Peeking, Part 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.
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.