Former Israeli General Says More Attacks in Jerusalem Are Inevitable

After four rabbis were killed in gruesome attacks at a synagogue in Jerusalem this week, a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) military attaché to Washington warns that the hard-hitting steps now being taken by Israel will not be enough to stop future attacks.

"There is no silver bullet for a person getting a sudden urge [to] take his car and ram into people," Amos Yadlin, who also served as a general in the Israeli Air Force and the head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, told Foreign Policy in an email exchange. "Having security guards, police spread out, and more lax gun laws as we had in early 2000s is not a reality we would like to go back to."

In the aftermath of the attack, Israeli officials have taken all of the steps listed by Yadlin. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also revived a controversial home destruction plan, telling the families of four Palestinian attackers that their homes would be demolished Thursday. The Israeli moves come with tensions in Jerusalem running high because of a spate of attacks in which Palestinians drove their cars into crowds of Israelis, killing 11 people.

In an interview with Foreign Policy last week and a subsequent email exchange after the attacks this week, Yadlin, who is now the director at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, warned that the current tensions between Israel and the Palestinians could last well into the future.

"It’s much more sustainable than people think," Yadlin said. "But the status quo is also undesirable."

Yadlin, who in the past has advocated that Israel should withdraw from 85 percent of the West Bank if peace talks fail, said the key to improving relations and preventing attacks would not be solved with increased security measures alone.

"The sources of incitement and ideological backing can be targeted, channels of communications stymied, and weapons [and] explosives proliferation curtailed as much as possible," Yadlin said. "Those kinds of tools can have a very significant effect."

He added that the evolving landscape of the West Bank makes it necessary for Israel to explore these options.

"In the case of Israel, walls and separation can never provide full coverage," Yadlin said. "It was used successfully to some degree vis-à-vis the West Bank, but the geography [and] demography in Jerusalem would never allow it, not to mention Arab communities inside pre-67 Israel."

Yadlin also urged caution on nuclear negotiations with Iran. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Vienna on Thursday, Nov. 20, to take part in last-minute talks ahead of Monday’s deadline. Yadlin argued that the White House undercut its own negotiating team by seeming desperate for a legacy-making deal.

"The US negotiating team has very little leverage in comparison to Iran’s," Yadlin said. "By assigning so much value to concluding a deal now the US leverage is diminished greatly, because Iran sees how important this is to the US. This is negotiations 101. "