On Thursday it was two 13-year-old girls, Israeli Arabs, who stabbed a security guard at the entrance to the central bus station in Ramle. The day before, it was three young men from Qabatiyah in northern Samaria, who murdered a border policewoman at Damascus Gate while planning a major terror attack. They were another link in the intifada of lone assailants that has now been going on for four months. The right-wing government seems at a loss, and except for empty talk of a painful response and a heavy hand, we are not hearing a real solution.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the situation is simple. On Wednesday he said that Islamic terror is flooding the whole world and that here, too, the wave of terror is the result of incitement. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said this week that the solution is to invest more in stopping incitement. Both of them think that the Palestinians’ situation is good and only unnecessary incitement is driving them out of their mind.

Really, what’s so bad about the Palestinian situation? They’ve only be living under occupation for 48 years, with no hope in sight. Their land is being stolen. More and more settlements are being built on it. They are deprived of freedom of movement. They are attacked in their own homes. They are humiliated. They are being prevented from developing economically, which leads to widespread unemployment – and they are in the depression of a people who see no chance of establishing a state of their own, with dignity and control of their own fate instead of occupation.

Open gallery view Israeli border police body-search Palestinian men following an attack by three Palestinian assailants at Damascus Gate, a main entrance to Jerusalem's Old City on February 3, 2016. Credit: AFP

Nothing justifies terror and murder of innocent people and the terror attacks must be condemned. But from the dawn of history, every people under occupation has fought to be free of it, including the Jewish community before the establishment of the state.

Netanyahu was the one who trampled the buds of negotiation because he did not want a two-state solution. Instead, he instituted a policy of conflict management, based on continued oppression. Now that this policy has failed, he is trying to use even more force. But steps like collective punishment and house demolitions only deepen the despair, which leads to more outbreaks of violence. The whole world is demanding that Israel come back to the negotiating table to reach a two-state solution. After four bloody months, the time has come to do so.