In the sixth point of your commment you mention the possibility that israeli arabs weigh their nationalistic sentiment on one side and the comfort of being israeli citizens on the other. I agree to this point and want to expand on it. If I understand you correctly, you say that for israeli arabs nationalism is far more important than persoanl comfort. In other words, they are idealistic people, ready to give up property and freedom of speech in exchange for territory, a flag and a hymn.

But killing the jews is against the selfish interest of israeli arabs, because the jews are responsible for their relative prosperity compared with the PA and Jordan - two other arab countries without oil. So the question is whether rational factors play a part in the thinking of israeli arabs. My opinion is that economic prosperity has a calming effect on them, just like it works everywhere else in the world. I would be glad to see evidence to the contrary.

Dov,

I agree with the general approach of collecting facts and building a thesis. Still, I have a few remarks.

Let's not base an analysis of israeli arabs on the tiny sample that includes their top politicians (say, 100 persons?) and the ideological terrorists (perhaps a few dozens inside the green line). For meaningful results, we need more robust statistical facts.

Second, when trying to judge the relevance of economic factors to violent events, the time scale you use is perhaps too short. It is not simply that in a year when there is 5% rise in GDP there is 20% less terror. These processes develop over a long time scale of decades.

As a first shot, here is my understanding of the relationship between economics and violence:
When a group of people feel that they are so miserable that they have nothing to lose, or, at the other extreme, so strong they cannot possibly lose - then there is danger of widespread violence.

According to this line of thought, if Israeli arabs are constantly aware of what they have to lose, violence will not erupt.