London is facing the “biggest convergence of threats we have seen for a very long time” because of the conflict in Gaza with counter-terrorism arrests at “unprecedented levels” and a huge surge in inflammatory online material, police warned MPs on Tuesday.
Met Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes, the head of national counter-terrorism police, said the “extraordinary” situation was putting the capital facing a heightened danger of an attack – similar to the recent fatal stabbing in Paris – carried out by an extremist “energised” by the fighting between Israel and Hamas.
He said the “concerning” situation had already seen calls by the public to the anti-terrorism hotline double, a 12 fold increase in referrals about extremism online, and a 25 per cent increase in counter-terror intelligence. He said this meant there “red lights blinking everywhere”.
Mr Jukes added that a further danger was that hostile states, notably Iran, would seek to stoke and widen divisions in society and counter-terrorism policing resources were under great pressure as officers sought to protect the public.
“This is an exceptional period where we have a sense of counter-terrorism risk which is immediate,” he told the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee during a hearing today on the policing and impact of the recent protests over the conflict in Israel and Gaza.
“We have seen in the course of the protests a whole spectrum of behaviour, the extreme of whi9hc crosses over into terrorism legislation. The arrests for those offences that relate to supporting or glorifying terrorism are in unprecedented numbers when compared to the last decade and are part of a concerning environment where people are energised towards potentially support for extremist ideologies.”
He added: “The threat is going to manifest at two speeds. We have got the immediate of people being energised or galvanised by the amount of hateful material that is being circulated. There is a real risk as we saw in Paris recently of an individual being energised by these events.
“The FBI director talked last week about red lights blinking everywhere and I think that’s part of what we’re beginning to see – that increase in calls from the public, that increase in online traffic, and increasingly young people involved.”
Another Met Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said: “What we are seeing in London is the biggest convergence of threats we have seen for a very long time with the impact of major global events being felt on the streets of London. The scale of the policing challenge is enormous.”
