Top military intel officer: West Bank violence only going to get worse

A top Israeli intelligence official said Monday he believed the escalating situation in the West Bank would only get worse in the coming year and that Israel was not  merely facing a “wave of terror,” as many officials have described it.

The head of the Israel Defense Forces’ Military Intelligence Research Department, Brig. Gen. Amit Saar, said the rising violence in the West Bank will be Israel’s second most challenging issue in 2023, after Iran.

Speaking at a conference hosted by Gazit, a military think tank, Saar said: “People can say nothing has changed… the terror is seasonal, every few years we have a wave and afterward it calms down and comes back. There are people in the security establishment who believe this to be the case, but I think otherwise.

“I think we need to examine what we have seen in recent months — not through the [prism of the] number of attacks, but the causes,” he said. READ MORE