Foreign Affairs

Israel-Hamas Conflict Increases Risk Of Islamist Terrorist Attacks In Europe, Officials Say

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The risk of terrorist attacks in Europe by Islamists radicalized by the Israel-Hamas conflict is on the rise, European security officials told Reuters.

Intelligence and police officials in several European countries, including Germany, France and Britain, said that they are increasing their surveillance of Islamist militants, according to Reuters. The risk of terrorist attacks is likely from “lone wolf” attackers who are hard to track and act on their own, officials told Reuters.

“It’s only a question of time until these people carry out crimes,” Jochen Kopelke, a police officer who heads Germany’s largest police union, Gewerkschaft der Polizei, told Reuters. “It’s not always about them having a bomb. They can drive with a car into a gathering or attack with a knife.”

“Lone wolf” attackers are often radicalized online and have no formal links to established terrorist groups, according to Reuters.

London Police Chief Mark Rowley said that the combination of threats from terrorism and foreign adversaries is “one of the most challenging convergence of threats I have ever seen,” according to Reuters.

Deaths from Islamist attacks in Europe rose from 2004 and 2006 and again between 2015 and 2018, driven by al Qaeda and then by the Islamic State, according to Reuters.

Two Islamist attacks in France and Belgium killed three people last month, according to Reuters. Both of those countries, Austria, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina raised their terrorism threat alert levels.

“What you have now is a threat that is more diffuse and more diverse,” Thomas Renard, director of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism think tank, told Reuters. He said the radicalization is occurring more online than from places such as mosques.

The London Police Department and Gewerkschaft der Polizei did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.