It is Hamas and its sympathetic cousin, Islamic Jihad that are firing these first shots of the vehicular intifada. It doesn’t matter that the overwhelming majority of Israeli Arabs and West Bank Palestinians are indifferent to the ‘resistance’ (as armed terror is euphemistically called).
Actually it does matter. The entire point of this new terror endeavor is to force a new wedge between the complacent, silent Arab population and the Israeli Jewish population and create an atmosphere of distrust and hate which will almost certainly result from the inevitable security crack-down, roadblocks, raids, revenge attacks and general distrust caused by these escalating vehicular attacks.
I wish I had a solution to offer. But sadly, the only thing that can throw a wrench in this current uprising is a vocal outcry from the silent, complacent Arabs themselves; some sort of grass roots ‘not in our name’ up-swell of outrage at these vicious attacks.
But unfortunately it is unlikely to happen. Because even though this is designed as a way to punish the silent, compacent Arabs of Israel and the West Bank (by turning them into objects of suspician and hate), as Bibi previously observed, ideals are expensive… and they have too much to lose.