If I forget thee East Jerusalem, let my writing hand wither

Sometime on the morning of October 13, as an ancient sun clambered up the Judean hills to perch above the holy city, five men left their East Jerusalem neighborhoods, armed with knives, hatchets, a pistol, a steering wheel and the will to kill or maim as many Jewish Israelis as possible, wreaking mayhem, chaos and terror. By the time their murder spree was complete, three Israeli men were dead, the cities of Jerusalem and Ra’anana were shaken to their cores, and a fight that until now had mostly been relegated to knives, with their mercifully low casualty rate, had escalated to a whole new kind of battle.

Judging from the front pages of Israeli papers Wednesday morning, which are reminiscent of the bad old days of the summer of 2014, or the Second Intifada, that battle is on the way to becoming a full-on war, though the way in which that war will be fought garners a heap of second-guessing.

Much of the coverage in the print editions focuses less on the four attacks in Jerusalem and Ra’anana and more on the government’s response, which includes an army deployment to Jerusalem – nearly unheard of in the annals of the state — and a similarly drastic move of setting up checkpoints in East Jerusalem neighborhoods and possibly closing them off altogether.

“Jerusalem: Soldiers to guard buses,” reads the main headline in Yedioth Ahronoth in bright red letters, above a large picture of ZAKA volunteers in white plastic suits cleaning up the mess from a gun and knife attack aboard a bus, one of four assaults Tuesday in the seemingly never-ending wave of terror that has gripped the country. Israel Hayom’s main headline “Army to enter cities” sends the same message, while Haaretz takes a more critical tack, reporting in its main headline that “the cabinet is considering cutting off East Jerusalem.”

Yedioth dubs Jerusalem “the terror capital” (and with 12+ attacks over just a few days, who can blame it) and lays out the cabinet’s “answer to terror,” namely putting soldiers in Jerusalem, putting armed people on buses, cutting off East Jerusalem, revoking citizenship for families of terrorists and razing their homes within three days of an attack.

Among the many commentators across all three major dailies there isn’t much in the way of praise for the plan as just what the doctor ordered, though Israel Hayom’s Boaz Bismuth comes closest as believing it will in fact return security to the streets of Jerusalem, Ra’anana and elsewhere.

“These are important steps. Israeli citizens deserve massive protection. It’s their right as citizens. It’s also the army’s job,” he writes. “The Israeli public is going through a hard time. All of us. But we’ve been through hard times. We’ll make it through this as well. Together.”

Not everybody else is so sanguine about sending troops into the center of Jerusalem and effectively cutting off the eastern part of the city.

It’s the second part that seems to have most people’s goats, as it will mean the effective division of the so-called undivided capital of Israel.

“The emergency atmosphere and anger in the air obligated the mayor and ministers to answer. The answer they came up with at first yesterday, putting a closure on East Jerusalem neighborhoods, is perhaps the worst one they could have come up with,” writes Haaretz’s Nir Hasson, not mincing words. “Not only because you can’t simply separate the two halves of the city in one fell swoop, certainly not in a way that will keep Palestinians with intent to harm from crossing from one side to the other; not only because this is admitting that a united Jerusalem is an illusion; but because the consequences will be destructive for both sides of the city.”

If this is the government’s way of de facto dividing Jerusalem, Yedioth’s Shimon Shiffer, for one, won’t be shedding any tears, writing that the solution that’s needed is a diplomatic one, and that the division of Jerusalem happened long ago.

“The prime minister needs to establish a professional team to manage the political, military and diplomatic fight in the storm growing around us,” he writes. “And another thing, [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has already divided Jerusalem in practice, and any dream of uniting the capital has been taken off the agenda as a result of the recent popular uprising.”

Beyond hashing over what needs to be done, analysts also apparently decide they’re bored with the current conflict and try their hand at handicapping what the next one – and of course there will be a next one – might look like.

In Yedioth, Ben-Dror Yemini dubs the spate of unrest the “incitement intifada,” surmising that Arab political and religious leaders, as well as media and social media, are driving teenagers to grab knives and attack Jews, and they need to be taken care of before the next time the night soil hits the fan.

“This is incitement, spewing forth from preachers like the mufti of Jerusalem, who calls to kill Jews because they are Jews, through to [Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement head] Raed Salah, who spreads the ‘desecration of al-Aqsa,’ and the broadcasts of the Palestinian Authority, which give a seal of approval to the hateful words of the preachers,” he writes. “We need to change the rules of the game, we need to stop the collective blindness. This won’t stop the current wave. But it’s worthwhile to advance a cure for the problem, before the next wave comes.”

In Haaretz, though, Barak Ravid opines that it’s Netanyahu and his peace-killing ways, and not Facebook posts glorifying the stabbing of Israelis, that needs to change ahead of the next wave of violence.

“Even more disconcerting is the tendency by Netanyahu and his ministers to disassociate the current crisis from its context. As if this is a natural disaster that has emerged and is out of our control, and not a man-made development for which Israel might be at least partially responsible. Netanyahu has been talking in recent days about a century of terrorism against Jews between Jordan and the sea. He is right, but he is also ignoring 48 years of occupation, and is refusing to admit that, maybe – only maybe – they have something to do with the current wave of violence,” he writes.

“The explosion that we are experiencing is part of an ‘atomization’ of the conflict; the fight isn’t against the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, but against an entire generation of young Palestinians, some of them kids, who don’t see a future for themselves. They are frustrated, desperate and incensed. They hate Israel as much as they hate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. In the current situation, the capability of dealing with the situation is limited. There are many means of defense – deploying troops to Jerusalem, severe punishment, closures, arrests and house demolitions. But even if this quells the current wave of unrest, the calm would be only temporary – until the next one, which will be even more difficult.”