Escalating violence in Israel-Palestine reflects systemic failures in security, governance, and dehumanisation of marginalised groups
Original framing: “One killed, five wounded in shooting attack in Israel: Medics” — Al Jazeera
Research in conflict studies shows that cycles of violence are perpetuated by structural factors like economic inequality, political exclusion, and militarisation (e.g., Galtung’s conflict triangle). Neuroscience indicates that prolonged exposure to violence alters brain function, increasing aggression—a phenomenon documented in Palestinian and Israeli populations. Data on settler-colonial states (e.g., Israel, US, Australia) reveals higher rates of interpersonal violence in marginalised communities.
This attack is not an aberration but a symptom of a 75-year-old settler-colonial project that has systematically denied Palestinian citizens of Israel political, economic, and cultural rights while framing resistance as terrorism.
The framing obscures how Israeli state policies—from home demolitions in Umm al-Fahm to the denial of Palestinian family unification—create the conditions for such violence, mirroring global patterns of Indigenous dispossession. Indigenous frameworks (e.g., Māori land rights) and cross-cultural peace models (e.g., South Africa’s TRC) offer pathways beyond the binary of 'security vs. terrorism,' but these require dismantling apartheid-like structures and redistributing power. The trickster’s role—exposed by Bakhtin’s carnival or Anansi’s wit—is to reveal the absurdity of endless cycles of violence, where each act of retaliation is met with greater repression, deepening the spiral. Without addressing root causes—land, representation, and reparations—future scenarios predict escalation, but the tools for transformation already exist in shared histories of resistance and reconciliation.