The Jewish festivals at the end of September, New Year and the Day of Atonement, are usually a time of high terror alerts in Israel. Many Jews in Israel and worldwide, who on a regular basis would deem themselves secular, cherish the traditional Jewish time of reflection and atonement and attend services in their local synagogues. Subsequently, terror alerts often increase during these times, as an attack on a place of worship is likely to have a stronger shock effect than a ‘standard’ attack.
“We don’t raise the state of alert as a general rule before the festivals,” said Israel’s police spokesman, Gil Kleiman, “but we do increase security in sensitive areas such as synagogues and at city entrances.” Kleiman added that the Israeli Police only increases the alert status if it receives information pertaining to specific plans to carry out attacks.
The Israeli police force, similar to the American security system, has four alert statuses marking out the likelihood of hostile occurrences. Unlike the American system that illustrates the stages in colors, the Israeli system has four stages demonstrated by letters, A being the lowest state of alert, D designating the highest. Since violent clashes broke out between Israelis and Palestinians in September 2000, the state of alert in Israel has very rarely, if at all, been on the standard A level, according to Kleiman.
The D status, on the other hand, has also been applied very infrequently in that same period. D is the maximum state of alert and is manifested by mobilization of all members of the police force to the streets, including non-operational hands, to strive to create a blanket effect against possible aggressors. Despite the declining security situation over the past two-and-a-half years, the D alert is seldom declared, since it implies that personnel are all recruited for the sake of fighting terror at the expense of contending with other police tasks such as fighting crime. This situation cannot prevail for more than a day or two, otherwise other fields of security will lose control, Kleiman said.
Levels B and C are the most common states of alert in Israel of late. They differ in terms of the number of policemen put onto the streets. Alert status C is when all the mobilized police officers are operational, such as traffic police and patrols.
The alert status is determined by Shlomo Aharonishky, the commissioner of the Israel Police and Major-General Dudi Cohen, Chief of Operations. However, sometimes specific alerts are relevant to a particular district and the head of that district may mobilize increased forces to the streets to contend with the problem.
Over the period of the unilateral cease-fire announced by the Palestinian factions at the end of June, a situation that lasted officially for just over six weeks, the state of alert in the police force did not change, said Gil Kleiman. “During the Hudna [temporary cease-fire] we didn’t reach an A alert because we weren’t observing what the Palestinian were saying, only what they were doing. They were still preparing terror attacks,” said Kleiman, adding that terror alerts continued to flow during that time of alleged peace.