The current wave of terror on the roads of Judea and Samaria, on the streets of Jerusalem, and in other parts of Israel is a clear sign that the Palestinian Authority is becoming the latest failed Arab “state” of the Middle East and will soon dissipate into the political oblivion of Arab Islamic political rivalry.
The PA has played a major role in the murderous incitement against Jews and the State of Israel in schools, in children’s programs on TV, in the media, and over the Internet during the current wave of terror. Taking over this insidious role of who will represent the Palestinian Arabs is Hamas and the northern section of the Islamic movement in Israel, both enjoying unprecedented support and legitimacy in the eyes of Palestinian Arabs as well as Israeli Arabs.
Since the heyday of the Oslo agreement, a generation of Arabs have grown up with social networks and have become addicted to Facebook, Twitter, and other Internet venues with Islamic channels that not only incite to murder Jews but provide instruction material and training videos on how to go about it. The current terror wave is a direct result of this Internet-generated campaign, creating a new challenge to Israel’s security and police agencies, which have yet to provide an effective tactical or strategic response.
These new neighborhood bullies, Hamas and the Islamic movement, have no need or desire to pay lip service to the now-obsolete mantras of negotiations, peace, and coexistence. They refuse to play along and pretend they are interested in arriving at a peaceful negotiated settlement with the State of Israel. The Palestinian Authority has been outflanked by extreme Islamic organizations with only one goal: They are espousing their hatred of Jews, through the social networks and Internet, and encouraging Arabs to go out and murder Jews.
We should ask ourselves: Does the conduct of Israeli Arabs seem any different from that of other minorities worldwide? Israeli Arabs are a special case. We are not dealing with just a majority and a minority, but rather an Arab minority with the mentality of a majority, vis-à-vis a Jewish majority with the mentality of a minority. Israel affords more freedom to sympathize with the enemy than is granted to any minority in any democratic state in the world.
Israeli Arabs do not hold on to their Israeli citizenship out of a desire to strengthen their Israeli identity. Their objective is to water down the state’s Jewish democratic identity. Yet the determination not to lose their Israeli citizenship stems from the realization that no Arab regime will grant them the high standard of living and free lifestyle that they can maintain in Israel—thanks to the Jewish majority.
The belief is especially prevalent among the younger and more educated Israeli Arabs that their struggle against the Jewish nation-state and Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem is part of their collective Palestinian Arab identity. They see nothing contradictory in benefiting from the Israel-produced fruits of the land of milk and honey, while working towards Israel’s destruction as a Jewish state.
Israeli Arabs are increasingly electing radical representatives, and their elites are committed to the more radical version of the struggle against the Jewish state. In the political arena, the radicals are almost the only ones who are given public expression, held in high esteem as role models. Israeli Arab Knesset members have become the most extreme and vocal supporters of the current wave of terror and have encouraged the Israeli-Arab public to commit violent acts against Jews.
Palestinian Arabs have transformed themselves into “in-house agents” of the Islamic organizations sweeping the Middle East. The Palestinian leadership refuses to acknowledge that the Jews have a history and sovereign legitimacy in Israel that goes back thousands of years; this same Palestinian leadership claims that there was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and, by extension, no Jewish history in the Holy Land. They deny the Jews any religious, historical, or political legitimacy in the land of Israel.
The current terror wave is in fact a result of the failure of the organized Palestinian terror organizations in the past. Israel defeated the suicide terrorists of the second intifada in the early 2000s, decimating the terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria. Rocket attacks emanating from the Gaza Strip have been stopped mid-air by Israeli-produced anti-missile systems, making the rockets more of a nuisance rather than a strategic threat. With little to show for so much terror over the years, the Palestinian Arabs have turned to the Internet to instruct and encourage young Palestinians, men as well as women, to go out and stab a Jew.
By adopting the ideologies of the extreme Islamic forces sweeping the Middle East, the Palestinian Arabs have placed themselves—as always—on the wrong side of history and will pay a dear price for this obsessive need to always deny Israel’s legitimacy in the Middle East. They will soon wake up to a new leadership of Islamic extremists who will attempt to turn Judea and Samaria into the new Gaza. Poverty will become pervasive, extreme Islamic observance will be strictly enforced, all economic activities will be used to finance terror infrastructure and attacks against Israel, and the Palestinian people will respond by emigrating from Judea and Samaria, similar to the demographic trends in the Gaza Strip.
The true test of Palestinian Arab society now is how their mainstream responds and deals with its extreme Islamic terror. Now, amid the current terror wave, it seems as if the Palestinian Arabs have wholeheartedly adopted the murderous frenzy of stabbing Jews to death.
The Palestinian Authority and the Islamic movement that abets it are two sides of the same coin—leading the Arab population in Israel back to the Middle Ages. Israel continues marching into the future stronger than ever, generating unprecedented technological, medical, and agricultural advancements. The people of Israel have exhibited a level of resiliency, enabling Israel’s leaders to make the correct assessments of and responses to the current wave of terror. Eventually, after the current terror wave ends, the Palestinian Authority will be just another former group of corrupt Arab leaders that have been thrown out by their own people.