Intifadas are strategic
This posting has 4 items:
1) The National: This is not the third intifada, Joseph Dana argues that until there is an effective Palestinian leadership there can be no effective resistance;
2) Ma’an: Red Crescent: Over 90 Palestinians injured in latest clashes;
3) Ma’an: Israeli forces shoot, kill Palestinian boy, 13, in Aida refugee camp;
4) Notes and links on the first two intifadas;
Palestinian protesters stand amid blazes of fire during clashes with Israeli settlers in the West Bank village of Burin. Sporadic clashes erupted between Palestinians and a dozen settlers from the settlement of Yitzhar, which is known as a bastion of extremists, when the settlers threw stones at Palestinians who responded in the same way. Caption from The National, photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh / AFP
This is not the third intifada
By Joseph Dana, The National
October 6, 2015
When the hawkish Israeli politician Ariel Sharon visited Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa compound in September 2000, Palestinians were on the verge of a second uprising, or intifada, against Israeli rule.
Fed up with the 1993 Oslo Accords that failed to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinians made a decision to change the status quo through armed resistance. Five years after that fateful visit, the Palestinians were left with deep wounds in a worse-off position after fighting the Israeli army.
Last week, one of Israel’s largest newspapers ran the front-page headline “The Third Intifada”, regarding the violence currently consuming Jerusalem and the West Bank.
This was deliberately misleading. Palestinians know they must reform their own leadership and its relationship to Israel as part of any genuine uprising against Israeli rule — something that doesn’t appear likely in the short term.
Intifadas are strategic, not simple reactions to isolated events, or even sustained Israeli incitement. The first intifada was a declaration that Palestinians refused to accept Israel’s slow annexation of the West Bank and the expanding occupation. The second intifada was an attempt to use violence to change the status quo.
Since the arson attack that killed a Palestinian family in the West Bank village of Duma in late July, Palestinians have reacted to the rising tensions on the ground with no clear goal or end point. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’ reticent approach towards popular uprisings and the fear of repeating the mistakes of the second intifada add to the lack of appetite for full-scale rebellion in the West Bank.
Having invested a lot of political capital to defeat the US nuclear deal with Iran and then failed, Mr Netanyahu has turned his sights on the Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Tel Aviv is now worried that a shift in American foreign policy in the Middle East — away from traditional allies and towards a warmer relationship with Iran — is on the horizon.
Mr Netanyahu is therefore trying to demonstrate Israel’s relevance to American foreign policy by visibly reminding US lawmakers that the country is vulnerable and at the heart of the region’s many conflicts. For its part, the Obama administration is consumed with the crisis in Syria, and the Israel-Palestine conflict appears to be off the radar of American officials, at least for the time being.
As a politician who is losing popularity at home and abroad, the Israeli prime minister is in desperate need of a scapegoat that will allow him to appear as a security-conscious leader.
This September, Israel allowed hundreds of extremist Jews to visit the Al Aqsa compound in a move designed to inflame tensions. Predictably, the tension boiled over into the current violence.
At Mr Netanyahu’s behest, the Israeli government has declared war on stone throwers with legislation that allows looser rules of engagement for security forces and harsh minimum sentences for those caught.
Stone throwing has been part and parcel of Palestinian resistance since the beginning of the conflict and as such, the timing of this “war” suggests that fresh legislation serves the dual purpose of empowering Mr Netanyahu’s security-minded base constituents as well as pushing the Palestinians towards more violent means.
If the gap in the punishment for throwing stones and firing weapons closes, the result will be more Palestinians taking up arms as the fighting intensifies. In the last week alone, there have been three knife and gun attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank that have killed four Israeli civilians. According to the Palestinian Red Cresent nearly 500 Palestinians have been injured and two Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy have been killed since Friday.
Israel is also blaming Mr Abbas for the current wave of violence, accusing him of incitement with his “bombshell” comments at the United Nations General Assembly, in which he announced that the Palestinians would begin to ignore agreements with Israel such as the Oslo Accords.
The facts don’t support this claim, however. Mr Abbas’s bombshell was more of a bluff, a way to buy time while he considers the future of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
For the PA to ignore agreements with Israel, it would have to unilaterally dissolve ongoing security cooperation with Israel that has tirelessly suppressed Palestinian dissent directed towards the PA itself inside urban areas of the West Bank since 2005.
With clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces on the rise, Mr Abbas would be inviting unwanted questions for his Ramallah leadership about the depth of Israeli-PA cooperation. If Mr Abbas pulls the thread, the PA’s entire ball of yarn could unravel.
