The Missing Intifada Mostly Quiet in the West Bank
On July 31, arsonists firebombed a small home in the West Bank
village of Duma. The attack, suspected to be the work of Jewish
terrorists, claimed the lives of an 18-month-old Palestinian child and
his father, and another sibling and the child’s mother remain in
intensive care. Several Jewish extremists have since been arrested, but
the perpetrators remain at large. The horrifying tragedy was an urgent
wake-up call, many Israeli politicians argued, for some serious
soul-searching in Israeli society. It could also have been something
more: a spark that lit a wider conflagration in the West Bank. Yet the
often predicted “third intifada” has once again failed to materialize.
For several years now, Israeli security professionals have been
concerned that a deadly settler attack on Palestinian civilians would
lead to mass unrest in the West Bank. Causing such unrest has, in fact,
been a stated goal of settler extremists for some time. As one handbook
circulating in 2012 put it, targeting the Palestinian population was a
strategy to “unbalance the system,” by tying up Israeli military and
police resources and “sending a message” of deterrence to the
authorities. If the settlers were not allowed to keep their homes, then
the Israeli government would not be allowed to keep the West Bank quiet.
A
Palestinian woman reacts next to Israeli soldiers during confrontations
between Palestinians and Israeli troops in Qafr Malik village near the
West Bank city of Ramallah, June, 2015.
In the wake of the Duma attack, the Israeli military moved four
additional battalions into the West Bank, anticipating the worst.
Small-scale protests did take place in a handful of cities, but they
petered out quickly. Similarly, there has
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