Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now urging Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to hold talks to calm the recent surge of violence in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the occupied territories. In fact, the Israeli leader says he is also willing to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry and Jordan's King Abdullah for talks to defuse the tension. It seems that Netanyahu is willing to talk about stopping the violence but has not been willing to talk about what started it. Israel has been the cause of the latest month-long violence which has claimed the lives of at least 30 Palestinians and eight Israelis. The rising violence is being fueled by the concerns of Palestinians that Israel will change the status quo governing access to Jerusalem's holy sites by allow Jews more access to Al-Aqsa Mosque. In the bigger picture, the violence is the result of years of Israeli occupation, failed peace efforts and lack of hope among Palestinian youth. The reason for the attacks is that another generation is seeing that its future prospects will be crippled by the occupation of the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. Israel has determined that the best way to stop the violence would be to deploy army soldiers to bolster thousands of border police guards in Jerusalem, seal off and impose a curfew on parts of the city, set up checkpoints and concrete barriers in Arab-majority parts of East Jerusalem, demolish homes of Palestinian attackers, take away the right of Palestinian families to live in Jerusalem and create more cyber-crime units to monitor Palestinian social media. Israelis are now being called upon by their leaders to carry guns and indeed they have obliged, stocking up on guns in a dramatic spike in sales that has emptied shelves. Many people have been asking whether this latest round of violence means the start of the third Intifada. It's possible but not probable. There was a similar outburst of deadly violence a year ago attributed to similar concerns over Jerusalem and to lingering tensions from the summer war in the Gaza Strip. But the violence soon stopped, perhaps because Palestinians could see new openings for peace through non-violent means, including joining the International Criminal Court and the successes of the boycotts, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel until it complies with international law. The Palestinian attacks of today are being carried out seemingly spontaneously by young Palestinians without any affiliation or support from other groups, and without any clear leader. It is nothing like the years of near daily shooting and bombing attacks in the early 2000s that killed thousands of Palestinians and more than 1,000 Israelis. Concerning Netanyahu's request, Palestinians cannot return to talks unless Israel halts settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, illegal by the standards of most of the rest of the world but considered by the Israeli government to be its national right. The more than 100 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem erected since it occupied the territories in the 1967 Middle East war have transformed some Palestinian districts beyond recognition and made peace talks unsustainable. Violence does not come out of the blue; it comes from somewhere. The problem is the unresolved conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, the heart of all the violence. The biggest part of the conflict is the occupation of the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem that has lasted for nearly 50 years. It is an occupation that is brutal and which in successive Palestinian generations, has created hopelessness and hatred, and in some cases, has burst out into anger and rage. Recurring rounds of violence are an inevitable consequence of a conflict that is not being solved through negotiations but through occupation.
