Palestinians Have “Snapped” from the Pressure of Living Stunted Lives Under Occupation and Israeli Military Rule

Martyrs? Desperate? Crazy? Palestinians struggle to define Palestinians who attack Israelis

February 21, 2016

The Washington Post - Since the beginning of October, Palestinians have killed 28 Israelis and four others, including an American. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed — 111 during attacks and 50 in clashes with Israeli forces.

The Israelis are clear. They call it “terrorism.” Yet after five months of near-daily violence against Israelis, Palestinian society struggles with how to describe the wave of knife, gun and vehicular attacks targeting Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Is it an “uprising” or “upheaval” or “awakening” — or personal “despair”? Are the assailants “martyrs” or “victims” or both? Are the teens wielding kitchen knives “heroes” or “children” — and after they are shot and killed by Israeli soldiers during the attacks, should they be celebrated as “warriors” for the Palestinian cause or pitied as unstable individuals who “snapped”?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently offered his own explanation: The Palestinians are stabbing Israelis because they celebrate a “culture of death.” The Palestinians blame the almost 50-year military occupation of their home, which they condemn as 21st-century apartheid.

Some Palestinian officials have told Western diplomats and journalists that they believe at least some of the attackers have “snapped” from the pressure of living stunted lives under occupation. There was some psychological trauma that induced them to rush toward Israeli soldiers with a knife in their hands to commit a Palestinian version of “suicide by cop,” they say.

Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative, said: “The stabbings are unorganized. They come from frustration.”

Some Palestinian activists have labeled the violence the beginning of a third “intifada,” a mass uprising. The first intifada, in the 1980s, was characterized by youths throwing stones; the second by suicide bombers in the 2000s. Eventually both were directed by militant factions and adopted by the leadership.

Many dismiss the word “intifada” to describe the current violence, calling it overblown and saying there is little evidence of mass rebellion. They point to the relatively low numbers of demonstrators on the streets.


At al-Quds University, Abdullah Khatib, 20, a law student, said: “Before, our rebellions were led by famous men. Now it’s individuals from nowhere, ordinary people who become icons.”

“We can’t call this an intifada,” said Abdel Khader, 19, who studies material engineering.

“The cause is this tremendous pressure on young people, and the pressure will result in explosions,” Khader said. “It starts with the person who wants to do an operation. He wants to empty his rage. He wants to get even.”

But what is the point? “The point is, we are showing the Israelis, ‘You’re hurting us, so we can hurt you, too,’ ” he said.

He denied that the young assailants are targeting Israeli women and children.

But they attack them, too?

“They don’t start with that idea,” he said. “But that is who is killed. Because that is who they found.”

Searching for a word to label the wave of stabbings, he chose “upheaval.”

In a January speech in Ramallah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called the violence “a popular awakening.”

He said the attacks were carried out “in response to the continued occupation, the settlements, the affront to the honor of the holy places, and the lack of a just solution to the Palestinian problem, a diplomatic horizon, and hope for the future.”

Speaking to Israeli journalists this month, Abbas said the Israeli government must ask itself, “Why would a 13-year-old child throw rocks or try to attack others?” It’s because, he said, “they can’t take it anymore.”
Where this is going, nobody knows. But the signs are troubling. The most recent public opinion poll by the respected Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, conducted in December, found that two-thirds of the public are demanding that Abbas resign, two-thirds support the current wave of stabbings, and half believe the current confrontations will escalate into an armed intifada.

The survey found that members of the “Oslo generation,” people between the ages of 18 and 22 who were born at the dawn of the now-failed “peace process” and who do not recall the past intifadas, are the most supportive of the ongoing violence — and are no longer believers in a two-state solution.