Unexpected individual Palestinian operations posed a dilemma for Israel, in terms of the difficulty of predicting their time, place, and people, and being a temporary reaction that a person initiates on his own in response to the crimes and aggression of the occupation, which makes it impossible to stop them.

In recent weeks, these operations have become a security obsession that disturbs the occupation forces and settlers, and raises their state of alert to the highest levels, because the perpetrators are young men from a generation that does not belong to any of the organizations and factions, and they took the conflict to a new level and imposed different challenges on the Israeli occupation.

This comes against the backdrop of the two operations of the Prophet Jacob and Silwan in occupied Jerusalem, which confirmed that a new generation of individual resistance began to impose itself on the scene of the conflict fueled by an extremist Israeli government, and in light of the Palestinian division that has no prospect of ending soon.

"lone wolves"

In the analysts’ interpretation of this phenomenon, the Palestinian writer and researcher Moeen Al-Taher considered - in his interview with the “Scenarios” program (2/2/2023) - that the operations called “individual wolves” are apparently considered individual, but in reality they are an expression of a societal reaction. The Palestinian society realized - after years of attempts at a political settlement - that it should be able to use other tools to change the reality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Al-Taher refuted that individual operations constitute a threat to the path of resistance, as they come in light of the development of political conditions and the development of the general climate prevailing in Palestine, stressing that these new phenomena are natural because Palestinian history cannot tolerate a vacuum space in which the tools of resistance to the occupation in various forms stop.

Regarding the challenges that face it, Badr Al-Araj, a professor of political sociology at Birzeit University, saw that it is very difficult to frame and continuity individual processes, explaining that it cannot constitute a substitute for the role of the Palestinian national parties and forces, but it may be a prelude to a stage, as happened previously in the two uprisings. The first and second.

Political slouch

Al-Araj also stressed that the Palestinian arena suffers from an internal political division that has created a state of flabbiness in the resistance, considering that the motive for these operations is the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation, which makes these young people feel that their lives have become cheap, which makes these operations not represent scattered individual incidents. Rather, it is part of a state of general struggle for the Palestinian people.

In turn, the head of the Supreme Follow-up Committee for the Arab masses inside the Green Line, Muhammad Barak, said that individual operations are not a result of repression and crimes committed by the Israeli occupation, stressing that this phenomenon is a result of the situation in the Palestinian arena, as well as the emergence of a state of political elitism instead of political resistance, as well On issues of normalization in the Arab world that abandoned the Palestinian cause.

quick answer

For its part, some Israeli channels shed light on what they described as an individual tendency free from factional restrictions in carrying out operations against Israeli targets, as some Israelis expressed their desire for change, considering that they do not want to kill all Arabs, but they believe that they have the right to plant a bullet in the head of those It is "destructive," according to their description.

With the escalation of individual resistance operations, the tone of the official Israeli discourse escalated, and the poles of the extremist government competed in threatening and intimidating the Palestinian resistance fighters and their families.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "The response to terrorism in Jerusalem will be strong, swift, and precise, with measures to strengthen settlements, close and demolish the homes of the perpetrators of the attacks, and grant licenses to carry weapons to the Israelis."