A series of terrorist attacks that have swept Israel since March 22 has claimed the lives of 19 people in the towns of Beersheba, Hadera, Tel Aviv, Bnei Brak, Ariel and Elad.

Security officials had hoped the attacks would peter out after the highly charged period of religious observances that converged in April, including the Muslim month of Ramadan, the Jewish Passover holiday and Easter. Their hopes were dashed in the evening hours of May 5 as Israelis were celebrating Independence Day when two Palestinians crossed from the West Bank into the ultra-Orthodox town of Elad, axing and knifing to death three Israeli men and seriously wounding two others.

The two terrorists from the village of Rumeineh near the West Bank Palestinian town of Jenin were captured after a massive 60-hour manhunt. The assessment of security forces that the two had not gone very far from the site of their killing spree was proven correct. They were found hiding within tangled foliage a few hundred meters away, exhausted, hungry and thirsty, having subsisted on avocados from a nearby plantation and a pigeon they caught.

The difficulty Israeli security forces face in this current terror wave is not necessarily solving the attacks or apprehending the perpetrators; rather, it is gathering intelligence on planned attacks before they are carried out. The difficulty lies with obtaining intelligence information about individuals unaffiliated with known terror organizations who are suddenly spurred by religious incitement, plan attacks and share their secret with no one or with only a handful of people.