The bloody chaos that hit Israel's streets this week should ram home one fact more than any other - and it is a truism that has remained quietly constant since the current intifada began in October:
Nobody - not the Israeli government, the opposition, the head of the IDF or the intelligence chiefs - can agree on a solution, or even on what general direction policy should take to calm the situation.
Over 16 hours between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, the terrorism that had in
recent weeks been confined to areas beyond the Green Line, spilled into Jaffa, Petach Tikah and West Jerusalem. It left one American student dead and 14 Israelis wounded.
Seven Palestinian assailants were killed.
So far, the government's response has been to order a crackdown on illegal Palestinian residents and speed up the construction of sections of the separation fence near Jerusalem and to the west of Hebron.
These actions, however, could prove counter-productive. Security chiefs argue that the income earned by the 50,000 illegal Palestinian workers from the West Bank is an incentive for them not to get involved in terrorism. In fact, the security establishment has recommended the government authorise a further 30,000 work permits.
"We need to fight the terror attacks but at the same time create as many opportunities for Palestinians to make a decent living so they know there's a price to pay for chaos," said one senior officer serving in the West Bank.
While the attacks near Tel Aviv have received most of the attention, the majority still occur in places where the assailants can move relatively freely. Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog has published a plan to separate some East Jerusalem neighbourhoods from the rest of the capital, but it has been widely criticised both by the government and in the Israeli media, and is unlikely to receive backing from the Palestinians.
Two months ago, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot admitted that since last October, the Israeli security forces have failed to predict any of the attacks. They have nearly all been carried out by either Palestinian individuals or, at most, groups of two or three, acting without any external assistance. In other words, there is no terror infrastructure that Israel can hit.
Meanwhile, there is deep disagreement within the security establishment over more drastic measures being demanded by the government, such as the demolition of houses of terrorists - which an IDF committee ruled in 2005 did not serve as deterrence - and the deportation of their families to Gaza, which has been ruled illegal by the Attorney General.
Many Israeli security experts believe that at least part of the motivation comes from social media; many assailants announced their "martyrdom" plans on their Facebook pages. Israeli programmers are trying to develop ways of detecting such statements in advance. So far, government demands that Facebook find ways to shut down "incitement" on its network have been rebuffed by the company.
While the stabbings were taking place in Jaffa on Tuesday, US Vice President Joe Biden was dining less than a mile away with former president Shimon Peres at the Peres Peace Centre.
On Wednesday morning, Mr Biden criticised the PA for not speaking out against the attacks. "In no uncertain terms," he said, "the US condemns the failure to condemn them."
