Tough Israeli response to attack ‘risks backfire’

JERUSALEM: Tuesday’s deadly attack on a Jerusalem synagogue marked a new level in the violence plaguing the city but a tough Israeli response could trigger further escalation, experts say. After two Palestinians burst into the synagogue armed with a gun and meat cleavers, killing four and wounding nine other people, hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged a harsh response to the murders. Political and security analyst Daniel Nisman said there was likely to be a “bigger deployment” of police and border police throughout Jerusalem and even talk of deploying the army in the annexed eastern sector. “To stop these attacks, the only thing you can really do is to close off those (east Jerusalem) neighborhoods, but that’s a double-edged sword,” he told AFP. “You could risk increasing tensions with the people there, the majority of whom don’t want an escalation.” Mark Heller, a political analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel (INSS), said cracking down would be difficult. “There is no magic solution. There’s not much you can do against ‘lone-wolf’ attackers who wake up in the morning and decide all of a sudden to act,” he told AFP. “The government will undoubtedly toughen its stance, but this will not solve the problem.”   AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE