From Out Of Nowhere ... Inciting to Terror

"I was supposed to pick him up tomorrow at the same checkpoint."
"I knew he had personal problems at home after his wife ran away ... We spoke to him about his issues but nothing we saw would indicate anything would happen like what happened today." 
"It is frightening and shocking to know that this person was the one who worked at our house. This is our reality — on one hand coexistence and on the other understanding that these things can happen."
Moishe Berdichev, a resident of Har Adar

Emergency services respond to a terror attack outside the Har Adar settlement near Jerusalem, in which three were killed and one wounded, on September 26, 2017. (Menahem Kahana/AFP PHOTO)

"[The incident represents a] welcome message that the Palestinians prepared for American emissary Jason Greenblatt."
"American efforts must focus first on stopping the murderous Palestinian terror, before anything else."
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely

"[The terrorist] was known to those who greet the workers in the morning.” 
"[A border policeman and policewoman opened fire on the attacker] otherwise he could have entered the town and carried on with his murderous errand.”
"To my regret there is no profile for a terrorist [even one with an Israeli work permit].”
“It could just be someone who is fed up with everything and decides to take out his rage in an attack. The incitement [against Israel] is constant."
Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich

Israeli border police stand at the site of an attack at the entrance to the West Bank settlement of Har Adar on Tuesday. MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP - Getty Images

And there you have it. A man unknown to the Shin Bet, with no history of being involved in terrorism, 37-year-old Nimer Mahmoud Ahmad Jamal, depressed and looking for some way to vent his anger and frustration over his wife having left him to raise their children himself, left a note declaring himself "a terrible husband", exonerating his wife as having "nothing to do with what will happen". What happened was that the man who worked within a West Bank settlement as a cleaner, with the required permit and who appeared to have a stable relationship with his Israeli employers, planned to shoot and kill Israelis.

In a manner of speaking, he would also have been planning his death by suicide, since the chances of achieving that state by attacking armed Israeli military and police personnel is almost guaranteed to result in his firing on them inspiring return fire. Numerous Palestinians living in the West Bank are unable to find employment. The opportunity to work for Israelis, within settlements or within Israel's borders result in employment and permits are much sought-after. This man was one of those securing employment working for Jews.

In his choice to attack Jews, seeking to victimize them as he felt fate had victimized  him, he had essentially also decided to make life extremely difficult for his own close relatives, similarly given work permits enabling them to work for Israeli employers. Because Mr. Jamal had presented as a stable, reliable worker with no visible ax to grind, all other such workers will now come under intensified scrutiny and few will be trusted as they had been, to respect the right of other human beings to live without fear of violent attacks, attacks which are all too common.

Attacks in actual fact that the Palestinian culture as exemplified by Fatah and Hamas, emphasize are required to ensure that 'normalization' in accepting the presence of the Jewish state must be avoided at all costs. And the cost is martyrdom, selected suicide-by-killing. It is an option that many Palestinians view as their obligation to the Palestinian 'cause' a cause that calls for the elimination of the State of Israel and the geography upon which it sits being bequeathed through the conquest of jihad to the Palestinians.

What has been normalized by the Palestinian Authority is the challenge to Palestinians to 'resist' the 'occupation', an occupation that occurred resulting from the all-too-often violent attacks carried out by Palestinians against Israelis; a vicious cycle if there ever was one, and one that appears unsolvable by appealing to reason over the passion of hatred, resentment and victimization."Israel holds the responsibility for any Palestinian attack because these attacks come as reactions to the Israeli crimes against our people", offered Munir al-Jaghoub, a midlevel official in Fatah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded in the only way that Israel is capable of doing. Bearing in mind that it is not Israelis that are continually on the offensive; their action is reaction; defensive in nature. The attacker's home is now scheduled for demolition, permits giving members of his extended family the opportunity to enter Israel for work are to be revoked. The villagers of Beit Surik where the attacker lived, will also bear the brunt of Israel's response to the murder of the three Israelis outside the Har Adar settlement. His brothers have been arrested.

And, in the manner in which the Palestinian Authority reacts to all such atrocities, the attacker will now be recognized as a 'martyr' to the Palestinian cause. His family will be receiving a hero's pension hereafter, its size reflecting his success in killing three Israelis, and seriously wounding yet another. His death will be recognized as yet another 'sacrifice' to be honoured by Palestinians. As though such deaths by 'martyrs' do anything at all to advance the Palestinian cause...

"Before talking about any kind of [peace] negotiations, the world must demand of the Palestinian Authority to stop its incitement and encouragement of terror", remarked Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman. As though 'the world' is prepared to do that, as though the Palestinian Authority would see the justice in its responsibility to influence Palestinians to accept the presence of the Jewish State if they truly aspire to achieving one of their own.