With the huge wave of terrorism sweeping across the West Bank in the past few months, Israeli security forces are also worried about a discernible increase in the acts of retaliation committed by Jews against Arabs. According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), from January to the end of November 2022, there have been 838 cases of “nationalist crimes” (as the IDF calls it) by Jews against Arabs.

What makes this especially disturbing is the fact that in all of 2021, 446 attacks were committed by Jews against Arabs, and even that was considered a high number. Many of the attacks in 2021 can be attributed to Operation Guardian of the Walls in May of that year, which exacerbated friction between Jews and Arabs.

By way of comparison, there were “only” 353 such cases of “nationalist crimes” in 2020. According to IDF data, the overwhelming majority of “nationalist crimes” last year occurred in the wake of serious attacks in which Jews were killed by Palestinian terrorists. The main points of friction for these troubling incidents were in the regions of the Yitzhar settlement, Palestinian Huwara village, the Valley of Shilo, Kochav HaShachar and Oz Tziyon settlements, and the Southern Mount Hebron area.

What surprised security forces over the past few months was not just the scope of these retaliatory incidents, but also the fact that these were not just so-called “Price Tag” attacks in which Jews vandalize and burn Arab property. More recently, the people reacting to these attacks, whether within the Green Line or in the West Bank, are settlers who are considered “normative” — in other words, settlers who are not identified by the authorities with the extreme right. Nevertheless, after an attack against Jews, they gather at major intersections to throw rocks at Palestinians.