Jerusalem Up Against the Wall

Israel's separation barrier has blocked West Bank bombers, but may be creating a new threat within.

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"Ghassan Abu Tir's favorite television series was a Turkish soap opera called "Noor." The 22-year-old East Jerusalem hard hat rarely missed an episode. The show's setting—a luxurious villa along the Bosporus—is about as far from cramped and conservative Jerusalem as one can get. Some evenings, the Palestinian backhoe driver would sit with his brother on the balcony of their grandparents' stone house, smoking L&Ms and trying to figure out how he could afford his own villa. The numbers never added up. Building a house and buying his own backhoe would cost more than $100,000; on Abu Tir's salary of barely $1,000 per month, it would take forever to save that much.

He met a girl he wanted to marry, but his parents said no. "If you want her," his father said, "you'll have to build your life first."

Despair at that prospect is no excuse for what happened later, but it may be the beginning of an explanation. Around 2 p.m. on July 22, Abu Tir guided his earthmover toward a busy intersection in the heart of Jewish West Jerusalem. Then he plunged the tractor into a line of traffic stopped at the light, crushing and overturning cars, and injuring more than a dozen drivers. The attack ended in minutes when Israeli passersby rushed up to the cabin and shot Abu Tir dead. Such rampages have become something of a regular occurrence this year. Three weeks before Abu Tir snapped, another East Jerusalem construction worker plowed his tractor into a crowd of commuters on busy Jaffa Road, killing three people and injuring 45. Back in March a third East Jerusalemite slipped into the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in West Jerusalem and opened fire in the school library, killing eight students.

Attacks in central Jerusalem were frequent at the height of the second intifada, but in recent years they have been relatively rare. Israeli conventional wisdom has long held that the living standards of East Jerusalemites, which are significantly higher than those of Palestinians in the West Bank, keep residents comparatively docile. But something seems to have changed. According to statistics compiled by Israeli security sources, 13 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians this year in Jerusalem—as many as were killed in all of last year by Palestinians from any region. Already this year, 71 East Jerusalemites have been arrested by Israeli security forces—far more than in any of the previous seven years. The Shin Bet, the internal Israeli security service, has warned that Jerusalem's Palestinian population is quietly becoming radicalized."

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You've put the url for the article, but when I click on it it redirects me to the Newsweek homepage where I can't spot the article....

If having a good standard of living and a good life doesn't keep them from wanting to kill Israelis, what does?