The violence looks set to continue

On Monday Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas referred to the last three months of violence as a "justified popular uprising". Despite Israeli leaders accusing him and other Palestinian leaders of inciting the violence with their rhetoric, Abbas implied that the people are self-motivated.

"We cannot ask the youth why they are going out (to revolt)," he said in Ramallah. "They just despaired of the two-state solution."

Indeed, the results of a survey in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip conducted early in December 2015 indicate that 67% of the people support the use of knives in the current confrontations with Israel, whilst only 31% oppose it.

Additionally, 66% of the public across these two areas believe that if the current confrontations develop into an armed intifada, such a development would actually serve Palestinian national interests in ways that negotiations could not.

Thus there seems to be widespread support amongst Palestinians for a continuation of the violence, and any prospect for peace seems to have disappeared.