What are the chances of a third Palestinian Intifada?
Fatah strongman: Palestinians will continue to resist occupation, but only in accordance with international law.
By Reuters Tags: Israel news Middle East peace PalestiniansPeace talks with Israel are in deadlock and tear gas and rocks are flying at Jerusalem's holy sites, but for all the mounting frustration in the West Bank talk of a Third Intifada seems premature to most Palestinians.
While Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has limited options in pressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a peace deal, few see him turning to the kind of suicide bombings and other attacks seen under his late predecessor Yasser Arafat.
Spontaneous unrest among angry crowds may be more likely.
Mohammad Dahlan, a senior figure in the "young guard" of Abbas's Fatah party and a former security force commander, said he was wary that a new uprising would only harm Palestinians:
"If Netanyahu believes he wants to maintain the occupation as it is, to expand settlements and then expect peace from us, then this will not be acceptable," Dahlan told Reuters.
"We may resort to popular action or civil action. We have an open mind on all legitimate methods permitted by international law. But we won't push the Palestinian people into a disaster."
A week after Israeli forces clashed with hundreds of Arabs who believed settlers were trying to enter the al-Aqsa mosque compound, there were scuffles again on Sunday and tension will remain high this week during holidays that draw Jewish worshippers to the Western Wall, close to the mosque.
After the violence the previous Sunday, Palestinian leaders accused Israel of trying to sink U.S. President Barack Obama's efforts to relaunch peace talks and compared it to a visit to the site in September 2000 by Israeli right-winger Ariel Sharon. That sparked what was dubbed the al-Aqsa Intifada, or uprising.
However, analysts and officials in the West Bank and East Jerusalem cited a number of factors likely to curb renewed violence in the near term, despite anger at Netanyahu, Sharon's right-wing successor, and with the settlers whose expansion drive he has defended.
"There is a state of disengagement between the people and its political leadership so people are not ready to sacrifice as they did before," said Zakaria al-Qaq of al-Quds University.
"At the same time there is a build-up of anger that is waiting for the spark. No one can predict when the spark will come. But it could take years yet."
Factors mentioned include disillusion that 4,000 Palestinians deaths in the years of uprising since 2000 have brought few benefits, while Israel has walled off the West Bank and closed the Israeli job market to Palestinians.
The schism that has seen Islamist Hamas seize the Gaza Strip and being suppressed in the West Bank by new, Western-trained security forces loyal to Abbas is also likely to limit organised violence from the West Bank against Israel.
Israeli police hauled away Palestinian youths, some only in their early teens, after stones and bottles flew in Jerusalem's Old City on Sunday. But the new generation, successors to the young men who spearheaded the rock-throwing of the First Intifada of the late 1980s and to the gunmen of nearly a decade ago, seems divided.
"Israel is fueling tensions that will explode later," said Raed Abed, a 17-year-old student in the southern West Bank city of Hebron. "No one can predict what will happen."
But his schoolmate Husam Sameh forecast no explosions for now: "Enough of fighting. We need to live in peace. We cannot fight Israel. We are so weak," he said.
"Still, the question is whether Israel is ready for peace."
Analyst Hani Masri said sporadic and largely spontaneous demonstrations that turn into clashes like those this past week in Jerusalem may become more common.
But he said: "The wariness among the people about popular resistance is greater than before, following the huge losses they suffered in the Second Intifada.
"Israel has used the Second Intifada as an excuse to build the wall and to avoid committing to signed agreements. Palestinians should not give them this excuse again."
Samir Awad, a political science professor at Birzeit University, said: "It would be a mistake to expect a popular wave of protest. I cannot see it happening.
"But if Israeli provocations in Jerusalem continue, we may expect clashes arising from religious and patriotic emotion."
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What are the chances of a third Palestinian Intifada? chances are 100% has the 2nd intifada stopped yet?
"But finally it seems that the Pals are growing up and learning to separate hard facts from paranoid and hysterical rumours. If that trend ever catches on in the wider Arab world, we may see the breaking of a new dawn of sanity". when you say sanity, you mean they should bow to everything you demand? like when jews say jump, they say how high?, i thought so, say "prophet", anyone with a name like that should be institutionalised, can you predict israels future? i can, it ain't looking good.
I wish it was that easy Daniela but remember: To some people,teaching or even thinking means sometimes treason! I bet you know where that leads to ; )
Why do people need to belive in childish Fairy Tales. Why not believing in ONE G-D and no more religions?
As long as the palestinians refuse to recognize Israel as a country and use violence against the state and civillians, they will continue to be treated as "second class".
israel needed serious palestinian unrest to distract from the reality of its "peace" in 2000. the intifada didn't just happen: it was a calculated move. turmoil inside israel, with jew against jew, is only abated by consoldating together against a "common enemy". now, when the world is mounting pressure on israel it turns to the same tactic. the third intifada will happen, and it will be orchestrated not by palestinians but by netanyahu et ak. it helps to pull back from the abyss of religious vs secular, haredim vs messianic etc etc etc. what a waste of lives. lives of my friends and my family. and the ruination of the most beautiful part of this world.
