To stop an Islamic terror attack, you need some kind of control over the area. Once Israel surrendered control over the terrorist occupied territories, that became very difficult.
This is one of those unusual incidents in which the perpetrators were based in Jerusalem.
Indictments have been filed against three residents from east Jerusalem who planned to carry out a terrorist attack on behalf of Hamas, The Jerusalem District Prosecutor’s Office said on Sunday, ynet reported.
The office has filed indictments against the three suspects, who initially conspired to carry out a shooting attack on behalf of Hamas on the Tel Aviv beach, however, after discussing their plans, thought it would be better to carry out the attacks in and around Jerusalem, including at Damascus Gate.
A Damascus Gate attack would have fit the profile more and would have spread terror.
An interesting angle though is that their Hamas handler wasn’t in Gaza, but in Turkey.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, they were imprisoned in 2017, but released earlier this year, following which two of the suspects were in contact with a Hamas operative in Istanbul and suggested they carry out an assassination of top figures, naming former Likud MK Yehudah Glick, ex-police chief Roni Alsheich and former Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat.
Turkey is run by Erdogan and his AKP Islamist allies who like Hamas quite a lot. But Hamas plotting attacks against Israeli officials from Istanbul is pushing the limit.
There’s no practical reason for this operation to have been handled from Turkey except that moving command functions to a NATO country would protect Hamas from retaliation.