The teenagers' revolt: Young Israelis and Palestinians are steering events in the West Bank

In a sense, the security situation may now be in the hands of the youth on both extremes: the No’ar HaGva’ot (Hilltop Youth) of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, on the one hand, and the shabaab of Arab-Israeli and Palestinian towns now throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers who have been deployed to contain this crisis. The rise of these angry Palestinian youths was almost inevitable. They were young children when the Second Intifada erupted, and now having come of age, they are ready to fulfill what is perceived as their “duty to resist,” as one protest onlooker told me in Shuafat.

It also doesn’t help that this unrest comes in the wake of another failed, if not misguided, American attempt to broker peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. The failure to achieve a final status agreement in 2000, during another bout of U.S.-brokered negotiations, was one of the contributing factors to the eruption of the Second Intifada. It’s quite possible that the recent heightened expectations followed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s failed attempt at peacemaking have once again opened old wounds.

What’s particularly striking about this most recent round of clashes, however, is that the epicenter has been in East Jerusalem. The Israelis have made significant efforts in recent years to ensure further coexistence with this disenfranchised segment of Israeli society.