Iran continues to spread revolution and violence throughout the Middle East. Including in Israel.
As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, or CAMERA, documented, in May 2021, Iran greenlighted its Gaza-based proxies to attack the Jewish state. Over the course of eleven days, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups indiscriminately launched rockets at Israeli civilians while using human shields as cover, prompting a response by Israeli Defense Forces.
Now Iran is trying a new strategy.
According to a December 2021 op-ed in Al Arabiya magazine, the Islamic Republic is using its proxies to smuggle weapons to Israel’s Arab communities. Jonathan Schanzer and David May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies argue that while Tehran’s “goal is to overthrow the Israeli state,” Israel’s Arab community “is clearly the victim.” The evidence shows that they’re right.
Israel’s Arab communities have experienced a sharp increase in violence, with more than 116 murders in 2021 alone. The shootings and the violence have attracted some attention from Western media outlets. And yet few in the press have examined how, or why, illegal weaponry seems to be flooding some of Israel’s Arab communities.
The Times of Israel recently reported that Israeli police have “noticed a significant increase in efforts to smuggle weapons into the country via the Lebanese and Jordanian borders.” The increase, police told reporters, has been “several-fold,” with numbers skyrocketing after the end of the war in May. Further, “there has been a marked improvement in the quality of the weapons being sent.”
The weapons, officials told reporters, were mainly being smuggled by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed, U.S.-designated terrorist group that de facto controls Lebanon. The head of Israel’s northern district police intelligence department, Chief Superintendent Yaron Ben-Yishi, told the country’s Channel 12 news team that as much as 95% of the smuggling from Lebanon is directed by Hezbollah, with many of the weapons destined for organized crime families.
Iran could be hoping to spark a civil war. The last outbreak in the long-running Israel-Iran conflict did, unfortunately, witness civil unrest, including some instances of violence between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs.
Some Israeli military officials have speculated that the Islamic Republic is hoping to frustrate future Israeli deployments by bogging down troops before they reach the front lines. Internal Security Minister Omer Barlev has described police efforts to seize illegal firearms in Israeli Arab communities as a safeguard for future military deployments, and Channel 12’s report described the flood of weapons as a “strategic threat” to the community.
But if Tehran is hoping to foment civil unrest in Israel, it is likely to be disappointed.
While Israel’s Arab communities do face some inequities and challenges, Arabs in Israel often have a higher standard of living than in neighboring states. Indeed, Israeli Arabs have served on the country’s Supreme Court, held high ranks in the IDF, run hospitals and businesses, and have their own political parties. Indeed, the major Arab political party now sits in government. Polls also show that sizable majorities wouldn’t want to be part of a Palestinian state, should one be created.
Iran’s hope for a civil war in Israel is as deluded as it is dangerous.
The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