Both Israel and the international community don’t seem eager for another Israeli attack on Gaza; Hizbollah remains a powerful deterrent in southern Lebanon; and the Iranian menace that was once favoured as a scapegoat by Mr Netanyahu is about to sign a deal with Washington.
The Israeli prime minister has nowhere else to pick a fight to create a media diversion and maintain his image as a tough leader than his own backyard. But that doesn’t mean we are headed for another intifada in the coming weeks.
Only when the Palestinians decide to reform their own leadership will we be close to an intifada against Israeli rule.
jdana@thenational.ae
Red Crescent: Over 90 Palestinians injured in latest clashes
By Ma’an news
October 05 /06, 2015
BETHLEHEM — At least 90 Palestinians have been injured in clashes with Israeli soldiers and settlers on Tuesday across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.
Spokesperson Errab Foqaha told Ma’an that Israeli forces had shot eight Palestinians with live rounds and at least 23 with rubber-coated steel bullets.
She said that another 57 suffered excessive tear gas inhalation, and two were violently assaulted.
The figures were being updated as clashes continued throughout the West Bank into Tuesday evening.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have carried out 13 attacks on Red Crescent ambulance crews since Sunday, Foqaha said.
She said that the latest attacks on their emergency relief teams brought the total number to 27 since Friday, and had left 17 staff members injured and 10 ambulances damaged.
Fierce clashes were reported across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem for the fifth straight day on Tuesday.
In East Jerusalem’s Shufat refugee camp, Israeli forces shot a Palestinian in the back with live fire, while two others were hit with rubber-coated steel bullets in the head and legs.
The Wadi Hilweh Information Center said Israeli forces also assaulted Suad Abu Romoz while she was standing in front of her home in Silwan.
Clashes were also reported in the early evening in the Bethlehem-area village of Tuqu, where a Palestinian was shot with a rubber-coated steel bullet and dozens more suffered severe tear gas inhalation.
The man was shot in the leg and taken to hospital for treatment. An Israeli soldier was also hit with a rock and received treatment at the scene.
Earlier, over 51 were injured in the Ramallah district alone, while up to 10 were shot with rubber-coated steel bullets during clashes in Bethlehem following the funeral of a 13-year-old boy shot dead the day before.
In Bethlehem, Israeli forces shot and injured 10 Palestinians with rubber-coated steel bullets as fierce clashes broke out following the funeral of a 13-year-old boy who was shot dead by Israeli forces the day before.
Two Palestinians were hit in the head with rubber-coated steel bullets and were rushed to hospital for treatment, medics told Ma’an.
The Palestinian Red Cross on Sunday declared a state of emergency across the occupied Palestinian territory, and said it was putting all its staff, teams and volunteers on standby.
The 90 reported injuries on Tuesday will bring the total injured since Saturday to nearly 600. Of those, Israeli forces has shot 49 with live rounds.
Tensions had been mounting steadily for weeks across the occupied Palestinian territory due to Israeli restrictions on Palestinians seeking to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem.
However, it was violent Israeli reprisals in the wake of two separate attacks that killed four Israelis last week that spurred the recent clashes.
The PLO has warned that attacks by both Israeli soldiers and settlers indicates the “Israeli government is deliberately creating a situation of violence and instability that threatens to spiral out of control.”
Relatives and friends come to say goodbye to 13 year old refugee, Abed al-Rahman Shadi Obeidallah. Photo by Ma’anImages.
Israeli forces shoot, kill Palestinian boy, 13, in Aida refugee camp
By Ma’an news
October 05 /06, 2015
BETHLEHEM — A 13-year-old Palestinian boy was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers during clashes in Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem on Monday, Palestinian medics told Ma’an.
Abed al-Rahman Shadi Obeidallah, was shot near the heart by Israeli forces during clashes in the refugee camp.
He was taken in a civilian car to Beit Jala hospital where he immediately underwent surgery. However, doctors later pronounced him dead.
The child was initially reported to be 12 years old, although medics later confirmed he was 13.
Another teenager was reportedly shot with live fire in the leg during the same clashes and taken to hospital for treatment, locals said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was looking into the reports.
Overnight Sunday, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian teenager during clashes in the northern West Bank village of Bala, east of Tulkarem.
Red Crescent officials told Ma’an that 18-year-old Huthayfa Othman Suleiman was shot in the chest during clashes and died in the operating room.
The killings follow violent confrontations over the weekend in which the Palestinian Red Crescent documented at least 96 Palestinians who were wounded by live rounds or rubber-coated steel bullets in clashes with Israeli forces and settlers.
Overnight Saturday, Fadi Samir Mustafa Alloun, 19, from the East Jerusalem village of al-Issawiya, was shot dead by Israeli forces after allegedly attempting to stab a group of Israelis.
