Fear of a new wave of violence in Israel

Another attack in Israel has claimed several lives. A Palestinian from a village near Jenin in the West Bank shot dead four civilians in Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv, on Tuesday evening. A police officer who tried to stop him later died from his injuries. Two Ukrainians are among the victims, the Ukrainian embassy has confirmed.

It is the third attack within a week. Among many Israelis, this has fueled deep-seated fears of terrorist attacks. During the second intifada (2000-2005), Palestinian extremists indiscriminately attacked civilian targets, killing hundreds of Israelis. The counterattacks by the Israeli army claimed thousands of lives on the Palestinian side. The so-called “knife intifada” (2015/2016), when militant Palestinians indiscriminately stabbed Israeli civilians with knives, is also deeply engraved in people’s memories.

Palestinians reject terror state

At first glance, however, there is no direct connection between the attacks of the past week, apart from the course of events. In the southern Israeli city of Beer Sheva, a Bedouin killed a cyclist and then fatally injured two women and a man with a knife before being shot dead by a bus driver. In the northern Israeli city of Hadera, two Palestinian Israelis killed two border police officers, both of whom were shot dead by security forces. The three perpetrators had tried to join the Islamic State (IS) in the past and were therefore partly in prison.

IS has claimed responsibility for the two attacks. This fits in with the terrorist group’s strategy, which seeks to capitalize on a country’s internal conflicts everywhere. In Israel, however, the extremists have never succeeded to the same extent as in their core areas in Iraq or Syria. The vast majority of Palestinians, both in Israel and in the occupied territories, reject a terrorist state à la IS, even if radical groups like Hamas in the Gaza Strip celebrated the perpetrators and thus mocked the victims.

The Palestinians see their conflict with the Israeli state as a national struggle. For the minority within Israel it is about equality, for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip about their own state.

Abbas is part of the crisis

The Israeli government has long neglected this conflict. During his long reign, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relied primarily on security measures. He also promoted the false belief among many citizens that normalizing relations with Arab states would make a resolution to the conflict superfluous. That could now take revenge.

A young Palestinian from the West Bank carried out the attack in Bnei Brak. While older Palestinians have not forgotten the consequences of past waves of terror, the willingness to use violence has been increasing among young people for some time. The Palestinian Authority and its President Mahmoud Abbas also contribute to this. Apart from empty threats, Abbas has nothing to counter Israel.

Instead of putting his own ideas for a peace solution on the table, he shut himself up in his office and clung ironically to power. Meanwhile, for the Palestinians, there is no end in sight to military administration and the chances of a two-state solution are diminishing.

Intensive diplomatic efforts

Since the beginning of the year according to the UN 15 Palestinians have already been killed in clashes with soldiers in the West Bank and hundreds have been arrested. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s government has recognized that the current path is leading to a dead end. In recent months, it has issued several thousand new work permits for Palestinians, including for the Gaza Strip. In addition, several ministers have met their Palestinian counterparts, and Defense Minister Benny Gantz invited Abbas to his home.

In addition, the government is making efforts to improve relations with Jordan and Egypt. This month alone, four government officials traveled to Amman for talks. Just a day after Gantz met with Jordanian King Abdallah, President Isaac Herzog traveled to the Jordanian capital on Wednesday. Abdallah visited Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority. All of the talks were about preventing a new outbreak of violence like that during the Gaza war a year ago.

With the month of fasting Ramadan, Easter and Passover, high Muslim, Christian and Jewish holidays accumulate in April. For months, security experts have been warning of an outbreak of violence if there are clashes on the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif, as was the case last year.

Intuition necessary

Nobody has an interest in it, and unlike usual, Abbas condemned the attack in Bnei Brak. Even Hamas isn’t counting on escalation. Instead of the usual border fence, this year she celebrated “Land Day,” on which Palestinians commemorate land expropriations in northern Israel in 1976, deep inside the Strip.

The government is of course also under pressure from radical Jews, who are inciting hatred against Arabs and threatening to take action against them with an “iron fist”. Immediately after the attack, Bennett allowed himself to be persuaded to speak of “Arab terror”. The policeman who was killed was a Palestinian Christian. The government wants to prevent this with a large number of police and soldiers in the West Bank. However, Bennett will need a lot of tact to prevent an outbreak of violence given the heated atmosphere.