Israeli security officials and politicians have criticized the state of hysteria and chaos that took over security services following their failure to confront a series of deadly shootings in Tel Aviv, Bnei Brak, Hadera and Beersheba.
An Israeli officer was wounded by shrapnel of a bomb fired by another Israeli soldier at his forces. At first, the officer believed that the injury was caused by a Palestinian shooter.
The forces responded with a retaliatory attack on the Palestinians, and later realized that the injury was caused by friendly fire.
Another officer also killed the attacker of a female Israeli soldier thinking that the assailant was Palestinian. They later found out that the attacker was not a Palestinian, but a mentally ill Israeli citizen.
Israeli officials also criticized the mobilization of large forces of special units from the army and General Security Service (Shin Bet) in Tel Aviv, during the operation carried out by a Palestinian.
The forces operated without organization, and lacked coordination among them, to the point of posing a threat to the lives of citizens.
“The fact that we ended this event without any (Israeli) fatalities, with shooting by our forces, was a matter of luck rather than anything else,” said a senior Israeli security official who participated in the operation.
“No one knew what was going on there,” the official added.
“It turned out that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's call for citizens to carry weapons and the approval of the army and police commanders on this, caused a dangerous situation, as citizens and soldiers were dragging their arms towards the residents' homes, and armed men in civilian clothes ran between the alleys without one of them knowing the other,” they explained.
On Monday, the Israeli Haaretz daily reported that Israeli forces had shown similar disorganization and failures in the past following a series of operations by Palestinians.
In 2015, such blunders had resulted in the death of an Israeli citizen in Jerusalem.
