Despair and discord after days of terror
THE BLOODY CHAOS that hit Israel’s streets this week should ram home one fact more than any other — and it is a truism that has remained quietly constant since the current intifada began in October:
Nobody — not the Israeli government, the opposition, the head of the IDF or the intelligence chiefs — can agree on a solution, or even on what general direction policy should take to calm the situation.
Over 16 hours between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, the terrorism that had in recent weeks been confined to areas beyond the Green Line, spilled into Jaffa, Petach Tikah and West Jerusalem. It left one American student dead and 14 Israelis wounded.
Seven Palestinian assailants were killed.
So far, the government’s response has been to order a crackdown on illegal Palestinian residents and speed up the construction of sections of the separation fence near Jerusalem and to the west of Hebron.
These actions, however, could prove counter-productive. Security chiefs argue that the income earned by the 50,000 illegal Palestinian workers from the West Bank is an incentive for them not to get involved in terrorism. In fact, the security establishment has recommended the government authorise a further 30,000 work permits.
“We need to fight the terror attacks but at the same time create as many opportunities for Palestinians to make a decent living so they know there’s a price to pay for chaos,” said one senior officer serving in the West Bank.
While the attacks near Tel Aviv have received most of the attention, the majority still occur in places where the assailants can move relatively
AMID THE stories about rampaging gunmen and knife attackers, news emerged this week of two Israelis who hit back at their assailants in the most extreme circumstances.
Yonatan Azrihav, a 40-year-old Breslav Chasid who was stabbed in the neck by an attacker in a shop in Petach Tikva on Tuesday, managed to remove the knife himself. Together with the shop owner, he then used the weapon to stab the Palestinian attacker to death.
An hour later, on the Jaffa promenade just south of Tel Aviv, musician Yishai Montgomery used his guitar to hit and block a 22-year-old Palestinian who had stabbed passers-by. By that time, the terrorist had murdered American student Taylor Force and wounded 11 others, including a pregnant woman. Police shot the attacker dead.
In a third attack on Tuesday, two policemen were shot by a gunman outside the Justice Ministry on Saladin Street in East Jerusalem. One was critically injured and is fighting for his life; the other was moderately wounded.
On Wednesday morning, two men from Akeb, a village within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, opened fire on a bus on the Golda Meir Boulevard in northern Jerusalem. They fled towards the Old City, running over a 50-year-old man and seriously injuring him. The men were shot by police. Two other Palestinians were shot and killed in separate incidents in the West Bank when they tried to stab soldiers.