Most of the recent attacks in the Old City of Jerusalem have been with knives, occasionally with guns and rarely now with bombs, like reported by standard.co.uk.

The pattern of individual “lone wolf” assaults matches those in the UK, France, Germany and Belgium. Many are carried out by one or two individuals, armed with knives and crashing into crowds or bus queues with hijacked vehicles. Israel is undergoing a continuous update of its counter-terror strategy, involving public awareness, new police and counter-terrorist force tactics and improved surveillance.

The fresh thinking has lessons from which Britain could learn as it also faces the threat of street terrorism, although the circumstances are very different. “London and Jerusalem are very different in scale alone,” says Micky Rosenfeld, the senior police liaison officer in Jerusalem. “You can cross central Jerusalem by motorbike in around eight minutes.”

In the past 18 months there have been 12 attacks near the Damascus Gate. Earlier this month Hadas Malka, a 23-year-old border police sergeant major, was fatally wounded when three men attacked officers at the entrance with a knife and home-made pistol. In all there have been 45 victims of lethal attacks since the autumn of 2015. Most were Israelis but two were American and one British. Last April exchange student Hannah Bladon, 20, was stabbed on a tram by a deranged man armed with a kitchen knife.
“Unfortunately, I think we really have to learn to live with this kind of terrorism — and just do everything to minimise its effect,” the commander at the Israeli Defence Force’s Counter Terrorist Training School explains. “Their tactics change all the time, and we must change ours.”

The commander, who declines to be named, says the public has to be made vigilant, though not anxious. He ventures that he thinks more public awareness is needed in Britain now.

But there are huge differences between Israel and Britain. He shows us practice videos of attacks at bus queues with crashing cars and knives. In most examples a bystander draws a weapon and shoots the perpetrator.

“We have 30,000 civilians bearing arms, which they are permitted to do after military service.” The large conscript army also provides back-up of manpower in an emergency.

Although it only has a population of eight million, Israel can call on a much larger reserve of security and specialist helpers than Britain ever could today. The other clear difference is the huge emphasis on surveillance of mobile phone and internet traffic. Of a national police force of 29,000, some 1,000 officers are involved in internet and social media surveillance, something that wouldn’t be allowed in the UK.

At Israel’s leading defence electronics contractor, Elbit, I am shown its latest communication and surveillance concept. It consists of a huge national data base, known as WIT — Wise Intelligent Technology – which can be summoned by the counter-terrorist commander. Another tool is a pod for a drone or helicopter called Skyeye, a multi-track camera that can be called on by a large number of security units at a time.

The new system allows different types of radio and phone — from UHF, VHF radios and walkie-talkies to the latest smartphone — to talk to each other. Moreover they can track a phone call, its origins and owner in an instant by using the WIT database. In Britain, following a row over identity cards, there is no such national database.

Last week the head of Israel Defence Forces, Lt-Gen Gadi Eisenkot, warned that the situation would get much more complex in the next 20 years. Here he had a powerful message for Britain, which has cut back on its public and armed services.

“We will have to adapt our forces for the future, their research and development platforms. But it is the people who ensure our future — and we will need more committed young people serving. We depend on them, and they should be properly rewarded.”

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations on Saturday slammed the international body’s force patrolling the border with Lebanon, saying it was ignoring obvious Hezbollah operations in the area.

“It is unfortunate that UNIFIL has chosen to look the other way as Hezbollah continues to operate in the region,” Danny Danon said amid an ongoing argument between Israel and the UN over activities involving a purported environmental group at the border. Israel alleges that they are a front for Hezbollah setting up observation posts along the frontier, but on Friday UNIFIL said the group Green Without Borders were just planting trees.

“This NGO is not protecting the environment, but is conducting reconnaissance activity along our border,” Danon said.”It is time for UNIFIL to fulfill its mandate and ensure that UN Security Council resolutions are implemented.”

The organizers of Safari tours in North Africa uncovered on Sunday that thousands of four-wheel drive vehicles were out of service due to the presence of ISIS militants at the desert border in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, like reported by aawsat.com.

The authorities took strict measures to prevent extremists from targeting tourist convoys in the area, particularly that most of those tourists came from Europe.

“The authorities stopped granting permits,” said Imam Fawzi, one of the tour organizers in west Egypt, adding that the problem lies in the resemblance of those desert vehicles to those used by ISIS militants.

A border official asserted that any four-wheel drive vehicle seen at the desert near Libya could be subject to an airstrike as a policy used to confront the transportation of terrorists in the area.

However, the official said that the decision to ban safari tours was only temporary.

According to the organizers of several safari tours, thousands of workers in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia already lost their jobs due to the decision.

Despite their high cost, around 1,000 four-wheel drive vehicles were out of service in the oasis located in west Egypt, while some of these vehicles were instead used to transport vegetables to the farms.

