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| Islamic State snipers in Libya face difficult odds against the Yamam |
The Yamam, Israel's secret police, has since 2014 been authorized to carry out operations on foreign soil, and it is an authority which the organization has used to a terrifying extreme.
Fear that Islamic State militants in Libya are plotting to sink or capture a cruise liner full of Israeli citizens has led the Netanyahu government to take extraordinary measures in order to disrupt plots emerging out of the North African branch of the feared trans-national terrorist proto-state.
The Islamic State currently has just under 8,000 fighters in Libya and controls less than 300km of coastline, but its rise in the country has been meteoric, and its expansion and acquisition of territory is far more coldly calculated than in Syria and Iraq, partly owing to increased experience in urban warfare by veterans of the group.
The dramatic growth of the Islamic State in Libya is due largely to disarray on the ground between the two competing governments. Without a unified government to welcome foreign troops, NATO forces could once again find themselves invading a Muslim country without permission from the country's politicians, further feeding a rise in terrorism.
Although the Obama administration recently ordered a drone strike against top operatives in Libya, with Italy agreeing to allow flights from bases in Sicily, it is Yamam snipers that are planting terror among the group's militants.
The presence of the Yamam in Libya and the start of drone operations by Washington signals that many top operatives have moved from Syria and Iraq, where the group faces extreme pressure, to North Africa in order to minimize loss of high-ranking personnel.
There are currently unconfirmed intelligence reports that The Caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, made his way to Libya in order to minimize the risk of succumbing to a US or Russian airstrike.
If indeed The Caliph has made his way to Libya, it would explain why NATO is turning its sights with extreme worry towards North Africa.
The presence of Israeli snipers in a country where top terrorists are flocking to is bound to be a volatile mixture, and the capture of an Israeli citizen could lead to Israel launching direct operations against the Islamic State, sparking a regional war that would make the first Intifada look like a child's party.
