...What is occurring resembles the cooking of soup. First one has to heat the soup to the point that any slight increase in the heat will bring it to a boil. Likewise, in a gradual process, the basic elements of the Palestinian identity – as the leadership views them – are instilled in the psychic infrastructure of the Palestinian population as a whole, and particularly of the young people. According to these principles, the mission of the Palestinians is to hasten Israel’s inevitable disappearance through a constant struggle in which all means are permissible. The Palestinian leadership’s ceaseless incitement guarantees that the heat will always be very high.
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Arabic Caption: “We’ve come to slaughter you.”
Published after the massacre of four rabbis and
a Druze policeman in Jerusalem in November 2014. |
Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser..
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..
03 January '16..
The Palestinian terror wave is not letting up, and fighting it more effectively requires a close examination of its roots and its objectives. While not baseless, the explanation that it is a spontaneous outbreak stemming from continued Israeli control of the territories, building in the settlements, the horrendous Jewish terror attack in Duma, economic hardship, or the lack of a political horizon, does not suffice.
If any or all that were true, then the Palestinians could have accepted far-reaching offers to establish a Palestinian state, or, at least, to return to the negotiating table; alternatively, the terror wave would already have erupted much earlier than it did.
In reality, the Palestinian leadership with Mahmoud Abbas at the helm, which rejects negotiations and now admits that it spurned the offers of statehood, stands unequivocally behind the ongoing stabbing and car-ramming attacks, which have been added to the stone-throwing and hurling of firebombs which characterized the problematic security situation until October 2015. With the support of a large majority of the Palestinian population, this leadership encourages the continued attacks and does not hide its satisfaction with them. On December 27 in
Al-Ayyam, senior publicist Hamada Farawne lavished praised on the terror wave, calling it a further stage of the unending struggle of all the Palestinians – including the Israeli Arabs – against Zionism, which will culminate in the Palestinians’ return to their homes in pre-1967 Israel and the regaining of their property. After the January 1, 2016, attack on a Tel Aviv pub in Tel Aviv, Fatah – headed by Abbas – tweeted, “Settler (sic) killed, 4 injured on Dizengoff St. in Tel Aviv.”
What is occurring resembles the cooking of soup. First one has to heat the soup to the point that any slight increase in the heat will bring it to a boil. Likewise, in a gradual process, the basic elements of the Palestinian identity – as the leadership views them – are instilled in the psychic infrastructure of the Palestinian population as a whole, and particularly of the young people. According to these principles, the mission of the Palestinians is to hasten Israel’s inevitable disappearance through a constant struggle in which all means are permissible.
The Palestinian leadership’s ceaseless incitement guarantees that the heat will always be very high. How, though, does one bring things to a boil and at the same time make sure the soup does not burn? The tried-and-true way to reach a boiling point is the Al-Aqsa issue. It worked in September 2000. It worked in 2014 (when the spate of car-ramming and stabbing attacks reached its apex with the synagogue massacre of four rabbis in Har Nof) when Abbas, stressing to Fatah members in Jerusalem the need to prevent “herds of settlers” from contaminating the holy site, invoked a Koran verse that is interpreted as sanctioning jihad. And it worked in September 2015, when Abbas again spoke of preventing settlers from defiling Al-Aqsa.
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