When news spread on Sept. 22 that an Israeli soldier was killed in Hebron in the West Bank, Al-Monitor spoke by telephone with a leading activist in the city's nonviolent popular resistance movement who wished to remain anonymous. His voice sounded uneasy as he explained that he could not ascertain whether the killer was Palestinian, for, he said, the soldier may have died as the result of friendly fire. While unease from an activist in a peaceful resistance movement can be understandable, it has become noteworthy that a new way of thinking may be developing among the Palestinian populace in general.

Palestinians have long chanted an old traditional slogan that goes, “We die so that Palestine may live.” But this slogan is now being rivaled by a new one: “Long may we and Palestine live,” which was adopted this year at the annual festival of Nazareth, commemorating the Palestinian Nakba. It was a slogan sung by Palestinian youth on New Year’s Eve in 2012, as they also chanted in favor of armed resistance and against negotiations with the Israelis, talks that have gone on for two decades without measurable results. Meanwhile, they repeated the ubiquitous “We sacrifice our souls and blood for you, oh Palestine.”

Many significant events have lately converged. The first distinguishing moment occurred in Damascus’ Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in June 2011, when the camp’s inhabitants marched against factions that had sent their sons to swarm the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, leading to the death of 23 people. Al-Monitor spoke with two pro-Syrian regime activists shortly after the incident in 2011; one activist lives in the camp, while the other resides in Jordan and has frequently traveled to Damascus. They both confirmed that pro-regime factions had affirmed that they did not endorse sending the young men to the Golan Heights, but that did not help soothe people’s anger. This incident is unprecedented in that families had never before so sharply and publicly criticized such a move, even when it led to the death of their children in a confrontation with the Israelis. This is because tradition had previously dictated that casualties be treated as martyrs and heroes.

Prior to the Hebron incident, a Palestinian man abducted and killed an Israeli soldier who worked with the perpetrator in an Israeli restaurant. The Palestinian man later threw the soldier down a well in the village of Beit Amin, in the northern part of the West Bank. Preliminary information indicated that the culprit wanted to exchange the soldier, or his body, for his brother, an inmate in an Israeli jail. A few days later, Palestinians were shocked to see the perpetrator’s father on television condemning his son’s actions and questioning his motives.