Over the last few months, Israel's security services have noted a change in the kind of Palestinian carrying out terror attacks. He is no longer a member of Fatah or Hamas or any of the other terror groups. Mostly, he's a young person with no prospects, someone who hates the Palestinian leadership, and wants to be free of Israeli control.
In this way, writes Alon Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post, he is totally unlike killers of the past.
From Israeli interrogations of 90 terrorists in past months, an impression emerges of a generation that did not experience, or that does not remember the traumas of the past uprisings. A generation that has never even visited Israel, has never seen the sea or gone abroad, but that rather lives on the Internet, and via the web has gained its understanding of the world. Its reference point for information is Israel and what happens in the rest of the Arab world is of less significance.
This generation of Palestinians is not interested in a framework for a diplomatic solution with Israel and it does not care if Israel negotiates or does not negotiate with the Palestinian Authority. It cares about one thing only: human rights for the Palestinians. It believes that Israel negates its basic rights and it is demanding those rights and the creation of a Palestinian state is a secondary concern for it.
Lack of economic opportunity, Ben-David writes, is key to understanding the mindset of this new terrorist.
They study, earn degrees and then don't find work. There were 370 applicants recently in response to an ad placed for a water meter reader in the village of Tubas. Half of the applicants had post secondary education. Hundreds apply when a police officer position opens in the Palestinian Authority, a job that pays 1200 shekels per month. In the West Bank, one can find chemists that work as bakers and mathematicians that work as construction laborers.
In other words, if the Palestinians would accept a Jewish state and agree to lay down their arms and live in peace, everything would come to them, including economic prospects. Will this new generation see the light?
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