The incident took place just hours after another Palestinian was shot dead when he stabbed and possibly opened fire on a family of Israelis at the Old City’s Lion’s Gate.
Two Israelis were killed and two others injured, including a two-year-old infant, in the attack.
First Intifada, 1987-1991. Leadership – The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) (al-Qiyada al Muwhhada). Palestinian tactics: non-violent civil disobedience. Later some Palestinians preferred throwing stones and molotov cocktails. The IDF response was described as brutal and the death toll on both sides was high.
from WikipediaThe uprising began on 9 December 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp after a traffic incident when an Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) truck collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinians. In the wake of the incident, a protest movement arose, involving a two-fold strategy of unarmed resistance and civil disobedience, consisting of general strikes, boycotts of Israeli Civil Administration institutions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, an economic boycott consisting of refusal to work in Israeli settlements on Israeli products, refusal to pay taxes, refusal to drive Palestinian cars with Israeli licenses, graffiti, barricading, and widespread throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails at the IDF and its infrastructure within the Palestinian territories. Israel, deploying some 80,000 soldiers and initially firing live rounds, killed a large numbers of Palestinians.
In the first 13 months, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed. Given the high proportion of children, youths and civilians killed, [Israel] then adopted a policy of ‘might, power, and beatings,’ namely “breaking Palestinians’ bones”. The global diffusion of images of soldiers beating adolescents with clubs then led to the adoption of firing semi-lethal plastic bullets.
In the intifada’s first year, Israeli security forces killed 311 Palestinians, of which 53 were under the age of 17. Over the first two years, according to Save the Children, an estimated 7% of all Palestinians under 18 years of age suffered injuries from shootings, beatings, or tear gas. Over six years the IDF killed an estimated 1,162–1,204 Palestinians. Between 23,600 and 29,900 Palestinian children required medical treatment from IDF beatings in the first 2 years. 100 Israeli civilians and 60 IDF personnel were killed often by militants outside the control of the Intifada’s UNLU, and more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 1,700 soldiers were injured. Intra-Palestinian violence was also a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of an estimated 822 Palestinians killed as alleged collaborators,(1988–April 1994). At the time Israel reportedly obtained information from some 18,000 Palestinians who had been compromised, although fewer than half had any proven contact with the Israeli authorities.
Second Intifada, 2000-2005 – brought under control by PA and Hamas
Chief weapon – suicide bomb on buses. No overall command.By BBC
The second Palestinian intifada or uprising broke out at the end of September 2000 and is named after the Jerusalem mosque complex where the violence began.
Frustrations that years of the negotiation had failed to deliver a Palestinian state were intensified by the collapse of the Camp David summit in July 2000.Ariel Sharon, then the leader of Israel’s opposition, paid a visit to the site in East Jerusalem known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, and to Jews as Temple Mount, which houses the al-Aqsa mosque – and frustration boiled over into violence.
The timeline below highlights the key events.
2000
Jamal and Muhammad al-Durrah
Durrah was one of eight Palestinian children killed in the first three days
28 September: Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount – against the background of the failure of the peace process – provides one of the sparks that ignites a cycle of violence.30 September: In one of the enduring images of the conflict 12-year-old Muhammad Durrah is killed during a gunbattle between Israeli troops and Palestinians in the Gaza strip, kindling Palestinian anger about the growing number of children killed by Israeli forces. The army initially apologises, but later casts doubt on whether its forces killed the boy.
17 October: The Sharm al-Sheikh agreement, brokered by President Clinton, aims to end the upsurge in violence. It breaks down almost immediately.
2001
6 February: Ariel Sharon elected prime minister of Israel.
Israeli police examine the scene of a Haifa suicide bombing
Israeli police examine the scene of a Haifa suicide bombing
18 May: Israel launches F-16 warplanes against Palestinian targets in Gaza for the first time.1 June: Suicide bomb attack on a disco in Tel Aviv leaves 21 people dead and more than 60 others injured. Islamic Jihad says it carried out the attack.
9 August: Fifteen people are killed and about 90 others are injured in a suicide attack on a busy restaurant in the heart of Jerusalem. Hamas says it carried out the attack.
27 August: Israel assassinates People’s Liberation Front for Palestine leader Abu Ali Mustafa in a missile strike.
17 October: The PFLP assassinates Israel’s tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi.
2 December: A Palestinian suicide bomber blows up a bus in the northern coastal city of Haifa, killing 15 people and wounding more than 100 others.
