An Israeli emergency services worker cleans the sidewalk at the scene of Tuesday’s attack.JACK GUEZ/AFP / Getty Images
When Palestinian cousins Ghasson and Udai Abu Jamal went on a killing rampage in an Orthodox Jerusalem synagogue Tuesday morning, they crossed a line that may well envelop the city and region in another deadly intifada.
Wielding a Kalashnikov and a meat cleaver, the pair carved out a trail of blood that left five dead (four rabbis and a policeman) and half a dozen wounded (including a Canadian) and a Jewish nation enraged.
"We are in a battle for Jerusalem," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed in a televised address Tuesday night. Appearing red-eyed and determined, Mr. Netanyahu recalled the recent series of deadly terror assaults that preceded Tuesday's events – two drive-over attacks at train stops, two stabbing incidents – that left six people dead.
As bad as these assaults were, it is the attack on people at prayer that resonates most powerfully.
One worshipper in the Kehillat Bnei Torah shul described Tuesday's carnage: "I looked up and saw someone shooting people at point-blank range. Then someone came in with what looked like a butcher's knife and he went wild," Yosef Posternak told Israel Radio.
Just as the 1994 attack on Muslims at prayer in Hebron launched a wave of suicide bombings and brought the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to a standstill, Tuesday's synagogue killings risk unbridled attacks of revenge.
Sensing the national mood, Mr. Netanyahu appealed to Israelis to avoid such reaction.
"Citizens of Israel, I call on you to show maximum alert and to respect the law," he said. "As a state, we will settle accounts with all of the terrorists and those who dispatched them. We have already proven that we do this, but let nobody take the law into his hands, even if tempers flare and blood boils."
Assuredly, if they do, the response from Palestinians will be greater still.
"There is a mood of radicalized violence all over the region," said Mark Heller, a senior analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Events outside Israel, such as the bloody campaign of the Islamic State movement in Iraq and Syria, are encouraging greater violence in Israel and Palestine, he said, while events in Jerusalem are inflaming the international mood as well.
"Anyone can get agitated and go on a spree," Mr. Heller said. "There's no need for an organization or hierarchy."
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas quickly condemned Tuesday's synagogue murders, but not in unqualified terms. "The presidency condemns the attack on Jewish worshippers in one of their places of prayer in West Jerusalem," he said, "and condemns the killing of civilians no matter who is doing it," he added, bringing to mind Israeli attacks that have killed Palestinian civilians.
More to the point, Mr. Abbas has called on Palestinians to resist the Israeli takeover of Arab Jerusalem, and links people's violent actions to the growing concern over the status of the city that they, like the Jews, view as their historic and religious capital.
For years, Palestinians in Arab Jerusalem have been frustrated over the lack of housing. Permits to build even on vacant land are often denied and penalties for illegal construction are serious. Most recently, however, the greatest concern has been the Muslim community's worry over the religious enclave inside the Old City. It is known as the Noble Sanctuary by Muslims, the place from which Mohammed is believed to have ascended one night to heaven, and as the Temple Mount by Jews, the site of Judaism's first temples.
Palestinians say they fear that right-wing Israeli political leaders will succeed in their demand that Jews be granted unlimited access to the enclave. When Israel captured the site in the 1967 war, Israeli authorities immediately returned control of the place to the Muslim wakf, which grants access to non-Muslims during certain times and in limited numbers.
Mr. Netanyahu denies that Israeli authorities are planning to reverse this arrangement. "This is all lies," he said Tuesday night. Palestinians don't believe him.
The only thing preventing recent events from blossoming into a full-blown intifada is that the violence has mostly been carried out by Jerusalemites, while the West Bank has been relatively quiet. In the violent 2000-04 intifada, which also began with concern over the Al-Aqsa Mosque that sits in the Noble Sanctuary, most terror attacks were perpetrated by Palestinians from the West Bank who ventured into Jerusalem and other Israeli cities.
"This time it's Jerusalem's turn," said a Palestinian analyst who hails from Jerusalem but works in Ramallah and requested anonymity for professional reasons.
West Bank Palestinians, however, won't stay silent forever. "Jerusalem is an extremely potent political symbol," said Mr. Heller. "I don't see an end to this cycle of violence."
"The people are in no mood for reconciliation," he explained. "The only answer," he said, "is separation, even within Jerusalem."
As much as Israel would like to see a united city of Jerusalem, the reality, Mr. Heller has concluded, is that two communities cannot at this time live together in peace.
"Whether with more walls, police lines or checkpoints," they need to be separated, he said, adding that permits should be required for Palestinian labourers wanting to work even on the other side of the city, in Jewish Jerusalem.