If you're listening to this conversation and you're 18 years old or 20, you're perhaps an

underclassman at American or European University, you probably don't have vivid memories of

the year 2005, and you almost certainly do not

remember the meeting that took place on February 8th of that year.

It took place in the Egyptian city, Sharma al-Sheikh, and it brought together, then Prime

Minister of Israel Ariel Sharon, with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. It was at that meeting that the Second Intifada officially came to an end.

Launched four years earlier in the aftermath of the failed Oslo Accords,

the Second Intifada was a period of regular Palestinian terrorism in Israel.

It took the form of suicide bombings and shootings and rocket attacks.

And of course, Israel's security forces would inevitably respond to the buses that were detonated,

to the cafes that were exploded, to the pizzerias and nightclubs that were transformed into scenes of civilian death.

It was a time of terror, not because the death tolls were as high as they would be in

conditions of war, but because the conflict could strike at any time, at any place, forcing

Israelis to pause before gathering in large numbers, and worrying that their children would

be unsafe in the streets of their own cities. If you're a young American Jew today, you may have

read about the Second Intifada, but you probably don't remember it. And so you may be at a

remove from understanding the psychological background that Israelis will inevitably feel when

confronted with the wave of terror attacks that Israel has suffered over the past weeks.

You see, in the aftermath of the Second Defada, terrorist attacks of that kind have become

comparatively rare.

There have been knifings, and of course there have been a great many rockets fired from

Gaza and from Lebanon in the years since.

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