2002
8 March: The bloodiest day of the intifada so far sees 45 people killed, mostly Palestinians.
27 March: In the Israeli resort of Netanya, a bomber blows himself up at a hotel, killing 28 Israelis celebrating Passover. The attack claimed by the armed wing of Hamas was the deadliest since the beginning of the uprising.
29 March: Israel begins a massive military assault on the West Bank. Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters are targeted and Palestinian militants take refuge in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Heavy fighting goes on for days in the northern West Bank town of Jenin.
7 May: Suicide bomber attacks a social club in the town of Rishon Letzion, killing 16 people and injuring more than 50. The attack is claimed by the armed wing of Hamas.
16 June: Israel begins construction of its West Bank security barrier, a 640-kilometre (440-mile) structure designed to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of Israel.
18 June: A suicide bomber kills himself and 19 civilians in an attack on a bus in southern Jerusalem.
22 July:: Israel kills Hamas military commander Salah Shehada with aircraft bomb dropped on his Gaza housing block; 18 other residents are also killed by the blast.
2003
5 January: At least 23 people are killed and 100 wounded when two suicide attackers set off charges in crowded streets during rush hour in Tel Aviv.
19 March: Mahmoud Abbas agrees to become the first Palestinian prime minister.
30 April: The Quartet group – the EU, UN, Russia and the US – launch the roadmap peace plan. It is a phased programme for ending conflict culminating in the creation of an independent Palestinian state, but the neither side keeps to its timetable.
11 June: Sixteen people are killed in a bus bomb in Jerusalem, in the first suicide attack since US President Bush’s peace summit a week before. It follows an Israeli air strike on 10 June aimed at killing Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi in Gaza.
27 June: Palestinian militants announce an agreement with the Palestinian Authority to temporarily halt attacks on Israelis. The “hudna” lasts seven weeks.
An injured man is carried from the scene of the Tel Aviv cafe blast
An attacker targeted a popular nightspot in Tel Aviv
20 August: A suicide bomber wrecks a bus in Jerusalem, killing at least 20 people. Palestinian militants claim the attack is carried out in response to Israeli killing of their leaders.9 September: Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas resigns after clashing with Yasser Arafat over reform of security services.
4 October: A suicide bomber blows herself up in a packed Haifa restaurant, killing at least 19 people including three children.
13 October: The Geneva Accords, an alternative peace-plan negotiated by prominent Israelis and Palestinians, is unveiled. The plan is quickly rejected by Israel and Palestinian militants.
2004
29 January: A Palestinian suicide bomber kills 10 in an attack on a west Jerusalem bus.
Palestinians attend the funeral of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
Palestinians attend the funeral of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
2 February: Ariel Sharon orders a plan be drawn up to remove Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip.22 March: Israel assassinates Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, in an air strike.
17 May: Israel assassinates Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi a missile strike.
13 May: Following the killing of 13 soldiers by militants in Gaza, Israel launches a nine-day incursion into the Rafah refugee camp, leaving at least 40 Palestinians dead.
9 July: The International Court of Justice rules that the West Bank barrier is illegal and that construction must be halted.
31 August: Sixteen people are killed in suicide bombings on two buses in the Israeli town of Beersheba.
27 October: Israeli legislators vote in favour of a controversial plan to withdraw Jewish settlers from Gaza.
29 October: Yasser Arafat is airlifted from his West Bank compound in Ramallah to a military hospital in Paris.
11 November: Arafat dies in France aged 75. Israel says his death may be a turning point for peace in the Middle East. Mahmoud Abbas is elected head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
2005
9 January: Palestinians elect Mahmoud Abbas to succeed Yasser Arafat as chairman of the Palestinian Authority.
10 January: Israel’s parliament backs a new coalition government, giving Ariel Sharon a firm basis to implement his Gaza pullout plan.
14 January: Israel seals off the Gaza Strip after six Israelis are killed in an attack by Palestinian militants at a major crossing point.
15 January: Mahmoud Abbas is sworn in as the new president of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
He uses his inauguration speech to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants.
21 January: Hundreds of Palestinian Authority police take up positions in the northern Gaza Strip to stop militants firing rockets at Israeli targets.
24 January: Following a week of talks between Mr Abbas and militant leaders, the groups say they have agreed to suspend attacks on Israel.
3 February: Israel approves a plan to free hundreds of jailed Palestinians and withdraw forces from West Bank cities.
8 February: After a summit at the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon declare a truce. Both express hopes that the informal ceasefire will lead to a new era of hope for the region.
10 February: Hamas militants fire dozens of mortars and rockets at the Gush Katif settlement after the organisation said it was not bound by the ceasefire. The attacks prompt Mr Abbas to order a security crackdown and sack senior security officials.