A terrorism expert has warned that Israel should brace itself for a major Al Qaeda terrorist attack, according to The Jerusalem Post:
It is only a matter of time before Israel becomes the target of a large scale attack launched by al-Qaida, Dr. Yoram Kahati, senior research fellow at the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies in Glilot told The Jerusalem Post.
The well coordinated double suicide bomb and car bomb attack that rocked Amman’s hotels on Wednesday night, bear all the hallmarks of al-Qaida, and should be a cause of concern for Israel, he said. “The threat is coming closer. An attack in Jordan should serve as a red light [warning] that an attack in Israel is only a matter of time. Six months, a year, or three, it will happen, it will be large scale and launched in a central, populated area,” he said.
Al-Qaida’s trademark and strategy is to place more than one bomb at the target site to ensure that if one fails there is a backup. Using suicide bombers is also one of its strategies, as there is no danger of the perpetrators getting caught and executed, Kahati added.
While Jordan has a good intelligence network, cooperation with Israel in the security intelligence field has existed for many years, mainly to maintain a quiet border between the two countries. According to Kahati, if Israel had any information concerning plans to attack Jordan, it would have informed the authorities.
And he says there is a clear and present danger:
Kahati, who is also a research fellow at the International Policy Institute for Counter-terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, said he could not rule out the possibility that al-Qaida had infiltrated into the Gaza Strip. He bases his assumption on reports in the media by key IDF intelligence officials who assessed that operatives succeeded in entering Gaza via the Philadelphi Corridor during the days following the IDF pullout from Gaza, when the Rafah border crossing was turned into a free-for-all.
All of this stands to reason. And when Al Qaeda executes an operation in Israel you can expect (a) it will likely be something brutally spectacular, such as on the scale of 911 in the U.S, (b) there will be some kind of swift, unquestionable Israeli response.