Intifadas

How nice were our dreams when we were entering the "information age." All totalitarian regimes, left and right, had fallen. The correctness of democracy and the market economy were certainly proven. 

The "Arab Spring" had elevated this optimism all together; "Muslim democracy" concepts started being debated. 

Clashes between secular and Islamist political forces came out into the open in many places after the Arab uprisings of 2011. The revolts lifted the lid on tensions that had long bubbled under the surface, though in places like Turkey the divide had defined politics for many years. 

'Islamism: What it Means for the Middle East and the World' by Tarek Osman (Yale University Press, $35, 328 pages)

An Israeli soldier was stabbed and lightly wounded in the southern city of Ashkelon on Feb. 7 and the assailant was shot, Israeli police said, the latest in a four-month wave of such attacks.

Three Palestinian assailants were shot dead on Feb. 3 while carrying out a shooting and stabbing attack that wounded two Israeli paramilitary policewomen at an entrance to Jerusalem's walled Old City, Israeli police said.

A 13-year-old Palestinian girl was shot dead on Jan. 23 by an Israeli security guard she tried to stab at a settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Israeli police said. 

Israeli soldiers shot dead a 19-year-old Palestinian as clashes broke out during a raid at a refugee camp in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Dec. 8, Palestinian medics and the Israeli army said.

After the incident at the Dheisheh refugee camp, clashes also broke out at Aida, another camp in Bethlehem, official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.    

A Palestinian stabbed and killed an Israeli at a petrol station in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Nov. 23 and in Jerusalem two Palestinian girls attacked and slightly wounded an elderly man with scissors before a policeman shot them both, killing one.

Israeli forces shot dead at least two Palestinians when clashes erupted during an operation Nov. 16 to destroy the West Bank home of a Palestinian accused of killing an Israeli hiker, the army said.

Palestinian hospital sources reported the death of two Palestinians, while the Israeli military said three were shot in an exchange of fire at Qalandiya.    

A Palestinian rammed a group of Israelis with a car at a junction in the West Bank on Nov. 8, wounding three of them, and was then killed by security forces, police said.