"Israel has used the Second Intifada as an excuse to build the wall and to avoid committing to signed agreements": signed agreements didnt prove to have stoped suiciders and saftey goes first. "But if Israeli provocations in Jerusalem continue"...it is called maintaing security and stability dear observer...lets once try to look from another angle, ok!
I wish people like you could help fight islamic hate and their willing to die fighting us. Teach them to live and enjoy life on the planeth hearth ! STOP TERRORISM!
Israel faces civil war.
Even you may be right about this particular guy, I must clearly atate that your statments and posts (and I have been reading them for quite a while now) are just as biased and radical as Yishay's comments. Your one sided approach has nothing to do with peace, because it completly ignors jewish rights and that will certainly not bring peace. So simply stop portraying yourself as a person seeking a just solution - you are just a Israel basher as there is many in the western world by now. But believe me, there still is a silent majority in the `rest of the world`that doesn't think the way you do. Not the `little state of Israel`is nasty but your statements!
Since 1920, the Palestinians have been manipulated like little children by their own leaders. First their leaders start false rumours that "the Jews" are about to take over the Temple Mount. Then the rumours are magnified as they are spread by word of mouth in an atmosphere of mounting hysteria. And then the Pals erupt into violence and get their heads kicked in. But finally it seems that the Pals are growing up and learning to separate hard facts from paranoid and hysterical rumours. If that trend ever catches on in the wider Arab world, we may see the breaking of a new dawn of sanity.
I admit we don't know the mentality of Israelis who have so many mentalities . . . I know Israelis don't know the way Arabs and Muslims think . . . Muslim extremists believe that being killed while fighting enemy is the best prize one can ever get, Jewish extremist think that strength can help them get their dreams true by finding what is named The Temple, the challenge will continue since Muslims believe Palestine is an Islamic Waqf and Allah will help them defend Al-Aqsa Mosque. No realistic and permanent solution will be achieved for the Palestinian Israeli Conflict, so nobody can predict when the the next Palestinian popular revolution will be. EXTREMISTS from both sides are the cause of the problem. Hope both people will realize soon that life doesn't deserve that fighting and the holy land can include palestinians and Israelis, Muslims and Jews.
Palestinians have a high-birth rate and, thanks to the superior medical care provided to them by Israel, they also have a low infant mortality rate. This resulted in a relatively high number of young men under the age of 25. Historically, this has always been a recipe for disaster. Compounded with chronic unemployment, and rabid incitement by PA controlled media and in the mosques, the Pali youths are a volatile crowd, ready for rioting. Too bad that their leaders are actively stealing the money that the gullible donors give for developing of the Pali infrastructure and jobs.
Did anyone expect the second Palestinian intifada? Did anyone expect the first one? As long as Palestinians are treated as second class people in their homeland, they will, like the South Africans, continue to fight for equality. And it won't matter how much you punish them for doing so, how many of them die, or how many you lock up, they will do it again, and again.
It is fanatics like you that will bring about the end of the nasty little state of Israel. All of your posts call for death and destruction...you must be so proud of your religion and how it somehow allows for theft and murder of anyone not jewish. But around the rest of the world we see your nasty little state as becoming the biggest threat to world peace that has ever existed. Beware of the rest of us Yesha, we are not weakened like the Palestinians.
That keeps terrorists out.
simmering violence, vigorous boil, temperate, absolute zero, laser hot, what's the difference? the differences pesist and neither side wants to move, and certainly not both towards each other in reconciliation. so, it will continue to be a mystery. Palestinians lost jobs, hope, belief in themselves. Israeli's lost a lot too. We don't need an intifada, we need a coming together in the best tradition of both religions.
The next time will be the Philistines' last- the one that ends with their expulsion from OUR land. "But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then shall those that ye let remain of them be as thorns in your eyes, and as pricks in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land wherein ye dwell." (Numbers 33:55)
Arafat planned, organized, and set into motion the second intifadeh, using the Temple Mount visit as a pretext. But if the Arabs want to get their terror infrastructure destroyed and their economy set back again by many years, then by all means, they should launch another. They will lose that too and then will never get anything resembling a state.
Arafat planned, organized, and set into motion the second intifadeh, using the Temple Mount visit as a pretext. But if the Arabs want to get their terror infrastructure destroyed and their economy set back again by many years, then by all means, they should launch another. They will lose that too and then will never get anything resembling a state.
At some point the Palestinians will realize that Netanyahu has totally skunked Obama and that they are doomed to inexorable compression into ever smaller and more isolated ghettos. When they stop hoping, they will start fighting back again.
he Palestinians are beginning to realize there is nothing they can do to get a state of their own. Now the fight turns to Palestinian rights in Israel...