Israelis have become accustomed to dismal news in the past days — mornings and evenings punctuated by stabbings, car attacks and rock throwing.
The cycle of random violence has left dozens of Israelis and Palestinians dead. Now, after two weeks of near-daily attacks, some are calling this string the start of a third intifada that could claim hundreds more lives.
But since the start of the second armed Palestinian uprising in 2000, fears of a repeat have proved unfounded. “It’s a matter of days until this stops,” Nitzan Nuriel, the former head of the prime minister’s counterterrorism bureau, said about the current round of violence. “This has no goal. It will be forgotten.”
In addition, in the years since the last intifada, Israel has created safeguards to keep Palestinian violence in check. “Every night we have actions to detain people who are involved in terrorist activities,” said Israel Defense Forces spokesman Peter Lerner. “We have operational access at any given time to any place.”
Israelis nevertheless have been bracing for a third intifada since the second one ebbed to a close in 2005. Waves of terror have risen and fallen, along with concerns that the region is on the verge of another conflagration.
Most recently, a string of Palestinian attacks in late 2014, including the murder of four Orthodox Jewish men and a Druze police officer at a Jerusalem synagogue, sparked talk of a coming intifada. But those clashes died out after several weeks. Another rash of attacks came and went two years ago.
After hitting a peak in 2002, attacks on Israelis waned the following year when Israel completed the first part of a security barrier near its pre-1967 border with the West Bank. Part fence and wall, the barrier has proved controversial. Its route cuts into the West Bank at points, which critics call an Israeli land grab. And the restrictions on Palestinian movement imposed by the barrier, as well as the fence around Gaza, have led some to call Gaza an open-air prison.
Still, the barrier coincided with a sharp decrease in Israeli deaths from terrorism. Terrorists have infiltrated the barrier repeatedly, but successful attacks dropped 90 percent between 2002 and 2006. Militants attacking Israel from Gaza now shoot missiles over the barrier or dig tunnels under it.
The current wave of violence has mostly involved attacks in the shadow of the security barrier, either in the West Bank or in Jerusalem. Both are Palestinian population centers with easy access to Jewish communities. A handful of stabbings have taken place in central Israel, perpetrated by Palestinians who were able to sneak across the barrier.
The unorganized, “lone wolf” attacks have created an atmosphere of insecurity and tension across Israel, even as the attacks have been relatively small in scale. There’s a feeling, some say, that an attack could happen anywhere at any time.
“No one is in charge [among the Palestinians] to say tomorrow we stop the attacks,” said Shimon Grossman, a medic with the Zaka paramedical organization. “Last time people knew to stay away from buses. Now you don’t know who to be afraid of.”
Another significant obstacle to a third intifada has been the West Bank Palestinians themselves, who have worked with Israel for eight years to thwart terror attacks. In 2007, Hamas seized full control of the Gaza Strip, violently ousting the moderate Fatah party, which controls the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority. Since that takeover, the PA and Israel have viewed Hamas as a shared enemy and coordinated on security operations aimed at discovering and arresting Hamas terror cells.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused PA President Mahmoud Abbas of inciting the ongoing violence. But Abbas has maintained security coordination with Israel through the clashes and has a history of opposing violence.
According to Nuriel, while Abbas is not to blame for the attacks, he stands to benefit from them. “He has an interest for the conflict to get headlines,” Nuriel said. “He wants to show there’s chaos here. He wants to show it’s in places that Israel controls.”
Palestinian society as a whole appears to support violence against Israelis. A poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey research last week found that 57 percent of Palestinians support a return to an armed intifada, an increase of 8 percent from earlier this year. Half believe the PA has a mandate to stop security coordination with Israel, and two-thirds want Abbas to resign.
Even if the attacks continue, according to former Israeli National Security Adviser Ya’akov Amidror, Israel will retain the upper hand. The best course of action, he wrote in a position paper this week, is to maintain current security operations and be cautious in using force.
“Now we no longer have to prove anything,” Amidror wrote for the Begin Sadat Center for Security Studies. “Israel is a strong, sovereign state, and as such it must use its force prudently, only when its results have proven benefits and only as a last resort.”