The Reasons Behind The Spike In Palestinian Terrorism

There have been constants as well as changes in the century-long assaults by Palestinian Arabs against Jews in the holy land, yet the number of terrorist attacks goes up and down. It begs the question as to the reasons.

Latest Wave 2021 To Present

After years of relative calm between 2016 and 2020, Arab terrorism slaughtering Jews began to rise in 2021 and has not slowed down. The number of murdered Jews is on pace to surpass the number of murdered in the Gaza War of 2014.

There are a few reasons for the higher total: more multi-person deaths and a greater number of deaths by guns.

The years 2016 and 2017 saw two and four multi-person fatality incidents from terrorism, respectively. The totals then dropped for several years, with a single multiple person killing in 2018, when a Palestinian terrorist ran over two soldiers with a car. In 2019 and 2020 there weren’t any multi-person deaths. In 2021 there were two, each from rocket attacks from Gaza. That changed dramatically in 2022 when there seven, with five in the first half of 2023.

As the chart above shows, Palestinians have used guns, knives and cars for many years, while rockets and bombs have been used more recently in multi-victim attacks. Many more Arabs own guns than historically, both in Israel and in the West Bank. It has led to a huge spike in Arab-Arab violence in Israel, as well as capabilities for Palestinian Arabs to kill many people. Hundreds of guns were smuggled into the region by a Jordanian diplomat.

While guns contributed to the higher death toll, it doesn’t address the motivation behind Palestinians committing more attacks.

Palestinian Sentiments

Palestinians have polled themselves every quarter since 2000. Many sentiments have remained constant about Jews and Palestinian leadership, especially for Gazans. However, the attitudes of West Bank Palestinians have changed since 2020.

Poll findings saw two significant shifts of West Bank Palestinian Arabs’ attitudes in the June 2021 poll and the polls of December 2022 and March 2023; break-out changes which did not appear during the relatively quiet prior years.

While the majority of Palestinian have consistently wanted PA President Mahmoud Abbas to resign, the June 2021 poll showed a 10% jump of those in favor. It coincided with a ten percentage jump in West Bank Arabs who believe that the Palestinian Authority has become a burden on Palestinians.

In December 2022 the number of West Bank Arabs who said they feel safe dropped below 50% for the first time. In the March 2023 poll, the West Bankers who felt that the PA was a burden jumped another 10%, as did the number of people saying they wanted to dissolve the PA, reaching 49% for the first time.

These inflection points are also seen regarding West Bank Arabs’ attitudes about Israel.

From the March 2021 poll to the June 2021 poll, West Bank Palestinians desire to murder Israeli civilians inside of Israel jumped from 18% to 33%, while those favoring another multi-year pogrom called an “intifada” jumped from 29% to 51%. Those attitudes held constant or slightly declined until jumping again in December 2022 and March 2023. In March 2023, 57% of West Bank Arabs said they were in favor of terrorism inside of Israel and 51% support a new intifada.

A similar shift in attitude happened regarding West Bank Arabs support of a two-state solution, with those opposed jumping to 61% in June 2021 from 51% three months earlier. In March 2023, those opposed to two-states crossed 70% for the first time.

Palestinians in the West Bank have moved away from supporting the Palestinian Authority and a peaceful resolution to the conflict to seeking a war with Israel, with inflection points happening in May 2021 and the fall of 2022.

The Rapture of Violent Jihad, May 2021

The various charts show how Palestinians used few rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza during the “lull” between 2016 and 2020. It is not as though they didn’t have much to complain about under the pro-Israel policies of U.S. President Donald Trump. Those initiatives included:

First sitting US president to visit Jerusalem’s Western Wall (5/17)
Recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital (12/17)
Signed Taylor Force Law banning funds to Palestinians if paid for terror (3/18)
Moved US embassy to Jerusalem (5/18)
Pulled US out of United Nations’ Human Rights Council due to obsession with Israel (6/18)
Pushed for major reforms at UNRWA (8/18)
Recognized Israeli sovereignty on Golan Heights (3/19)
Launched Israel-Palestinian Peace Initiatives (6/19 and 1/20)
Rejected notion that Israelis living in “West Bank” did so illegally (11/19)
Backed Israel in face of International Criminal Court allegations (6/20)
Brokered Israel-UAE normalization agreement (8/20)
Announced Kosovo and Bahrain normalization agreements (9/20)
Encouraged Guatemala, Serbia and Kosovo to move embassies to Jerusalem (9/20)
Announced Sudan normalization agreement (10/20)
Allowed US citizens born in Jerusalem to list “Israel” on passports (10/20)
Brokered Israel-Morocco normalization agreement (12/20)

Despite all of the pro-Israel efforts, terrorist attacks against Israel were at all-time lows.

