Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), never imagined that he would be touring the area known as the Seam Zone ahead of the 2022 Passover holiday. The area runs parallel to the so-called separation fence between Israel and the West Bank hastily built nearly 20 years ago to block suicide attacks by Palestinians dispatched from the West Bank to massacre Israelis.
According to figures compiled by the Shin Bet security agency, over 700 Israelis were killed in some 150 suicide attacks between 1993 and 2006. In the initial weeks of the wave of Palestinian violence known as the second intifada (2000-2005), a senior unnamed Shin Bet official said that fighting terrorism under current conditions is like trying to “empty the sea with a teaspoon.” Nonetheless, Israel launched a massive counterterrorism campaign (Operation Defensive Shield) in 2002 to crush the West Bank terrorist infrastructure, started construction of the security barrier and achieved a rare victory over terrorism, putting an end to the suicide bombings.
