Originally published at Western Journalism
Just over a week after the White House declared Jerusalem was not a part of Israel, and a couple of days after the Obama Administration launched its most vicious attack on Israel to date, a Palestinian gunman took the streets of Jerusalem to murder Israeli Jews.
If you think making the link between these events is far-fetched, you are mistaken.
Musbah Abu Shbeih, a Palestinian Arab from East Jerusalem, went on a shooting spree in Jerusalem Sunday morning. The terrorist shot dead two Israelis and wounded five others while driving his car from French Hill to the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood near the Old City.
He was acting upon increasing anti-Israeli incitement, internal security minister Gilad Erdan said after the bloody attack.
Erdan blamed Facebook, in particular, for the terrorist attack.
“We have said all along that due to the rise in incitement, individuals would perpetrate attacks. Facebook has just reopened pages of Palestinian terrorism because of external pressure and that is scandalous,” Erdan said while stopping short of addressing the unprecedented anti-Israel rhetoric coming out of the White House last week.
The Palestinian terrorist was expected to begin a four-month prison sentence on Sunday for 15 acts of incitement to violence and seven acts of supporting terrorist organizations.
Israel National News published an example of the inciting message he posted on Facebook in the past.
“Your festival is the force of victory and an opportunity to us. 19 of your soldiers were killed. Oh child murderer, cowardly despicable soldiers the heroes of Alkassam (Izz-a-Din Al Qassam Hamas’ military wing have dragged your heads in the mud. Alkassam and soldiers of the resistance, Allah Aqbar and praises to god,” he wrote after the summer war in Gaza and just before Jewish New Year in 2014.
The terrorist most likely reacted to a call of Hamas to renew the so-called Al-Aqsa Intifada, the knife Jihad of lone-wolf terrorists that started last year just before the High Holidays in Israel, Israeli TV Channel 10 reported on Sunday evening.
The fact the call was issued at this very moment has to do with the latest crisis between the Obama Administration and the Israeli Government.
That crisis started last week after the White House and the State Department issued a sharply worded statement about an Israel plan to build 96 housing units for Jewish families that will be displaced as a result of the scheduled destruction of their unauthorized outpost Amona near Shilo in Samaria.
The administration went as far as to use terminology that usually is reserved for the crimes of rogue regimes, such as the Syrian government, and for terrorist attacks.
The White House “strongly condemned” the Israeli plan (instead of expressing “concern”) and falsely claimed the plan would make it much harder to implement the so-called Two State Solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
In reality, the building will take place within the existing municipal borders of Shilo, and no new settlement will be built as the administration falsely claimed.
The Palestinians, however, saw what happened and apparently decided to do what they always do whenever there is political pressure upon Israel from Western countries, especially the United States.
They reverted to terror.
The same happened in March 2010, after the visit of Vice President Joe Biden to Israel.
A public spat between Israel and the Obama Administration about the announcement of a new building project in the Jerusalem neighborhood Ramat Shlomo during the visit of Biden almost led to the Third Intifada.
At the time, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded more than an apology from Israel and said Israel should take “concrete steps” towards peace.
Clinton later admitted the administration’s hard line toward Israel over the “settlements” had been a failure.
The administration’s harsh response to the plan led to more Palestinian intransigence and sparked massive riots in Jerusalem and the so-called West Bank.
Israeli pundits now say the same can happen in Jerusalem after Sunday’s shooting attack.
In a move rarely seen since the last decade Fatah, the ruling political movement in the so-called West Bank (Judea and Samaria) immediately announced a day of national mourning and called for a general strike after the Israeli police killed the terrorist in a shootout, Channel 10 reported.
The party of President Mahmoud Abbas also published a couple of inciting messages on its Facebook page, hailing the slain terrorist as a “martyr” and calling upon the Arabs to continue the fight against Israel until “Allah” will give them “victory.”
As a result, Arabs in East and North Jerusalem launched a strike and attacked Israeli police patrols in the Arab neighborhoods of Israel’s capital.
Israeli Arabs also clashed with Jews in the offices of the National Insurance Institute Bituach Leumi in Jerusalem while their Palestinian brethren stepped up their violent attacks on Jews in Judea and Samaria.
The increase of violence continued Monday when Arabs stoned an IDF patrol near A-Ram in Jerusalem and attacked buses and cars travelling from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria.
The Israeli authorities are bracing for more Arab violence in the coming days while former Obama official Martin Indyk warned the president could punish Israel for its alleged obstruction of the Two-State solution.
“At a certain point, the administration may well decide that there needs to be consequences for what it now sees as an effort to close off the two-state solution,” Indyk said.
He was referring to Israeli fears that Obama will refuse to veto a UN solution that will set a time line for the Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria.
Those fears have become more realistic over the weekend after Saudi Arabia called upon the UN to introduce a new resolution that will end Israel’s “occupation from occupied Arab lands” and after The New York Timespublished an editorial suggesting Obama support such a resolution.