A third intifada a matter of time
Wave of violence hasn’t reached level of previous Palestinian uprisings
A day before Palestinian law student Mohannad Halabi fatally stabbed two Jewish men heading to pray at Jerusalem’s Western Wall this month, he hinted at his desire to be part of a historical moment.
“According to what I see, the Third Intifada has erupted,” the 19- year- old wrote on Facebook, as reported in the Times of Israel. “I don’t believe that our people will succumb to humiliation. The people will indeed rise up.”
As deadly attacks like Halabi’s continued in Israel this week, and a growing number of Israelis armed themselves, the prospect of a prolonged Palestinian uprising sparked hope in some quarters and dread in others.
“From the Palestinian side, if you define it as intifada, that means you are in a different place in terms of how you think about what kind of sacrifices you make, what kind of changes from day to day life you make,” said Boaz Atzili, associate professor in the school of international service at American University in Washington. “It’s like a nobler cause and it has this kind of mobilization effect. It has its own momentum, in a sense.”
For Israelis, “it’s almost the mirror image of that,” Atzili continued. Confronting an intifada implies security measures beyond the regular control of violence that has become part of the everyday routine in the region.
Despite Halabi’s murderous bravado, most observers agree that the current wave of violence has not reached a level that would warrant grouping it with the first and second intifadas.
The term intifada comes from an Arabic word meaning “shaking off ” and has come to signify an uprising aimed at gaining full autonomy from Israel. The first intifada began in 1987 with peaceful protests and low- level violence such as the throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails. Israeli forces were criticized for their disproportionate response, firing live ammunition at Palestinians in the early days of the uprising before switching to rubber bullets. The conflict endured for years until the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993.
The second intifada, triggered by Ariel Sharon’s September 2000 visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, saw heightened violence including suicide bombings by Palestinians and a large- scale Israeli military intervention dubbed Operation Defensive Shield.
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia University, said that there is no official definition of an intifada; it’s in the eye of the observer. But the first and second intifadas “were much more organized affairs” than the current outbreak.
“This one so far, the Israelis are saying that there is no organization, no planning, there’s nobody behind it,” he said. “Everybody they’ve killed or arrested is clearly a single individual operating without co- ordination with anybody else. So far this, whatever it is, could not be more different than the first two intifadas.”
For many in Israel, it is not a matter of if there will be a third intifada but when. A year ago, a wave of violent attacks led to speculation that the next uprising was underway. In a survey carried out for Israel’s Peace Index this month at the beginning of the current wave of violence, nearly half of Israeli Jews ( 45 per cent) felt an intifada would erupt within a year if there were no peace deal with the Palestinians. Another 20 per cent felt an intifada would come within three years.
“I think we’re still at the stage — a sensitive, delicate, fragile stage — where things can be walked back,” said Dan Arbell, a former Israeli diplomat who is scholar- in- residence at American University ’s Center for Israeli Studies. “There’s a need for the parties to exercise calm and restraint. There’s a need for the Palestinian Authority ’s leadership to come out very straightforwardly and condemn these acts of violence. And there’s a need for the Israeli side, once the dust settled on the violence, to indicate a willingness to resume negotiations.”
The problem is that conflicting forces pull both the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships. Right- wing members within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government are clamouring for a crackdown. The mayor of Jerusalem has urged citizens to arm themselves, and Agence FrancePresse reported this week of long lineups at a Tel Aviv gun shop. Atzili said the lesson of the first two intifadas is that an offensive response is counter- productive. “Especially in the second intifada in 2000, the way I see it, things escalated the way they did to a significant degree because of overreaction by the ( Israel Defense Forces),” he said.
“Once the intifada started, the IDF reacted in a way that resulted in many Palestinian casualties, many dozens killed in the first few days, and that basically moved the conflict to a whole new level. I think without it, the violence would have been much more limited.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been accused of inflaming emotions, most recently on Thursday when he erroneously claimed that Israelis had “summarily executed” a 13- year- old Palestinian boy who had stabbed two Israelis. In fact the boy was recovering in an Israeli hospital.
From the Palestinian side, if you define it as intifada, that means you are in a different place in terms of how you think about what kind of sacrifices you make.
Atzili said political games are unfolding on both sides of the dispute, with Israel’s anti- Arab right wing competing to see “who’s going to be more extreme in their pronouncements” and Abbas trying to fend off opponents who believe violence is the way to victory.
“Abbas’s basic approach is not through violence,” he said. “But he realizes that there is no diplomatic horizon right now, so his position is becoming weaker, so he also tries in a sense to ride the back of the tiger in order to remain popular or compete with his opposition.”
The nature of the current violence limits both sides’ ability to respond. The attacks that have killed eight Israelis in the past month have been carried out mostly by teenagers and women.
Writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz this week, Asher Schechter argued that the current “random, leaderless, and unco- ordinated” terror is worse than an intifada. It’s a preview of life in Israel where hope of achieving a two- state solution has vanished.
“This time it isn’t a conflict for armies or diplomats,” he wrote. “You can’t send a tank to fight a mother with a master’s degree wielding a knife. You can’t negotiate with a hate- filled 15- year- old armed with a screwdriver.”