Think about the unbridled chutzpah surrounding the Temple Mount issues, which are being manipulated into a flashpoint for violence against Israeli Jews.

The Temple Mount has been the worship province of Muslims for quite some time. Moshe Dayan, on the heels of the Six-Day War, ensured that Islamic prayer would be allowed at the Mount, but not Jewish prayer (though Jews would subsequently be allowed to visit, unlike during Jordanian rule of the site). This status has survived numerous iterations of Israeli government, including Knessets and prime ministers, during the decades from then to now.

Both Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, are well aware of the continued enforcement of this rule. There has been no indication by the Israeli government that the law is going to change. The only serious challenges to the law have come from far-right zealots who have no ability to force a change in public policy.

Yet to incite violence against Jews and Israeli authority, Palestinian leaders are now conflating isolated efforts by these reactionary Jews seeking to defy the law, with the government. In other words, they are deliberately pinning the acts of vigilantes on Israel itself, so as to create an environment among young Palestinians that it’s equally fine for them to flaunt the rules.

Do you see how utterly disingenuous this is? Even though the Palestinian leadership is well aware of the current law and Israel’s support of it, they are using the acts of individuals to mount rhetorical assault, and encourage physical violence, against Jewish Israelis.

This isn’t surprising, but what it does demonstrate is the willingness of the PA and Hamas to put the rule of law aside if it justifies their provocation of violence.

To be fair, there are some on the Israeli security side who claim that Abbas is trying to hold the relative calm, compared to what the more vile consequences might be. This is not a universal view of Abbas’ intent or actions. And we aren’t necessarily buying it; after all, as we wrote just recently, Abbas is trying to maintain both attention and power in his waning years, and he is more than willing, in our opinion, to push toward another intifada to distract the street from his utter failure as a peacemaker.

Still, the security flank, who are most concerned about the devolution from order to anarchy, may have a point when viewing the current crisis. Indeed, some of the violence may ensue not from leadership’s urgings, but rather from the the lack of leadership itself leaving a chasm more readily filled by violence and rejection of authority.

Young Palestinians, the so-called “children of Oslo,” who were born after the 1993 accord, are living in a no-man’s land of sorts. They’re not receiving the benefits of Israeli citizenship, nor are they benefitting from the corrupt and largely inept leadership of Abbas, Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the PA.

As Times of Israel reporter and analyst Avi Issacharoff writes of this generation: “They have heard about the old model of the Israeli occupation, but don’t really know what it means. The Palestinian Authority, from their perspective, has been the government since before they were born, yet they view it with open contempt and suspicion.”

Issacharoff spoke with a resident of the Shuafat refugee camp who shed more light on the deteriorating situation: “Some things have to change. The current situation is impossible, and that’s especially true of the Jerusalem area. They have to decide once and for all what happens with us, with Shuafat and other places. Are we under the Authority or under Israel? But the current situation, where we’re under the government of nobody, has brought us to this point. Just decide. You decided to annex us to Israel [when Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war], so bring us police and the municipality and everything else. And if not, let the Palestinian Authority rule here.”

None of this is to any way overlook the loathsome violence being perpetrated against Jews; it must be addressed effectively on all fronts. But the hopelessness may help explain, at least in part, what’s going on.

We tend to look at the controversy through the lens of Jews versus Palestinians, state versus territory, political and religious movements, and so on. But when viewed through the lens of those who feel no semblance of predictable or useful social structure, the future might even feel more hopeless than all that.

To be sure, those egging on the stone throwings, stabbings and shootings probably have a political goal of destroying the Jewish State. But those who are committing them may themselves feel they have no state to lose.