Taking Stock in Israel after a Year of Terror https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/israel-zionism/2016/10/taking-stock-after-a-year-of-terror/

October 21, 2016 | Kobi Michael
About the author:

Over the past twelve months, Israel has seen a steady stream of low-grade terror attacks—stabbings, car-rammings, and occasional shootings. Besides those successful enough to grab headlines, hundreds of others, including the recent planned attack on a wedding hall, were thwarted by Israeli security forces. Analyzing the causes of the attacks, Kobi Michael notes that they constitute more a series of small waves of terror than a single large one and suggests some ways forward:

The act of stabbing has turned into a kind of “social-cleansing” mechanism. . . . Traditional values or customs, such as family honor and blood feuds, remain effective and influential, and thus in many cases of “lone-wolf” attacks the perpetrators are family members who are avenging the death of relatives who sought to carry out an attack and were killed by the Israeli security forces or to defend the honor of their family. . . . Added to these internal factors are [external] incitement (though institutional incitement has declined in the past two months) and the copycat effect. . . .

Israel cannot address all of the fundamental causes motivating “lone-wolf” terrorism, but it can moderate some of these factors. . . . There is great importance in maintaining a low level of friction with the civilian population and continuing to refrain from collective punishment. In addition, Israel can make a very significant contribution toward improvement of the economic reality in the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority’s strengthened ability to govern, which in turn can improve the restraint of violence.

Regarding the long term, . . . Israel can redefine Area C, [which, pursuant to the Oslo Accords, remains under its direct control]. . . . Instead of seeing all of it as a single bloc, it can be categorized into a number of areas possessing different statuses for different purposes. [This] would enable Israel to maintain control over the most essential areas for security and settlement needs, while allowing it to allocate land to the economic infrastructure required for developing the Palestinian economy in a way that expands the territory under full Palestinian control.

Read more on Institute for National Security Studies: http://www.inss.org.il/index.aspx?id=4538&articleid=12439