In Tunisia, Zeineddine Abdullah, a tour organizer for French tourists, also said that the roads were not safe anymore.

“We lost our jobs, and we have no money to pay the price of spare parts for our vehicles. We lack the capacities to change our cars’ wheels. If one spare part is broken, it’s not easy for us to change it,” Abdullah said.

Despite everything, “Europeans hope that the safari tours be restored here and they still plan to spend their vacations in the desert.” However, he said, “This is not possible anymore.”

Authorities in Morocco dismantled a  terrorist cell linked to the Islamic State group and accused of plotting major attacks on tourist sites, the government said according to dailymail.co.uk.

Four suspected cell members were detained and weapons were seized from them during the arrest operation in the Atlantic coast resort town of Essaouira, said the interior ministry.

They had been planning to carry out “large-scale” attacks on “sensitive installations and tourist sites of Essaouira”, it said in a statement.

The group also intended to “broaden the scope of its terrorist operations to other cities of the kingdom,” it alleged.

The security services in Morocco have regularly announced the dismantling of IS cells and arrests of suspected jihadist recruiters in the past two years.

The kingdom has been spared deadly jihadist attacks since a 2011 bombing in Marrakesh’s famed Jamaa El Fna Square, which killed 17 people, mainly European tourists.

Egyptian cabinet decided to extend the state of emergency in the country for three more months, state-owned Ahram newspaper reported.

The decision to extend the emergency state was made during a cabinet meeting.

On April 11, Egypt’s parliament approved a presidential decision for a three-month state of emergency, days after church bombings killed at least 44 people in the North African country.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian interior ministry announced on Thursday that its forces killed seven terrorists in connections to anti-Christian attacks.

The ministry said the terrorists, who were hiding in a mountainous area in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Assuit, exchanged fire with police forces before they were killed.

Egypt has been fighting a wave of anti-security attacks following the ouster of the Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Those attacks, which were mainly centered in Sinai while rarely happened in Cairo and other governorates, have killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen as well as Coptic Christians.

A local affiliate of the Islamic State group in North Sinai province has claimed responsibility of most of the attacks.

The Libyan National Army’s chief spokesman, Colonel Ahmed Mismari, claims that the army has documentary evidence of Sudanese government collusion with Qatar and Iran in supporting terrorism in Libya, like reported by libyaherald.com.

“We have records of secret meetings of the Sudanese army leadership in the presence of [President Omar] Bashir [which show] a clear conspiracy with Qatar and Iran to support terrorism in Libya, Egypt [and] Saudi Arabia,” he reported on the LNA’s Facebook page

At a press conference last night in Benghazi, he gave details of the alleged Sudanese collaboration with Qatar and Iran, stating that the latter two had military factories in Sudan which were suppyling weapons and ammunition to terrorists both in Libya and elsewhere.

Like Qatar, he claimed, Sudan was actively supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya and Egypt. The two were also actively working alongside Turkey and Iran.

Evidence of Libyans working with Qatari intelligence had come from Qatar’s opposition leader Khalid Al-Hail, Mismari claimed.

Notwithstanding  reports of Sudanese mercenaries fighting both for and against the LNA, relations between the eastern authorities and Khartoum have progressively worsened in recent weeks, in no small part to the presence of of Sudanese among militants fighting the LNA in Benghazi.  Some 20 are reported to have died fighting in Libya.  Tuesday’s suicide bomber in Sidra was also apparently a Sudani.

Two days ago, eight Sudanese children were flown to Khartoum from Libya Their parents had joined the so-calld Islamic State and were either dead or imprisoned.  Four other children of Sudanese fighters are still awaiting repatriation from Misrata.

The IDF’s chief of staff , Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, said that Hezbollah was ensconced in some 240 villages and towns in southern Lebanon, and remains the most immediate threat to Israel, like reported by thetower.org. He added that the Islamist group receives sophisticated weaponry from Iran, some of which is supplied by Russia.

Another Israeli military official warned on Wednesday that if Hezbollah launches an attack against Israel, “thousands” of Lebanese would be put at risk when Israel strikes back. Major-General Amir Eshel, commander of the Israeli Air Force, explained that Hezbollah has established thousands of bases in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and southern Lebanon, both “above and below live civilians whom we have nothing against — a kind of human shield.”

“And that is where the war will be,” he added. “That is where we will have to fight in order to stop it and win. Whoever stays in these bases will simply be hit and will risk their lives. And whoever goes out will live.”

Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, explained in July of last year that Hezbollah’s widely-reported tactic of hiding military assets in civilian areas would lead to mass casualties. Reports emerged in 2013 that Hezbollah was offering reduced-price housing to Shiite families who allow the terrorist group to store rocket launchers in their homes. An Israeli defense official told The New York Times in May 2015 that the buildup of Hezbollah’s terror infrastructure in southern Lebanese villages meant that “civilians are living in a military compound” and that their lives were at risk. A few days later, a newspaper linked to Hezbollah bolstered the Israeli assessment.

