On Sunday, the Shin Bet reported a decline in attempted and actual terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens; not coincidentally, Mahmoud Abbas has appeared on Israeli television and spoken of his interest in peace and his efforts to curb the violence. Yossi Kuperwasser believes that the PA president is genuinely trying to rein in the wave of terror he himself unleashed, and explains Abbas’s rationale:
At least for the time being, the knife terror has more or less exhausted its capacity to return the spotlight to the Palestinian issue. The terror attack in Brussels has again pushed the Palestinian issue to the margins of the international system, and the association being made between the anti-Western terror and the anti-Jewish terror in Israel is not to the Palestinians’ benefit.
Second, the terror has only reconfirmed the Israeli Jewish public’s sobriety about the chances of real peace in this generation, along with their opposition to a settlement based on the core Palestinian positions—that is, granting the Palestinians a state without having to renounce their committed goal of eventually ruling the rest of historical Palestine and vanquishing Zionism.
Third, the international attitude toward boycotting Israel is beginning to change dramatically. There is now more of an inclination to condemn BDS for its fundamentally anti-Semitic stance which denies the Jewish nation-state’s right to exist than to justify the ongoing demonization of Israel.
Read more on Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: http://jcpa.org/abu-mazens-attempt-to-blunt-the-knife-terror-wave/