Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency reported to the country’s cabinet that there has been a marked fall in Palestinian attacks on Israelis during the past month. It put this trend down to effective yet discreet counter-terrorism measures.

The wave of violence since October has seen near-daily attacks at times, resulting in the killing of at least 31 Israelis and more than 250 wounded. However, the Shin Bet said yesterday that in April there had so far been just three significant attacks, compared with 20 in March and 78 in October.

February saw 155 attacks, compared with 169 in January, and 246 in December, twice the number for March.

During the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “strong, responsible and methodological” policy had seen a significant drop in attacks, although he warned that the trend could yet reverse.

The Shin Bet explained that the decline was due to “effective deterrent measures to prevent additional attacks and determined action against Palestinian incitement.” In particular, the security agency said it had taken action to foil Hamas, which “significantly increased its efforts to carry out attacks during this period (including abductions and suicide attacks).”

Since the start of 2015, the Shin Bet said it had foiled almost 300 significant attacks, including 25 attempted abductions and 15 planned suicide attacks. It said that successful preventative measures had “left a sense among the Palestinian public (especially lone terrorists) that escalation is useless.”

The Shin Bet also emphasised that the actions of Israeli security forces had taken place “in the context of an effort not to disrupt the fabric of life of a majority of the Palestinian population, which is not involved in terrorism, and to continue cooperation with the Palestinian security services.”

During the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu also reiterated a ban on government ministers and Knesset members from visiting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem ahead of the Passover holiday at the end of the month. The site was a focal point for attacks towards the start of the current period of violence.

PA arrests 3 Palestinians planning attacks against Israelis

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has arrested three Palestinians over the weekend, who had been missing since last month and were reportedly planning a large-scale attack on Israelis. They were found with a large cache of weapons near Ramallah and were taken for questioning by PA police, who said that they were members of Hamas.

Also, up to five Hamas operatives have been killed after a tunnel they were digging in the Gaza Strip underneath the Egyptian border collapsed overnight.

Although Hamas has refused to talk about the incident, Palestinian reports say that between two and five people were killed in the incident. Some have put the collapse down to heavy rain, while other reports have said that Egyptian forces intentionally instigated the collapse.

It is the twelfth such tunnel collapse in Gaza in 2016, which has seen at least 16 Hamas members killed, as the terror group looks to rebuild its underground tunnel network.

Hamas uses the tunnels for a variety of purposes, from smuggling to launching attacks on Israeli targets.

Egypt has a long-standing policy of destroying the tunnels beneath the Gaza border into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Cairo accuses Hamas of using the tunnels to smuggle weapons and arms into Sinai for the ISIS-affiliated Sinai Province terror group, which has waged a long-standing armed campaign against President al-Sisi’s regime. Meanwhile, the subterranean network was a major feature of Hamas attacks on Israel during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Although Israel subsequently destroyed most of the tunnels, Hamas has admitted to rebuilding its underground capability in preparation for future attacks.