The Palestinian Arab territories, facing the decline of the Palestinian Authority, the rise of a new Israeli government, and a young generation unfamiliar with the horrors of an all-out war, are a powder keg waiting to explode. 

This week two remote-controlled bombs were detonated almost simultaneously at Jerusalem bus stops, killing one young man and injuring many others. The event marked a new phase in Palestinian violence, viewed in Israel as the start of a well-planned, well-coordinated campaign of terror. 

At a Jenin hospital, a group of armed men kidnapped an Israeli man, a Druze, who had been injured in a car accident. They disconnected the man from resuscitation equipment and snatched his dead body away. Jerusalem negotiated with the kidnappers through intermediaries.

While the Israeli Defense Forces prepared a major operation at a camp on Jenin’s outskirts, the kidnappers relented. The body was returned to Israel. These events, though, are “not one-off occurrences, they signal a possible big eruption in the near future.”

That’s the assessment of a former head of Aman, the IDFs intelligence arm, Tamir Hayman, on the website of Israel’s Channel 12 television. His warning, in a long essay analyzing current conditions in the West Bank, recommends going beyond a tactical response to Palestinian terror, and devising a strategic plan of action. 

Mr. Hayman warns that an all-out IDF operation in West Bank cities could lead only to mutual bloodshed and more terror. His assessment is far from universally accepted among Israeli West Bank watchers. “Sooner or later a major attack will kill an Israeli family in the West Bank, or even Tel-Aviv,” one researcher tells the Sun.

He is Yoni Ben Menachem of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Once such an attack on an Israeli target takes place, he reckons, the next prime minister, looking likely to be Benjamin Netanyahu, will have no choice but to launch a major IDF operation to shut down West Bank terrorism. 

The outgoing Israeli government of Yair Lapid, and of Naftali Bennett before him, has declined to order such an operation, which could entail a temporary takeover of Jenin and Nablus. There, an armed group called the Lion’s Den has ignited the imagination of young people, and is gaining support in other parts of the Palestinian areas. 

Under pressure from the Biden administration, the IDF has declined to make a strategic move in response to a year-long wave of attacks in Israeli cities and settlements. Instead, the army’s “Operation Wave Breaker” entails nightly incursions by small IDF units into Jenin and Nablus, where they arrest, or kill, armed men and leaders of the current terror wave. 

“The IDF should have taken over Nablus and Jenin a long time ago, imposed tight curfews, rid the area of these armed groups, and leave after a couple of weeks to a month,” Mr. Ben Menachem said. “If done later, it’d be a much messier and bloodier operation than now.”

What Mr. Ben Menachem calls “ragtag groups” are beginning to spread beyond the two northern West Bank cities into the rest of the Palestinian territories. The organized terror groups, Hamas and the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, increasingly get involved in financing and overseeing their activities. Either way, he added, a major operation would, in the event of a catastrophic attack, happen — so it would best be launched before these groups become even more entrenched.

In 2002, following a wave of daily terror that killed Israelis, Hamas bombed the Park Hotel at the Israeli coastal city of Netanya, where families were celebrating the Jewish Seder. Thirty were killed and nearly 150 were injured. Prime Minister Sharon left his family’s Seder, flew over to Tel Aviv, and launched Operation Defensive Shield. 

The IDF temporarily occupied all the major Arab cities of the West Bank, where per the Oslo Accords the Palestinians Authority had jurisdiction and its security forces were charged with preventing violence. Deaths related to Defensive Shield mounted on both sides, but following the operation the terror wave died out. 

The rising generation of Palestinians, unemployed and frustrated, is dissatisfied with the ineffective and corrupt Palestinian Authority. Operation Defensive Shield is no more than a faded memory of their parents’ generation. The Palestinian security aparatus has lost control, and is either unable or unwilling to disarm groups like the Lion’s Den. 

West Bankers are also anticipating the end of Mahmoud Abbas’s 17-year hold on power. The 87-year-old president has designated a lieutenant, Hussein al Sheikh, to be his successor as Fatah party chief. Yet, there is no guarantee that Mr. Al Sheikh, or Fatah, can win an election, if one is even held.

The West Bank could descend into chaos once Mr. Abbas is gone. Fears of the incoming right-wing Israeli government — which are intensified by dire predictions around the world — add to Palestinian Arab volatility. A bloody West Bank eruption is highly likely. How all sides would handle it, however, is much less predictable.