Will Jewish, Palestinian deaths in Sinjil spur gov't to combat extremism in W. Bank?

Although they were both killed at the scene of the attack by Israeli security forces, that killing set in motion, or increased the already spreading trend, of Israeli Jewish extremist revenge attacks.

The Palestinian Authority health ministry on Saturday said a second Palestinian man, Mohammed Rizq Hussein al-Shalabi, 23, died after being shot by a Jewish extremist and “left to bleed for hours."

This whirlwind of death is another low point for West Bank violence between Palestinians and Jews, but it’s a low point in an atmosphere that has been utterly out of control for an extended period.

Sure, there have been time periods since West Bank terrorism first spiked in early 2022, when Palestinian terror was down. And in relative terms, the IDF's aggressive operations in Jenin, Tulkarm, and elsewhere lately have put a cap on some of that terror.

But Thursday showed once again that all it takes is one or two violent Palestinians who slip through the vast security apparatus to lead to lethal results. Periods of time when Palestinian terrorism was truly down included a mix of carrot and stick approaches.

As to reducing violence against Palestinians by extremist Jews, the situation is as bad as ever, with no sign that anyone in the government is ready to rethink the basic strategy, either to reduce that violence or to try to bring the overall level of violence down on both sides.

From time to time, some statistics show improvements in certain kinds of anti-Palestinian incidents, but the number of mass attacks by Jewish extremists against Palestinians and the IDF betrays a deeper failure to confront the root causes of the spike in violence.

Israel is currently holding around 10,762 Palestinian security prisoners, including 3,629 in administrative detention, and has held even more than that over the course of the war.

Around 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed, mostly terrorists who were killed by the IDF, but also the number of Palestinians killed by extremist Jews is not tiny.

Already at the end of 2024, the number of IDF air strikes against Palestinians during the war had jumped past 100, while there had been a stretch of around 17 years since the mid-2000s during which there had been no air strikes in the West Bank.

So by pretty much any measure, the IDF has taken off the gloves, but not succeeded at blotting out Palestinian West Bank terror.

In contrast, Israeli security forces are doing less than ever to crack down on Jewish extremist violence.

Defense Minister Israel Katz ended all administrative detention against Jews, and recent mass arson attacks against Palestinians have left him unmoved.

The police under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir are barely arresting extremist Jews, and when they do, are virtually never providing evidence sufficient to file indictments.

Given that Palestinians were actually killed this past weekend, a few Jewish suspects, including an IDF reservist, were arrested, and possibly there will be some legal consequences.

But there is nearly zero preventative planning to stop mass clashes between Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank from happening.

IDF sources said regarding the incidents of Palestinians killed this past weekend, including at Sinjil, that their response time to breaking up clashes is now much faster than in the past.

And yet, IDF sources said they still do not have sufficient soldiers to maintain a constant presence at the various worst friction points in the West Bank, such that they might prevent clashes from happening.

Cracking down harder on Palestinian terror was necessary, but insufficient, and cracking down less on Jewish extremists is destabilizing for all sides.

There are big-picture ways Israel could reduce West Bank Palestinian terror.

The defense establishment has been pushing for 18 months to restore over 200,000 Palestinian workers in Israel once it became clear that Gazan-Palestinian workers had not worked as spies in any significant way against Israel on October 7 (Hamas was able to make detailed invasion plans based on foolish young Israeli soldier social media posts.)

The government has ignored this.

There have been initiatives in the past relating to letting both Israel and the PA build new cities in Area C using a "everybody builds" approach versus a "nobody builds" approach.

The government has tried to weaken the PA, against defense establishment recommendations, instead of trying to empower it to reform itself.

No one really thinks the PA would ever fully reform itself, but in times when Israeli-PA relations were better, there were some times when the PA did better at cracking down on its own terrorists.

There are also other out-of-the-box ideas, like the new Palestinian emirates, led by Jewish right-wing groups and some top sheikhs in Hebron, to quiet the storm.

But the government has taken no position on this either.

Maybe if Palestinian terror was reduced by some of these other ideas, Jewish revenge attacks would also disappear.

If they did not disappear, then it would get harder for the government not to place some extremists in administrative detention or to provide more soldiers or assign more surveillance drones to proactively protect Palestinian areas, which have been repeatedly attacked.

Until a bigger picture approach is taken to the violence in the West Bank, there will likely continue to be victims on both sides.