Terrorism: on the brink
By Richard North - December 4, 2023
Israeli ground forces resuming operations in Gaza invite a weary sense of déjà vu, but there is a radical difference in the tempo of the war. The Financial Times pointed to the key change with its headline yesterday, when it told us, “Israel plans for ‘long war’”.
The headline also told us that the Israelis plan to kill the top three Hamas leaders – a decapitation strategy which has been part of the armoury for decades but one which hasn’t always proved successful. Like the Hydra’s heads, as fast as they are cut down, more emerge to take their place. And even destroying the Hydra doesn’t lead to a happy ending.
Greek mythology apart, there is nothing in this latest development to inspire confidence as Israel – if it is serious in settling down for a long war – is taking on something it has not attempted before. More usually, its wars have been short and sharp and while not always conclusive, they do at least allow the reserves to be stood down and thus reduce the economic impact of mobilising much of the productive workforce.
Now, we seem to be drifting into uncharted territory, where the state of the Israeli economy might have as much impact on the continuing war with Hamas as the progress of the military campaign. And, given that the financial support from the United States is keeping the country afloat, this gives the US added leverage, when it comes to calling the shots.
But there are other, equally important elements to a “long war”, the implications of which could be profound. The first and possibly most significant is that it will prolong and intensify Middle East instability with unknown but potentially deadly effects in spreading international terrorism throughout the West.
We have already experienced something like this with the Palestinian-led terrorism back in the late 1960s and the 1970s, culminating in multiple airline hijackings in 1970, the 1972 massacre of the Israeli Olympic team and the 1976 Entebbe raid.
Although international Palestinian attacks have continued, they have been, to an extent, overshadowed by the al-Qaeda and latterly Islamic State attacks. But, the dramatic and rapid increases in Muslim immigrant populations throughout Europe and the United States, with many communities expressing overt support for Palestine, means that we could see an upsurge in terror attacks executed specifically in the name of Palestinian “liberation”.
So far, the more recent attacks, such as the knife attack in Paris have been on a relatively small scale, and not specifically focused on the Palestinian cause.
Nevertheless, the incident in Germany, where the police arrested two teenagers alleged to have been planning terror attacks on a synagogue and a Christmas market, has had the country’s domestic intelligence agency warning that the danger of an attack is “higher than it has been for a long time”.
Similarly, in London, the Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism group is urging people to be vigilant while out in the capital ahead of Christmas. There is no evidence of a specific threat, we are told, but police officers are in a “heightened state of readiness” and the public are asked to report anything suspicious.
While the chances of a Christmas attack are probably high, the issue we now have to confront is whether this and other Western countries must gear themselves for a prolonged period of heightened vigilance, expecting not just one but several major attacks, in any of their cities.
But there is more to this instability than just Israel. Not only does the Gaza conflict timetable appear to be stretching, we are also having to come to terms with what will soon be last year’s Ukrainian counter-offensive, which even Zelensky is now having to admit is a failure.
While the war in Ukraine has not been directly associated with international terrorism, we have seen Russia weaponising immigration on the Finish border and elsewhere, while Belarus – no doubt at the behest of Putin – has been creating problems on the Polish border. As the war stretches into its third year, we can only expect this type of pressure to continue, with widespread implications for the whole of Europe.
Then there is the instability in central Africa, with overt Russian activity in multiple countries, not least in Niger, where the military government has revoked an anti-migration law that had helped reduce the flow of West Africans to Europe.
Al-Jazeera notes that the law, which made it illegal to transport migrants through Niger, was passed in May 2015 as the number of people travelling across the Mediterranean from Africa reached record highs, creating a political and humanitarian crisis in Europe. And now, the government has not only revoked the law but also stipulated that convictions handed down under the 2015 law “shall be erased”.
As traffickers plan to restart what had been lucrative businesses, conveying thousands of migrants through the country, it is not unreasonable to suspect that Russian influence lies behind this move. It would be entirely in keeping with its actions elsewhere, speeding up migration in an attempt to destabilise European countries.
Despite complaints retailed by the likes of the Guardian, the government sees a direct correlation between the increase in Muslim communities and the growth in extremism, which begets terror attacks.
Given the impact of the London bombings of July 2005, directed at the public transport network in which 52 people were killed and more than 700 injured, and the Manchester Arena bombing of 2017, in which 22 people were killed and over 1,000 injured, it would not take a large number or terror incidents to cause considerable disruption and alarm.
While the warnings of possible terror attacks have been made, they have been relatively low key, but possibly overly so in an attempt to avoid inflaming further already strained community relations. No doubt our authorities have been looking nervously at the size of the pro-Palestinian marches, and also at the reaction in Dublin to a single Algerian migrant stabbing schoolchildren and their carers.
But it is not only Dublin which has seen a sharp reaction to a murderous attack. On 18 November in the French rural town of Crépol a Muslim Arab gang attacked a a village fete, killing a 16-year-old boy and injuring 17 others in what was described as a “bloodbath”.
As happened later in Dublin, though, the French authorities chose to blame “far-right” agitators for the subsequent protests, pledging to act with “systematic firmness” against such “radical groups”, more so than against the original perpetrators of the crime.
Unsurprisingly, this provoked a column in the Telegraph by French writer Anne-Elizabeth Moutet, headed “France could be on the brink of civil war”, noting that: “For decades, governments have avoided looking too closely at the worsening situation. We are now reaching a tipping point”.
Moutet wrote of an event two years ago, after yet another couple of nights of rioting in the banlieues, when twenty retired French generals wrote an open letter to Emmanuel Macron, then about to run for a second term.
They, warning him that the divisions between communities and increasing “violence and nihilism” in France would eventually cause a social breakdown, with a risk of “chaos” leading to a “civil war” that would then “require” a military “intervention… in a dangerous mission to protect our civilisational values and safeguard our compatriots”.
Coming up-to-date, when the knife-wielding attackers who murdered and slashed the inhabitants of Crépol, the local judiciary refused, against general custom, to give first names for the suspects they arrested. The entire country suspects why the names were not given: in the well-meaning aim not to “stigmatise” an entire community whose immense majority is law-abiding.
This type of reticence, which we see so often in the UK, adds to the feeling that the government and the official agencies are “not on our side”, while the sheer number of violent incidents is seen as fracturing the social compact.
Moutet remarks that it may not take much for the next round of riots, or for an equally violent blowback from a hard-right deciding to take matters into their hands. In that case, she says, that civil war the generals prophesied two years ago may be around the corner.
And, with the long-standing experience of the effects of Middle East instability, the die may already be cast, as Israeli troops move deeper into Gaza. The Middle East may be a long way away, but its problems are uncomfortably close to our doorstep. France is not the only country on the brink.
