A Palestinian terrorist rammed a tractor into an Israel Defense Forces base near Ramallah. He was shot and killed. This could have been the act of a lone wolf, planned and executed by a single, perhaps deranged, individual. But this attack was preceded by others. The most recent occurred last week, when an Israeli was bludgeoned to death at his home in an outlying community in the Jordan Valley. The Shin Bet identified potential suspects and is now engaged in a manhunt to find their controllers. Many law-enforcement officers are preoccupied with what is not really important: whether that attack was terrorism or just another homicide. Perhaps there were two motives at play. Several weeks ago, a soldier was killed by a sniper in Hebron. On Oct. 5, a girl was shot or stabbed while sitting on the porch at her home in Judea and Samaria. Was the latter crime carried out by a would-be burglar or a potential terrorist? In late September, a Palestinian who had no proper permits to stay in Israel managed to convince his Israeli co-worker at a shawarma joint to come with him back to his village, possibly trying to lure him by concocting a story of a large treasure that lay hidden there. This ended with another killing. Officially, Israel claims these attack were not orchestrated by terrorist organizations. There are no signs to suggest Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders in Ramallah have chosen the path of terrorism. Abbas' accomplishments on the world stage have been made possible because he stayed away from terrorism. Despite all this, you cannot ignore the resurgence in violence. While there is still no clear picture, the dots are there and they have come from violent acts. What's going on here? Abbas has managed to maintain a stable reputation among world leaders and under his watch and that of his former prime minister, Salam Fayyad, Palestinians' standard of living has improved. Under their watch terrorism was all but eradicated. For some time now, the Israeli and Palestinian security forces have been combining forces in an intense effort to target terrorist cells in their infancy. Israel has not said whether the Palestinian agencies have changed their behavior, but there are signs that they are less determined to join hands when it comes to countering terrorism. Perhaps they have received an order: Cooperate, but do so without excelling at your job. Such clandestine behavior on the part of Palestinian leaders could be their way of telling Israel: another intifada is on the table, if you want to keep things the way they are you would be well-served by moving ahead on the peace process, even though both sides have shown no signs of compromise. A similar conclusion can be deduced if you look at the nature of the terrorist acts from the past several months. While it is true that the attacks were not perpetrated by terrorist cells, such acts could reflect a growing sense of frustration on the Palestinian street that may be close to its boiling point. The first and second intifadas broke out not because of some directive issued by then-PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat but because of the masses in the city squares who dragged their leaders down the path of violence.
Abbas won't let the situation creep into an intifada until the U.S.-sponsored negotiations run their course in nine months' time. But such sporadic acts could lay the groundwork for a wholesale return to hostilities. On the Israeli side, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot afford to renege on his pledge to release more Palestinian terrorists as the talks progress. The only thing we can say so far about the impact of that move is that it may have brought an end to the terrorists' hibernation, but only on a small, molecular scale.
