Israeli officials are blaming Palestinian incitement for contributing to a string of attempted terrorist attacks.
Just this week, a Palestinian sniper shot and killed an Israeli who was working on a fence at the border with Gaza; a police officer was stabbed in the back near a West Bank settlement; and casualties were narrowly averted when a passenger noticed a suspicious bag on a public bus, allowing it to be evacuated moments before it blew up.
Palestinian violence has increased since the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks started last summer. Israeli economic minister Naftali Bennett, a critic of the talks, blamed the Palestinian Authority for not stopping the violence and said Israeli concessions don't lead to peace.
"When we concede, when we hand over territory, they murder us," he said. "We have to get this rule into our heads. When we stand strong, even if there are no negotiations, there is quiet."
Others say the attacks may not be the product of organized terrorist groups, but "atmosphere attacks." That atmosphere is "a direct result of the incitement and hatred propagated in Palestinian schools and media," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev said in a statement on Wednesday. "We are disappointed that so far President Abbas has not condemned these acts of terrorism as one would expect from a partner in peace talks."
Bennett went deeper: "When you educate children in terror from the age of kindergarten, when your television broadcasts depict Jews as monsters, when even Tel Aviv is not on your maps — then you are a terrorist."
The Palestinian Authority has named public places, sports teams and even streets after terrorists. Palestinian Authority television features programs which deny Israel's existence and some children's programming can be rabidly anti-Semitic.
Some of that indoctrination also may be fueling a rise in terrorist groups even more radical than Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Security officials intercepted a West Bank Salafi-jihad cell that was en route to launching a series of terrorist attacks in November.
Netanyahu raised concern over the incitement in an August letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
"Incitement and peace cannot coexist," Netanyahu wrote. "Rather than educate the next generation of Palestinians to live in peace with Israel, this hate education poisons them against Israel and lays the ground for continued violence, terror and conflict."