Latest violence in Israel and Palestine marked by ‘lone wolf’ attacks

JERUSALEM — In an occupation that has gone on for nearly 50 years, periodic outbreaks of violence have become an expected, if dreaded, part of the cycle.

Seven Israelis and 40 Palestinians, among them 10 alleged attackers and eight children, have been killed so far in a wave of violence that has swept across Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

In the last two weeks there has been a rash of attacks, many of them stabbings, carried out by young Palestinians, as well as a few by Jewish Israelis and widespread use of excessive force on the part of the Israeli Defense Forces against Palestinians. On Saturday alone, at least three Palestinians were shot dead.

Some in the Holy Land are bracing for a Third Intifada. But though Israel has seen waves of violence before, this new outbreak exhibits marked differences to the previous uprisings that bear that name.  

The latest round of attacks is being perpetrated by young people, mainly men but some women, too young to have clear recollections of the Second Intifada or the crackdown that followed.

Unlike in earlier uprisings the attackers on the whole have no criminal record and few are affiliated with any political faction. The absence of a leader is particularly daunting as authorities struggle to contain the violence and there is nowhere to direct pressure or clear parties with whom to have a dialogue.

“I think essentially what you have is the main Palestinian factions have been neutralized. When you have organized political groups you have someone to threaten, punish or negotiate with. Th[e situation now is] problematic for everybody,” said Khaled Elgindy, fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Elgindy said the current situation undermines Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' control. “All he can do is issue statements, condemn this and condemn that but he cannot protect his people,” he said.

The lack of central organization may be one of the reasons so many of the attacks have been with knives, as opposed to weapons or suicide bombs — which require money, planning and expertise.

“It may simply be a matter of access, everybody has a knife in their home, not everybody has a firearm or some sort of other serious type of weapon,” said Elgindy, “If you’re talking about arms… then you’re getting into the realm of organizations. A lot of Palestinians have weapons but they’re usually in the hands of young people affiliated with armed groups, not ordinary citizens, and those are activated under orders.”

The emerging generation of Palestinian young people has few opportunities and sees little in the way of a future.

“You have a generation that has lost hope,” said Elgindy. “There is no horizon for them, nothing that could give them any hope. There’s no Palestinian state coming. The settlements keep swallowing up more of their land. The future is evaporating before their eyes.”

Less freedom of movement between Israeli and the Occupied Territories has meant less mixing between Palestinians and Israelis in day-to-day life, which many say makes it easier for one side to dehumanize the other.

“They have far less contact with Israelis than the older generation,” said Nathan Thrall, senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. “You used to have much more intermingling. It’s a generation that knows Israelis much less than older ones. They know them primarily through their interactions with an occupying army.”

Much has been made of the role of social media, and videos of brutal killings amplifying tensions on both sides.

“Everybody is watching these videos and they’re gruesome and they are very upsetting. You see people watch these videos and break into tears. A number of attacks were directly inspired by a perceived injustice of a previous incident,” said Thrall.

The videos “may encourage more of this lone actor thing," said Daniel Levy, head of the Middle East North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. 

“It gives people access to a kind of copycat-ism but maybe they would have had access to that anyway,” he added.

People's individual experiences of violence during the occupation — such as forced evictions of Palestinians to make room for Jewish Israeli settlers, and hostility from settlers and security forces that goes unpunished — also fuels the attacks.

Thus far the Israeli government has reacted to the violence by cracking down harder on Palestinians: setting up checkpoints, closing off parts of East Jerusalem, using excessive force against Palestinian demonstrators, increasing penalties for stone throwing and encouraging Israeli civilians to arm themselves.

Elgindy predicted that such measures will escalate the conflict, rather than deter future acts of violence.

In the absence of strong leadership, however, whether from an existing faction or a new body, some expect the current wave of attacks to peter out.

Still, the biggest danger is the deepening rift between people, who must somehow live side by side. 

“It’s getting horrible because it’s getting so inter-communal. It's getting down to that level,” said Levy from the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The more Palestinians perceive Israeli society en masse to be oppressive and hostile and the more Israeli society perceives Palestinians en masse to be dangerous and also to be somehow lesser people, the worse this is going to get.”