THE Max Brenner restaurant in Tel Aviv’s Sarona neighbourhood was packed with diners on June 8th when two cousins from Yatta in the West Bank ordered drinks, drew makeshift submachineguns and opened fire. Four Israeli civilians were killed and six injured by the time the two shooters, one of whom was affiliated with Hamas, were overpowered.

Despite an initial assessment that the attackers had few accomplices and were most likely acting without the involvement of any organisation, the Israeli government’s initial response was to suspend 83,000 exit permits from the West Bank, originally issued for the month of Ramadan which began on June 6th. A ban on residents leaving town was imposed on Yatta, home to more than 60,000 Palestinians. Crossings between Israel and the West Bank were shut for three days. The Israeli army is planning to demolish the homes of the families of the two shooters.

The attacks were the first in exactly three months to have killed any Israelis. A wave of violence by Palestinians aimed at Israeli civilians began in late September before petering out after six months. At its height, there were on average two attacks every day. Last month saw only a handful. Senior Israeli military and intelligence officers attribute the decline in violence to a tiredness within Palestinian society, improved intelligence work on the Israeli side and better co-ordination with the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) security forces. Before the killings in Tel Aviv on Wednesday night, Israeli intelligence officials were undecided whether this Ramadan would be relatively peaceful or if the religious fervour inspired by 30 days of consecutive fasts could spur renewed violence. They still have no clear idea whether it was an isolated incident or the start of a new wave.

Israeli generals have counselled politicians not to respond harshly against the Palestinian population. The work permits of some 53,000 West Bank Palestinians allowed into Israel have not been revoked, partly as an incentive against wider violence. But Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and his new defence minister, the hardliner Avigdor Lieberman, who had been in office for only nine days when the attack took place, are under pressure from their right-wing base to respond forcefully. The Palestinian leadership has not been helping either. As Palestinians celebrated the murder of Israelis on the streets, Mahmoud Abbas, the PA’s president, belatedly rejected the targeting of civilians but would not specifically condemn the Tel Aviv murders. Hamas leaders in Gaza congratulated the attackers.

The current atmosphere is reminiscent of that two years ago. The kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas-affiliated Palestinians in 2014 was followed by a heavy-handed Israeli response in the West Bank, leading to Hamas launching rockets on Israeli towns. Within weeks it had exploded into a full-blown conflict in Gaza resulting in more than 2,000 deaths, the great majority of them Palestinian.

Many similar factors are now in place. A sudden terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, a tense Ramadan in the West Bank, a moribund peace process, widespread disenchantment among Palestinians with the leadership of Mr Abbas and desperation in the beleaguered Gaza Strip. Israel’s policy in the West Bank, along with its intransigence, together with Egypt, over any significant concessions to the people of Gaza could well lead to another bloody escalation. So far, the ceasefire around Gaza has mostly held and it is mainly down to Hamas to decide whether it can afford another round of bloodshed. Its political leadership is signalling that it wants to maintain the peace, but its military chiefs, who have been busy preparing more tunnels for cross-border attacks, could decide this Ramadan is the time to use them.