The world changed in several ways in early 2021. Joe Biden became president of the United States in January and in early May, after another round of elections in Israel, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid announced that they would form a coalition government to oust the long-time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While the news that Netanyahu was on his way out was breaking on May 9th, Arabs were rioting between May 6 and 10 about the pending eviction of long-term Arab squatters living in apartments in the Sheikh Jarrah section of Jerusalem who had refused to pay rent to the Jewish owners. Between May 10 and 25, riots spread into mixed communities in Israel and in the West Bank. Over that same time, Hamas rained rockets upon Israel.

The June 2021 PCPSR poll captured the change in mood on the Arab street well: “a semi-consensus that Hamas has won the May 2021 confrontation with Israel triggers a paradigm shift in public attitudes against the PA and its leadership and in favor of Hamas and armed struggle;… and the majority says Hamas, not Fatah under Abbas, deserve to represent and lead the Palestinian people.”

But Hamas did not follow-through to the liking of West Bank Arabs. While the political-terrorist group used language of incitement daily, it refrained from continuing to attack Israel. Even in May 2023, while Israel took out leaders and militants of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas remained on the sidelines.

New popular terrorist groups emerged to fill the thirst for violent jihad.

In September 2021, the Jenin Brigades was formed, the Nablus Brigades in May 2022, and then the Lions’ Den in August 2022. These West Bank terrorist groups led the spike in attacks against Jews in 2022 and 2023.

The December 2022 PCPSR poll captured the tide of events in the fall of 2022 which further increased West Bank Arabs’ quest to murder Israeli Jews: “The World Cup in Qatar helps to restore Palestinian public trust in the Arab World after years of disappointment; and in light of the escalating armed clashes in the West Bank and the near formation of a right wing and extreme government in Israel, the Palestinian public becomes more hardline while indicating a greater confidence in the efficacy of armed struggle.” The same poll showed almost every Palestinian thought that the PA had no right to interfere or arrest any member of the new terrorist groups.

Even as Hamas, Fatah and twelve other parties met in Algeria in October 2022 to reconcile and hold elections within the year, the Palestinian street chose to shun politics in favor of war. As one Palestinian said “This dialogue [Algerian Accords] will be recorded in the files within the long list of dialogues that the Palestinians have engaged in to achieve reconciliation, and it will not have any impact on the ground, whether in Gaza or the West Bank.”

Palestinians witnessed how violence stopped the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah and believe that terrorism will yield greater rewards than negotiations. The right-wing Israeli government that formed in the wake of those attitudes is intent on proving them wrong.

Yet, despite readily available information, the press publishes its typical inanity about the conflict.

After two Palestinian terrorist slaughtered Jews at a restaurant and gas station in June 2023, The New York Times offered that “The vanishing likelihood of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the entrenchment of Israel’s control and a weakening of the mainstream Palestinian leadership have all contributed to a rise in Palestinian militancy.” That NYT opinion-stated-as-fact is complete stupidity. If those things were true, there would have been more acts of terrorism during the Trump years, not the fewest on record.

Palestinians do not want two states. They do not want a Jewish State. They do not want the presence of Jews anywhere in the land.

Palestinians know that they will not be able to achieve their goal of a Jew-free region without a global jihad, as the Jewish state will not negotiate away its existence. Palestinian terrorism spikes when local Arabs believe that the world supports its “armed struggle” and Israel backs down to its demands.

That’s the plain truth as shown by statistics and the sentiments aired in Palestinian polls. And Palestinians are backing these new leaders, nascent terrorist groups armed with thousands of guns committed to the violent jihad.