.

These operations are based on intelligence directed against weapons smuggling from Iran, Sudan and Libya to Hezbollah in Lebanon and terror groups in Gaza. The US army is interested in exploring the possibility of adopting similar strategies against ISIS in Iraq, Syria and Libya.

“To some extent we have become a laboratory that not only the United States Army wants to learn from, but also other Western armies,” the officer stated. Chiefs of Staff of Germany, Canada and France and their senior officers also recently visited Israel.

Dunford and his aide are also said to be seeking talks with Eisenkot pertaining to the IDF implementation of its multi-year plan that set a fixed budget and succeeded in reducing man power as well closing unnecessary units. It also established new units that seek to adjust to the changes in the Middle East and the dangers and threats that come from them.