Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have a plethora of magic solutions for the serious crisis they’ve brought Israel to – all of them as good as a Band-Aid for a critically ill patient. The list is long: surrounding or imposing closures on Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem; calling up 1,400 Border Police reservists by emergency order; building a double fence around the Gaza Strip “like on the Egyptian border”; sending six cadet companies from the military’s officer training school to the capital’s streets.

The list goes on: sending 300 soldiers in order to secure buses; making it easier for civilians to carry guns, including letting local councils with “deserving communities” hand out gun permits; quickly demolishing terrorists’ houses and expropriating the land; revoking terrorists’ residency status; and installing another 150 concrete barriers at the exits of Palestinian neighborhoods.

It’s doubtful these measures will stop lone terrorists willing to die or go to prison for decades to give murderous expression to their despair or faith. Clearly certain security measures are important for self-defense and to bolster people’s sense of security, but it hasn’t been proved that more severe penalties, not to mention collective punishment, reduces the number of terror acts.

In the long term, concrete barriers won’t stop terror, nor will neighborhood closures. House demolitions and citizenship revocations will only produce more terrorists. If this government doesn’t aim at the heart of the fire, its sources and motives, if the government doesn’t open a dialogue with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, it will never resolve anything.

But Israel’s 34th government prefers the occupation to a diplomatic agreement that would require us to make concessions. The head of this government has no intention to achieve a solution and promote peace. He seriously believes that Israel can live forever by the sword, only by the sword — that’s the spirit he’s using for the current crisis.

Even if “the situation” calms down for a stretch, the long years of Netanyahu’s rule make it clear: This man and his government won’t be able to extricate Israel from the dangerous slope it’s on.