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What happened: Three members of a Palestinian terrorist cell likely behind multiple recent shooting attacks were killed on Wednesday evening in an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) strike on their car in Jenin.

• The cell had attempted a shooting at a checkpoint near the Jalame crossing earlier in the evening. Their car was then identified by IDF troops with corroboration from the Shin Bet security service, before both Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorised the aerial strike.
• Three assault rifles were later found in the car, two of the dead were affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the third to Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Brigade.
• Security and intelligence officials are working to establish if theirs is the same cell which carried out recent shootings at Shaked and Maale Gilboa (the latter beyond the West Bank security barrier in northern Israel) and the terror attack near Hermesh which killed Meir Tamari.
• Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli settlers rioted in several locations in response to Tuesday’s killing of four Israelis by Hamas-affiliated terrorists near the West Bank settlement of Eli.

• In the village of Luban a-Sharqiya, next door to the Jewish settlement of Beit Aryeh, young settlers set fire to at least 15 cars and smashed Palestinian shops.
• After the funeral of terror victim Nahman Shmuel Mordof, around 200 youths entered the village of Turmus Aya, near Ramallah. Palestinian media reported 30 homes and 60 cars set alight. Further significant violence then ensued in the area of the Shilo junction, north of the village. Israel Police and Border Police officers, together with IDF troops, arrived to protect firefighters who came under attack whilst trying to stem the fires. One Palestinian was shot by Israeli forces.
• In a further incident, video has emerged that shows masked settlers, accompanied by a dog, leaving a mosque in the Palestinian village of Urif, and one of them appearing to tear apart a Quran in the street outside.
• So far the Shin Bet has arrested three Jews for the rioting in Palestinian villages.

Context: The strike on the Jenin cell is the first aerial strike by Israel in the West Bank since 2006. This represents a shifting of the tactical paradigm also seen in Monday’s raid on Jenin in which a helicopter gunship augmented fire in the West Bank for the first time in two decades.

• Though the IDF is thought to have been reluctant to reintroduce UAV strikes now, the wounding of soldiers by an IED deployed by Palestinian militants during Monday’s IDF raid on Jenin shifted the calculus and made further incursions of ground troops more dangerous.
• Netanyahu and Gallant spoke with the OC Southern Command in the wake of the Jenin operation and requested an alternative method. The Shin Bet concurred that aerial strikes were a viable possibility, despite the army’s continued objections.
• Advancements in UAV technology since 2006 mean that such strikes can now be more surgically precise and in fact lessen the potential for civilian casualties compared with an incursion of ground troops.
• The IDF was also quick to clarify publicly that “this was not a targeted killing; it was to defuse a threat.”
• The military is also reluctant to pursue a larger anti-terror offensive in the West Bank, on the scale, say, of 2002’s Operation Defensive Shield. It prefers to continue its strategy, seen throughout Operation Breakwater, of targeted and intelligence-led operations.
• Pressure for a wider operation is increasing from the political echelon, the commentariat, and sections of the public, however, with 147 “significant” terror attacks having already occurred in Israel and the West Bank this year, and with security forces have thwarted a further 375. There is a wide recognition that the post-Second Intifada status quo is now at an end, such is the rise of young, semi-autonomous West Bank terror groups and the parallel decline in the authority of the PA.
• Most voluble in calling for a large-scale operation is National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who was excluded from the Security Cabinet meeting, as he was during last month’s clashes between Israel and PIJ in Gaza.
• The IDF condemned the rioting in the West Bank strongly: “The IDF denounces these serious incidents of violence and arson. Incidents like this block the IDF and security forces from focusing on their main goal: defending the citizens of Israel and preventing terrorism.”
• The IDF Spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, later acknowledged that the army had “failed to prevent” the “very grave” incidents. Vowing improvement, Hagari condemned the violence as something that “… creates terror and escalation, and takes the population that isn’t involved in terror and pushes it there, while preventing the IDF from fighting terror in operational activities.”
• There was condemnation, too, from across the political spectrum. In addition older settler also condemned the rioters, highlighting the coexistence that had existed between residents of Beit Aryeh and Luban a-Sharqiya.

Looking ahead: With the divergent views of the military and the political echelon on both the use of UAVs and a widening of the scope of Israeli West Bank counter-terror operations, it remains to be seen how Israel will next respond to the ever-deteriorating security situation in the West Bank.

• In the wake of Hagari’s comments, the IDF will be under pressure to improve the speed and effectiveness of its response to any future settler rioting.