In the past week there has been an onslaught of Palestinian stabbing attacks across Israel and the West Bank, several each day – so many it is hard to keep track. In the span of just a few days, at least 20 Israelis have been wounded in over a dozen incidents, in addition to four Israelis killed at the start of the month. The violence is targeting both civilians and soldiers on both sides of the "green line", the old pre-1967 boundary, with no distinction between far-off settlements or cities in the heart of Israel. There have also been increasing incidents of Israeli Jews attacking Palestinian citizens of Israel. The geography of the violence is beginning to take on the character of a civil war between Israelis and Palestinians.

This current round of violence may seem shocking but it is no anomaly: it is a direct result of government policy determined to normalise Israel's occupation, now nearly 50 years old. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest serving prime minister since David Ben-Gurion, was re-elected last March on a ticket that promised to preserve the status quo: tightening Israel's hold on the West Bank while dismissing any possibility of a Palestinian state.