Crime is turning into terrorism
Yossi Yehoshua analyzes the dangerous connection between organized crime in the south and terrorism, against the backdrop of Shin Bet warnings about attempts to establish battalions in the Bedouin diaspora. Drones for smuggling, criminal money, and weapons could be used to attack strategic infrastructure and IDF bases. The article calls for a combined campaign and action vis-à-vis Egypt to dry up smuggling routes.
In his article, Yossi Yehoshua analyzes the dangerous convergence between organized crime in southern Israel and terrorism. He cites Shin Bet warnings about attempts by young Bedouins from Segev Shalom to establish a military battalion inspired by the Palestinian battalions in the West Bank and carry out attacks. The article describes how criminal infrastructures—drones smuggling weapons from Egypt, money from drug smuggling and protection rackets, and weapons—could be used to attack military bases and strategic infrastructure such as the Nevatim base. Yehoshua notes that since the beginning of the year, 72 residents of the Negev and south have been arrested on suspicion of security-related activity, 67 of them Israeli citizens. He emphasizes that Bedouin society is not a terrorist society and the vast majority is not connected to these phenomena, and calls for a combined campaign by the police, Shin Bet, IDF, and tax authorities, along with a demand for Egyptian action against smuggling infrastructures. The danger, he says, is that habituation to isolated incidents will prevent identification of an accumulating pattern that becomes an operational system.