RISHON LEZION, Israel (AP) — Twenty-four-year-old shopkeeper Darya Zelenkov was working her shift in a downtown clothing shop in this central Israeli city when she was startled by a knife-wielding Palestinian trying to burst in. The quick-thinking saleswoman quickly slammed the glass door in his face.

"I looked him straight in the eye. He had this lost look about him," said Zelenkov. "Until yesterday I thought all the troubles were 'there.' I thought it had nothing to do with me."

After years of relative quiet in major Israeli cities, a seven-week burst of violence has brought the Palestinian issue to the country's heartland and pushed the long-festering conflict back to the forefront of the national agenda. Disillusioned by years of failed negotiations and a controversial withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, most Israelis appear to want to create more distance and separation from their Palestinian neighbors rather than revive peace talks.

Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel's Shin Bet security service and current fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, said despite the fear and anger, the unrest is having some unexpected results. He cited a recent poll showing more than three-quarters of Israelis ready to hand over Arab-majority neighborhoods of Jerusalem to a future Palestine, in contrast to the government position that the city must remain unified.

"People only get it when things are very sad," Ayalon said. "You can't ignore the situation. People are ready to give up a lot just to make it stop."

Such findings raise the unsettling question of whether Palestinian violence works.

Twenty years of on-again, off-again peace talks have yielded no solution to the conflict, partly because militant attacks frequently derailed them. But the first Palestinian uprising in the 1980s is widely seen as having hastened Israel's decision to allow limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank, and rocket and mortar fire on Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip was a key factor behind the decision to pull out in 2005.

Israeli cities were frequent targets of violence during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s, when suicide bombers blew up buses and struck crowded restaurants throughout the country. But when the violence subsided, residents in central Israel largely put the conflict out of mind, trying to enjoy the comforts of what is known as the Tel Aviv "bubble."

While Israeli leaders have blamed the latest violence on Arab incitement, Palestinians say this Israeli sense of complacency is a key reason for the unrest. They say Israelis cannot ignore them, and that nearly 50 years of military rule and a lack of hope for gaining independence are driving young Palestinians to desperate acts.

With the attacks migrating away from traditional hotspots in and around the Palestinian territories to a normally quiet city like Rishon Lezion, situated on Israel's coastal plain, it is becoming increasingly difficult for average Israelis to look away.

Jews are nearly 80 percent of Israel's population, and the Arab minority makes up about 20 percent. The latter often suffer discrimination and identify with their Palestinian brethren, but very few of the recent attacks have been carried out by Arab Israelis.

Standing next to a pile of shattered glass from Monday's melee, Zelenkov, 24, said the new reality has made her far more suspicious of Arabs and no more sympathetic. "Their problems don't interest me," she said. "Those who don't attack aren't attacked either."

It's a sentiment shared by much of mainstream Israel. Polls consistently show a majority of Israelis still believing in the need for a two-state solution, but often on terms the Palestinians have been unwilling to accept.