The attack by a young Palestinian from the village of Rumanah who was hiding in Jenin invites four insights with implications for the developing reality vis-à-vis the Palestinian arena:
- The attack is not another "lone wolf" attack. The young Palestinian man who entered Israel illegally, armed with a gun, arrived for a “sacrifice attack,” which is an updated version of a suicide attack.
- His gun was apparently given to him by one of the Palestinian organizations, likely Islamic Jihad, if only for the reason that the price of weapons in the West Bank is beyond the reach of a poor or unemployed Palestinian youth. In other words, this is a type of organized attack and not a spontaneous act born as a result of frustration or anger erupting in the morning of a day in the life of an idle Palestinian youth.
- The attack is another indication of a step up in the terrorism system that Israel has confronted since March 2022 and the motivation of the Palestinian terrorist organizations to expand the ranks and the scope of terrorism, with emphasis on the effort to extend the borders of the sector from the West Bank into the State of Israel itself.
- The haste by Hamas to express official support for the attack, perhaps even to attribute it in one way or another to itself, without accepting official responsibility, is strongly indicative of the Hamas mindset and the unwavering support for the idea of armed struggle in the form of murderous terrorism against Israelis. This position of Hamas reinforces the assessment of the lack of a real possibility for intra-Palestinian reconciliation and the effort to establish a technocratic national unity government, in the spirit of the dialogue that began in Egypt last week and Abu Mazen's demand for an end to terrorism.
It is not possible to point to a direct and immediate connection between the attack in Tel Aviv and the clash in the village of Burqa near Ramallah the day before the attack, even though there will be those among the Palestinians who will try to present the attack as Palestinian revenge. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Jewish terrorism is also on the rise, protected by the helplessness of Israeli law and order enforcement; the limitations imposed on the IDF and the security establishment in connection with the strict and determined enforcement of law and public order with regard to the lawbreaking, extremist, and violent Jewish groups; and the support of the most influential political elements in the Israeli government. The Jewish terrorism that rears its head is searing testimony to eroded Israeli governance, which mirrors the weakness of Israeli governance in Israel’s Arab sector, in the agricultural sector in the face of agricultural crime, and the resounding failure in the face of the protection phenomena, which has a grip and a hold throughout sovereign Israel.
Palestinian terrorism does not rely on excuses and justifications and has existed in every era and even during periods of progress in the political process, but there is no disputing that Jewish terrorism feeds and energizes Palestinian terrorism. Even worse, it weakens the IDF, the State of Israel, and the Jewish public as a whole, both at home and before the international community. Therefore, the attack in Tel Aviv, like the incident that preceded it a day earlier in the village of Burqa, should be seen as a glaring warning sign before a descent into oblivion.
The attack by a young Palestinian from the village of Rumanah who was hiding in Jenin invites four insights with implications for the developing reality vis-à-vis the Palestinian arena:
It is not possible to point to a direct and immediate connection between the attack in Tel Aviv and the clash in the village of Burqa near Ramallah the day before the attack, even though there will be those among the Palestinians who will try to present the attack as Palestinian revenge. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Jewish terrorism is also on the rise, protected by the helplessness of Israeli law and order enforcement; the limitations imposed on the IDF and the security establishment in connection with the strict and determined enforcement of law and public order with regard to the lawbreaking, extremist, and violent Jewish groups; and the support of the most influential political elements in the Israeli government. The Jewish terrorism that rears its head is searing testimony to eroded Israeli governance, which mirrors the weakness of Israeli governance in Israel’s Arab sector, in the agricultural sector in the face of agricultural crime, and the resounding failure in the face of the protection phenomena, which has a grip and a hold throughout sovereign Israel.
Palestinian terrorism does not rely on excuses and justifications and has existed in every era and even during periods of progress in the political process, but there is no disputing that Jewish terrorism feeds and energizes Palestinian terrorism. Even worse, it weakens the IDF, the State of Israel, and the Jewish public as a whole, both at home and before the international community. Therefore, the attack in Tel Aviv, like the incident that preceded it a day earlier in the village of Burqa, should be seen as a glaring warning sign before a descent into oblivion.