Hezbollah hasn’t just embedded its military infrastructure among civilians; it is also increasingly entrenched within Lebanon’s government.

Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote in a policy brief earlier this month that the Lebanese government now primarily aims “to defend Hezbollah, and to align its policies with the preferences of the group and of its patrons in Tehran.”

Badran pointed to a statement issued by the United States and Saudi Arabia during President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East last month, which called for “supporting the Lebanese state in enforcing its sovereignty on all of its territory, disarm terrorist organizations such as Hizballah, and bring all weapons under the legitimate supervision of the Lebanese army.”

The Lebanese government rejected this joint U.S.-Saudi statement, Badran observed. It also rejected a final communique at the Riyadh summit, which took place during Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, condemning Iran’s regional subversion.

Badran added that in January 2016, at summits of both the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League, Lebanon was the only Arab state not to sign on to resolutions condemning the attacks on the Saudi embassy and consulate in Iran.

Later that year, Lebanon’s interior minister was the only Arab interior minister to refuse to sign a statement calling Hezbollah a unterrorist organization, even after Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council had done so.

Saudi Arabia has cut off all aid to Lebanon due to its ongoing support for Hezbollah, and it is now time for the U.S. to “adopt a similar cut-off,” Badran argued.

While there was once a reason to believe that the Lebanese state could check Hezbollah’s influence, now “that paradigm is as obsolete as it is counterproductive,” he wrote.

“In the best case, continued support for the ‘Lebanese state’ to disarm Hezbollah will merely fail,” Badran concluded. “More likely, it will counterproductively bolster Hezbollah, which controls the institutions the U.S. is funding.”

Egyptian policemen on Tuesday shot and killed three wanted militants from the extremist Hassam group in a shootout in the coastal city of Alexandria, the interior ministry said like reported by jordantimes.com.

A statement said the suspects were wanted by authorities and were “among the most prominent leaders” of the militant group.

Hassam has claimed responsibility for several assassinations and attacks in Cairo and the Nile Delta.

The ministry said security forces had approached a hideout of the militants in Alexandria and that the suspects opened
fire at them.

Police returned fire killing all three.

The ministry said the Hassam group is part of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood of Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist president toppled by the military in 2013.

Morsi’s ouster ushered in a crackdown that decimated the Brotherhood and killed hundreds of its followers, and set off an extremist insurgency that has killed hundreds of security personnel.

The brotherhood emerged from the 2011 uprising that unseated former president Hosni Mubarak and won a series of elections ending with Morsi’s 2012 presidential victory.

Since then, an extensive crackdown on the group has left it in disarray with competing wings that have disagreed on whether to use violence, after police quashed their protests.

Most attacks in Egypt have been carried out by the Daesh terror group, which views the brotherhood as heretics.

But over the past year, Hassam and Lewaa Al Thawra claimed several attacks and bombings that targeted police officials and judges.

The groups have not announced their affiliation to the brotherhood in any statements.

– See more at: http://jordantimes.com/news/region/egypt-police-kill-3-militants-gunfight#sthash.OQIFlfUw.dpuf

Egyptian police in the city of Arish, capital of North Sinai, fought off a major terrorist attack on a security checkpoint on Monday, the interior ministry said like reported by ahram.org.eg.

Militants opened fire at security personnel at a checkpoint on the International Road, meanwhile deploying a car loaded with explosives. However, the police were able to win the firefight and prevent the car from reaching its target.

“Security forces repelled the attack and destroyed the trapped vehicle before it reached the checkpoint,” an interior ministry statement said.

Egypt’s military spokesman also reported on anti-terrorist actions elsewhere in the Sinai Peninsula.

The Egyptian Air Force targeted a “terrorist assemblage” for leaders of Ansar Bait El-Maqdis, the Daesh offshoot, in North Sinai on Tuesday.

Reporting on another operation, the military spokesman said that security forces units have arrested several “extremely dangerous” takfiri terrorists in Central Sinai.

Egypt’s army and police have been fighting an insurgency in parts of North Sinai for the past few years. Hundreds of militants and security forces personnel have been killed in the insurgency since the 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Algeria’s army said on Sunday that it had killed three armed militants and captured several others in an ongoing operation in the country’s east, like reported by gulftoday.ae.

The joint operation by the army and other security forces in Constantine and Skikda, under way since June 11, has led to “the elimination of three terrorists, the capture of three others and eight people who were supporting criminal groups, and the surrender of another terrorist,” a defence ministry statement said.

Weapons, ammunition and money were also recovered, the ministry said.

More than 40 armed militants have been killed in Algerian army operations in the country’s mountainous east since the start of the year, according to official figures. Algerian authorities use the word “terrorist” to refer to armed militants active in the country since the start of the 1990s.

Bloodshed blamed on such fighters has lessened significantly, but such groups continue to clash regularly with security forces.