Passover Bombing, Jenin Incursion, Israel

For months I and others have wondered how a possible Global Consciousness might be responding to the ongoing violence and intransigence in the middle east, with Palestinian suicide bombers and Israeli reprisals killing innocents and destroying hopes for a peace in the region. But how to identify a "global moment" in this unending turmoil? A note from Hala Azzam stimulated me to think more specifically about this. Finally I decided to take the Passover bombing on March 27, 2002, to represent the desperation of the suicide terrorism. The other side of the coin was represented by a prediction for the Israeli incursion into Jenin a few days later, on April 4, 2002. In the following, both events are shown, with a graph for the formal prediction period, accompanied by an exploratory graph of the full day's accumulated deviation in each case.

According to news reports, 28 people were killed and 140 injured, many critically, in the suicide bombing attack. It was described as the worst atrocity since the outbreak of the current conflict in Septemper 2000 in terms of carnage and its symbolic circumstances, coming on the first night of Pessah at a communal Sedar.

The bomb was detonated at about 7:15 pm (19:15) in the dining room of a seaside hotel in Netanya, Israel. The corresponding GMT time was 17:15. The prediction was modeled on similar disasters, which typically are specified as a short time before to a few hours after the event. The formal prediction was for the four hour period from 17:00 to 21:00 GMT.

Analytically, the outcome is neutral, with Chisquare 14414 on 14400 df, and p = 0.465. Perhaps this is representative of the confusion and bemusement the whole world must feel at the terribly frustrating insistence on violence and futile hatred as the best we are able to do in confronting this persistent, but surely unnecessary disaster. The first figure shows the result for the formal prediction.

Passover Bombing, Israel

In the second figure, the GCP data for the whole day are shown. There are 47 active eggs at this time, and their communal trend shows a steady departure from chance expectation. At the time of the suicide bombing, the trend shows a sudden drop that, to my eye, looks unusual. It is magnified and easily noted as a precipitous trend shortly after the bombing in the figure above. Technically, such a drop means that the inter-egg correlation or the tendency to correlated deviations or both are strikingly low for a brief period. Perhaps this is a reaction to the event, perhaps not. My heart says the former -- this breakdown of interconnection has the feeling of a support suddenly removed from a fragile structure.

Passover Bombing, Israel,
24 hours

Hala Azzam later suggested an event that might reflect the Israeli response, which manifested as a military campaign with house to house fighting in several West Bank towns. He suggested specifically, "... April 3rd, at 2:00 am when the Israeli troops entered the Jenin Camp and the days before and after that." For a concise period, I decided to use the Jenin incursion time plus four hours, with the same parameters as the Netanya bombing prediction. Thus the prediction period is 00:00 to 04:00 April 3, 2002 GMT. The result shows a modest positive trend, with Chisquare 14509 on 14400 df and p = 0.259.

Jenin Incursion, Israel,
4 hours

Again, for context, we look at the full day of April 3, with the result in the following figure. Beginning at about 14:00, Jenin/Israel time, the data assume a striking aspect, with a great increase in the Chisquare that persists for the rest of the day. As in the full day of the 27th, there is a suggestion of an underlying, consistent reaction to the ongoing tragedy.

Jenin Incursion, Israel,
24 hours


GCP Home