Outside the East Jerusalem synagogue where a Palestinian gunman killed seven people on Friday evening, the trauma of the attack was still being felt days later.
On the street corner, a guard leaned on a motorbike with a gun protruding from his belt. Nearby, three small girls studied the death notice of one of the victims that had been plastered to a lamppost. On the fence outside the synagogue hung a banner that read “Jewish blood cannot be wasted”.
“We’re in shock,” said Avram, 35, who lives opposite the synagogue and whose downstairs neighbour was among those killed. “Our kids are afraid to sleep. Every noise gives them the feeling that there might be a terrorist attack.”
Friday’s shooting was the worst in Jerusalem since 2008, and came amid a surge in violence that has exacerbated fears that the long-simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be on the verge of a broader escalation.
The day before, Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp in the deadliest raid in the occupied West Bank for two decades. In response, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired rockets at Israel, which in turn bombed targets in the coastal enclave. The following day, a 13-year-old Palestinian injured two more Israelis in another shooting in Jerusalem.
Even before the recent bloodshed, Israeli-Palestinian tensions were high. Last year was the deadliest for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, with Israeli forces killing 154 during near-nightly raids in the territory in response to a spate of Palestinian attacks that began last spring and killed 31 Israelis in 2022.
But many observers fear the latest bloodshed could set off another cycle of violence and reprisals that neither Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline new government — which has empowered ultranationalists such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich who came to power pledging to take a tough stance against the Palestinians — nor the crumbling Palestinian administration in the West Bank will be able to stop.
With the international community’s influence on the conflict also on the wane, some even fear that another intifada, akin to the Palestinian uprisings of the 1980s and 2000s, could be in the offing.
“I suspect it will only escalate from here,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian analyst and former negotiator. “In the past there has always been some effort to de-escalate. And in this case there is nothing.”
At Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda market on Sunday, merchants and visitors also expressed unease. “You can feel that people are scared, that they don’t want to leave their homes,” said stall owner Idan Ben David, showing off a handgun that he kept stashed in his storeroom in case of need. “You can feel in the atmosphere that it’s not a normal day.”
Michael Milstein, a former adviser to the Israeli agency that oversees Palestinian affairs in the West Bank, said that for now, he did not think that another intifada was brewing
But he warned that if the Israeli government — in which settlers and ultranationalists hold security positions that give them far-reaching powers over the West Bank — took steps that weakened the Palestinian Authority or led the territory’s economy to deteriorate, such a scenario could become “more likely”.
The latest round of violence also underscored the potential for a flare-up in the West Bank to spread to Gaza, as Islamic Jihad militants in the enclave responded with rocket fire to the killing of their fighters in Jenin.
Hamas, the group that controls Gaza and which has greater military capabilities, stayed out of the fighting, as it did during a previous increase in hostilities in August. But analysts said a deeper intertwining of tensions in the West Bank and Gaza could give an extra layer of volatility to the security situation in the future.
“You just don’t know how [such escalations] are going to evolve,” said Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence officer. “It could end up like Friday with a short round [of fighting]. Or it could end totally differently, and snowball into in a massive collision. Nobody knows.”
During previous rounds of conflict, Netanyahu gained a reputation for being a cautious operator. But in his new coalition, he is dependent on Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, both settlers with a history of anti-Arab positions, who are demanding a far more radical response.
Over the weekend, the government announced a range of security measures, including increasing the armed presence in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and an easing of gun licensing rules for civilians. But it also proposed a series of punitive steps, such as revoking the benefits of terrorists’ families and “strengthening” settlement in the West Bank, which most of the international community deems illegal.
As he announced the moves, Netanyahu said his government was not seeking escalation, and urged Israelis against vigilantism. But the Palestinian Authority dismissed the moves as “racist collective punishments” and Israeli critics warned that the steps could inflame tensions further.
“All Netanyahu has to confront a new Palestinian uprising and civil unrest at home is a team whose only strategy is to pour more gasoline on the fires,” columnist Anshel Pfeffer wrote in the liberal newspaper Haaretz.
Melamed, the ex-Israeli intelligence officer, also expressed doubts about the proposals’ effectiveness. “It’s very unfortunate that many still think that you can solve this complex reality with a magic wand of rhetoric and empty slogans,” he said. “And time and again, both the Israelis and Palestinians have to pay the price.”