Is Israel on the brink of a new wave of terror? According to senior Palestinian security officials, the writing was on the wall from the minute Avigdor Liberman assumed office in late May as Israel’s defense minister and dictated a carrot-and-stick policy of rewards and punishments for Palestinian villages, depending on the origins of Palestinian assailants.
Following five months of relative calm, 10 terror attacks and attempted terror attacks occurred in the past week. On Sept. 19, adjacent to Herod’s Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem, a youth from East Jerusalem's Ras al-Amoud neighborhood stabbed and wounded a policewoman and a soldier. The policewoman sustained serious wounds, while the soldier was moderately injured.
On Sept. 16, three terror attacks took place: a Palestinian stabbed a soldier in Hebron; a Jordanian citizen tried to stab soldiers at the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City, but was shot and killed; and in the Jewish settlement town of Kiryat Arba, a couple from the Palestinian village of Bani Naim tried to run over Israelis with their car at the Elias junction. The driver was shot dead by soldiers and his fiancee was seriously wounded. On Sept. 17, a soldier was slightly wounded at a checkpoint near Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarch, and over the past days, some attacks took place at the Tel Romeidah Hebron neighborhood and in the Etzion settlement bloc. All in all, five police officers and two soldiers were injured in five days. On the Palestinian side, six were killed and three seriously injured, all of them suspected terrorists. Several weeks ago, Israeli security officials warned that in the runup to the Jewish High Holidays, starting Oct. 2, the likelihood of renewed terror attacks increases.
A Palestinian security source who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity said that months of efforts to restore calm had gone to waste and that virtually not a day goes by that special units of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) raid Palestinian villages in the area of the West Bank under Palestinian security and civil control, designated Area A, clashing with local residents. “Instead of understanding that these raids are the main cause of renewed tensions, they’re talking about Jewish holidays? What’s that got to do with it and why are they the cause?” he asked, chuckling.
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