World's Israel-friendly reactions to attack don't herald new-found support

Raphael Ahren, The Times of Israel

Image from article, with caption: Israeli security forces at the scene of a deadly shooting attack at the Sarona Market shopping center in Tel Aviv, June 8, 2016.

In significant change, international community not only slams deadly shooting but also Palestinian hate speech. Still, peace initiatives and pressure on Jewish state will proceed as planned

Excerpt:

In their statements on Wednesday’s deadly terror attack in Tel Aviv, world leaders refrained from their usual chorus of asking both Israelis and Palestinians, in the same breath, to exercise “restraint” and to resume peace talks. Rather, they limited themselves to outright condemnations of the murders and in some cases even denounced Hamas for celebrating the bloodbath and called for an end to the anti-Jewish propaganda that is seen to have inspired it.

However, rather than a sea change in world attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it appears as if this remarkably different tone of voice from the international community is solely a matter of semantics.

Hence, pressure on Israel to move toward the implementation of a two-state solution is liable to pick up not long after the reports of this attack fade from the headlines, and even probably intensify dramatically in the coming weeks and months.

The change in style of post-attack condemnations is unmistakable, though  ...

Israeli hasbara, or public diplomacy, appears to have been effective in this area. Since the outbreak of the current wave of terrorism, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has often called on the international community not only to denounce violent acts against Israelis but to denounce the Palestinian Authority for not speaking out against them forcefully enough. This “failure to condemn terrorism,” he said in March, “should be condemned itself by everybody in the international community.” ...