On the edge

ON THE morning of October 14th the Israeli border police set up road blocks at three exits from Jebel Mukaber, a Palestinian neighbourhood in south-eastern Jerusalem. At one exit they prevented residents from leaving, at another they merely checked papers, while the third remained wide open. It was a tellingly muddled reaction to a spate of attacks the previous morning, when three men from Jebel Mukaber carried out two simultaneous shooting and stabbing attacks in Jewish areas of the city, killing three Israelis and wounding 12. For Israelis, it was the worst episode in a wave of violence in which 32 Palestinians and seven Israelis have been killed since the beginning of October. The government seems to have little idea how to respond.

The majority of Palestinians attacking Israelis in Jerusalem and other cities within the “green line” (Israel’s pre-1967 borders) have been residents of East Jerusalem, whose Israeli-issued identification papers allow them to travel relatively freely. In the wake of Tuesday morning’s attacks, Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, demanded the closure of the Palestinian neighbourhoods (where nearly 40% of his city’s residents live). Some 35,000 workers cross into western Jerusalem daily to work; without them the city’s economy would grind to a standstill. Nevertheless, the mayor was followed by cabinet ministers demanding drastic measures including widespread closures, preventive arrests, withholding Palestinian funds held by Israel and even starting work on new settlements in the West Bank in retaliation for any further attacks.

Israel’s security cabinet met at night on October 13th, but authorised only a fraction of these demands, deploying hundreds more security personnel in Jerusalem and other cities, and allowing police to impose local closures according to operational needs—a power they had anyway. The cabinet had already decided a week earlier to expedite the demolition of homes of families of Palestinians accused of murdering Israelis, a method originating during the British Mandate in the 1920s that an Israeli military committee found in 2005 was ineffective at curbing terror.

Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, seems increasingly isolated—under relentless criticism from the opposition, from within his own coalition cabinet and from the Likud party he lead—for failing to protect Israeli citizens. But there is little he or Israel’s security forces can do to stem the attacks, which are being carried out mainly by individuals, many of them teenagers, without the operational support of any Palestinian movement.

The attacks seem born of a growing frustration among young Palestinians, disillusioned by the failure of both their own and Israel’s leaders to offer any prospect of ending Israel’s 48-year occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Mr Netanyahu’s security chiefs have been warning him since 2010 that the current status quo is untenable. But, while paying lip-service to a two-state solution and to a currently non-existent diplomatic process, the prime minister has practised an approach that many of his ministers openly describe as “conflict management”.

This policy was plausible as long as the Palestinian Authority, based in Ramallah, whose leaders have their own political and financial interests in keeping the peace, was capable of doing so. In recent days, though, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has become a bystander, neither condemning nor endorsing the attacks. The official Palestinian media, however, have pandered to popular opinion by praising teenagers who stab Israelis as heroes and martyrs. Mr Abbas’s security apparatus has remained largely on the sidelines.

Mr Abbas’s rivals, the leaders of Hamas in Gaza, have declared a “Jerusalem Intifada,” exhorting Palestinians there to continue the attacks while encouraging civilians in Gaza to storm the border fence around their strip. Nine Palestinians have been shot there this month in clashes with Israeli soldiers; scores have been injured.

Mr Netanyahu deserves some credit for facing down his ministers. But six and a half years since he returned to office, he cannot avoid his share of the blame for having taken no serious steps towards a lasting solution. His accusations of Palestinian incitement to violence contain some truth. But it is Israel that holds nearly all of the cards.