ISRAEL HAYOM
by Richard Baehr
November 12, 2014
It is not clear when a widespread and growing terror campaign becomes officially labeled as a new intifada (the “car intifada” terminology is now being thrown around). In any case, as they have done many times before, the Palestinians have shown that one area in which they are willing to innovate is to find new ways of killing Jews in Israel. Suicide bombings, rockets from Gaza, tunnels dug into Israel — when Israel responds with countermeasures to one form of terror, others are introduced. Using automobiles to slam into pedestrians has been tried before, but now seems to have become a more popular tactic. Stabbing Israelis does not kill as many people as quickly as suicide bombings, but draws a weaker response from Israel and a far weaker rebuke from the West.
The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, well into his second unelected four-year term of office beyond the one term to which he was elected, is the Palestinian leader that Israel has been waiting for, according to European and American peacemakers. He is, they argue, a “moderate,” unlike Yassar Arafat, and his tenure in office represents a real (and of course, likely final) opportunity to achieve the two-state solution between Israel and “Palestine.” Final of course does not mean final, since when peace talks break down, if they are ever resumed, the likes of John Kerry and Martin Indyk and EU leaders like Catherine Ashton will claim that now, this time, we have really reached that final opportunity, which will disappear if not seized upon.
Abbas, of course, has done everything in his power to stoke the violence, by glorifying the murderers of Jews as martyrs, and honoring them, and calling for the defense of Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem, presumably under threat because some Jews might mouth silent prayers on the Temple Mount. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has succumbed on this score, reassuring the Jordanians that Israel has not changed its policy on the Temple Mount……
ArchitectGuy on Israel 