An entire country sat in front of the television and watched the attack live. Persecution of terrorists in the streets, pictures of the wounded, waves of rumors, an intensifying sense of anger and worry - and a demand for a solution.
This attack came at a particularly sensitive time.
Not only because of the immediate place and time - Tel Aviv is busy, on Thursday evenings, which is also the first day of the Passover holiday - but also because of the broader context: the evening of the first Friday of Ramadan, a week before Passover, and when Israel does everything it can to Curb the current wave of terrorism, while trying not to take collective action.
Long after the attack: The hunt for the terrorist in Tel Aviv continues // Photo: Avi Cohen
By nightfall, this effort also seemed to be bearing fruit.
The IDF and the police flooded the area with forces, and the GSS focused its activities - and managed to thwart several attacks just before hitting Israel. Against this background, the political echelon also decided to adopt the recommendation of security officials to allow Ramadan to survive; To be carried out, and also the restriction of entry to prayers on the Temple Mount was to be only minimal.
All that will surely change now.
Although it was not yet clear who was responsible for the attack and where they came from, Israel did not have many choices left: Given the well-known experience that an attack pursues an attack, and any attack inspires the next attack, much more significant steps will now be required to reduce the danger. as much as possible.
The scene of the attack, Photo: Yossi Zeliger
The main effort will naturally be concentrated in front of Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem, and will be accompanied by a further concentration of forces, and it is possible that Israel has so far avoided all waves of terrorism in recent years - a general closure. Q may lead some to extreme actions.
And yet, it seemed last night to be a necessary move, in part because such a closure would be imposed on the territories anyway on Passover, as every year, and its introduction now may actually calm the area.
In parallel with the military-security effort, it is likely that Israel used all the political levers last night in an attempt to calm the Palestinian arena.
It is an effort that is taking place simultaneously with Ramallah (directly and through the Americans and Jordanians) and with Gaza (through Egypt).
While the strip has been very quiet lately, it is not worth betting that it will remain so even now;
Although Hamas has no interest in escalation, it is not certain that it will be able to control any rebellious factor that seeks to join the celebration now.
Security and life - first of all
All this is happening when the internal arena of Israeli Arabs has not yet calmed down from the fact that the attacks in Be'er Sheva and Hadera were carried out by Israeli Arabs, and the wave of arrests of ISIS supporters that followed.
This requires the Shin Bet to split effort, and the entire defense establishment to the familiar challenge of trying to differentiate between the various arenas. Last year Israel failed to do so in Operation Wall Guard, and now must make a much more significant effort to ensure all arenas burn at And Ramadan.
This is a complex challenge, which becomes even more complicated against the background of the political rush that Israel has been thrown into in recent days.
Precisely because of this, all parties are now expected to act responsibly and with restraint, and to remember that with all due respect to politics - security and life precede everything else.
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