Ongoing violence and widespread protests in Israel and the Palestinian Territories are growing larger and more confrontational, prompting fears of a third Palestinian intifada. Meanwhile, Israel is enacting harsher security measures, including cordoning off some neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, in a crackdown that could trigger more violence and resistance.
Five experts respond to these developments and examine their implications for Jerusalem, the Arab–Israeli conflict, and prospects for de-escalation. Please join the discussion by sharing your thoughts in the comments section.
It’s All About Jerusalem’s Holy Esplanade
Eran Tzidkiyahu
Eran Tzidkiyahu, a research fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking and a PhD student in the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris.
The current wave of violence sweeping Israel and Palestine in the last days wouldn’t have erupted if not for the current tensions around the Temple Mount (al-Haram al-Sharif). Escalation or de-escalation of the situation depends on what happens on the Holy Esplanade and around it. A dramatic declaration by Netanyahu to reaffirm limitations on visits by Jewish adherents of the Temple Mount Faithful, which seeks to rebuild the Third Temple on the site, would most probably bring an end to the cycle of violence. If these actions are accompanied by trust-building steps and an appeal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, they could even leverage the current crisis for the best. However, provocations by an Israeli politician on the Holy Mount, should they be serious enough to incur casualties, would cause the situation to get out of hand and might even lead to a third intifada.
Abbas expressed Palestinian worries about what happens around the Holy Mount in his September 30 speech at the UN General Assembly, where he opened with a warning that radical right-wing Jewish groups are—according to him—repeatedly violating the status quo in an attempt to impose a new order. Abbas also attacked the members of the Knesset who go up to the Temple Mount, whose actions strengthen the Palestinians’ belief that the change of status quo is not just the aim of a few radical groups, but an official Israeli policy. He accused Israel of de facto dividing the Holy Esplanade between Jews and Muslims “in direct violation of the status quo since before 1967 and thereafter” and called on the Israeli government “to cease its use of brutal force to impose its plans to undermine the Islamic and Christian sanctuaries in Jerusalem, particularly its actions at Al-Aqsa Mosque, for such actions will convert the conflict from a political to religious one, creating an explosion in Jerusalem and in the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory.”
Three days after the speech, Muhannad Halabi, a Palestinian student, stabbed to death two Jewish men and wounded several others in the Old City of Jerusalem, not far from the city’s holy sites, before being shot to death by the police. Before executing his deadly plan, Halabi wrote on his Facebook wall: “The Third Intifada has erupted. What is happening to al-Aqsa [mosque] is what is happening to our holy sites, and what is happening to the women of al-Aqsa is what is happening to our mothers and women. I don’t believe that our people will succumb to humiliation. The people will indeed rise up.”
Abbas did not threaten Israel. Rather, he warned us all, and he was not alone. Before, during, and right after the Jewish High Holidays, voices warned against an escalation around the Holy Esplanade. Indeed, starting in late July on Tisha B’Av (the Jewish commemoration day for destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem), and up to Yom Kippur (Jewish Day of Atonement) and the Muslim Eid al-Adha in late September, violence on the Holy Esplanade erupted time and again after increased visits by Jewish groups triggered violent responses by Muslim worshippers. This escalated into the current “knives intifada,” a wave of violence and hate that hasn’t been seen in the country since the days of the second intifada, which that also erupted in the mosque whose name it bears, the “Al-Aqsa Intifada.”
Understanding the centrality of the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif and the authenticity of Palestinian fears—whether they are justified or not—concerning the integrity of the holy site, is a prerequisite for understanding the current situation. With the religion-ization of the conflict as a whole, Jerusalem’s holy sites are being transformed from a religious symbol into a protected, national symbol.
Young Palestinians Lost Faith in the Peace Process
Mahmoud Jaraba and Lihi Ben Shitrit
Mahmoud Jaraba, researcher at Erlangen Center for Islam and Law in Europe (EZIRE) in Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.
Lihi Ben Shitrit, assistant professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia in Athens.
The ostensible spark for the current violence was the rise in provocations by Israeli politicians and right-wing activists at the Holy Esplanade and clashes between the Israeli police and Muslim protesters. Palestinians have viewed these events as growing evidence of the Israeli government’s intention to institute temporal and spatial division there to allow Jewish prayer. While Netanyahu has repeatedly affirmed Israel’s commitment to the status quo, the support by members of his own government for Temple activists has convinced Palestinians that “Al-Aqsa is in Danger,” as the ubiquitous slogan that has animated the current wave warns.
But underlying the situation is Palestinians’ growing and profound sense of suffocation and loss of hope. It has become clear to both the Palestinian people and its leadership that any prospect for an effective peace process that can deliver tangible results for the Palestinians has all but closed. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas officially stated last month that the Oslo Accords have become practically obsolete. Even though its effects, such as security coordination, an enormous bureaucratic regime of checkpoints, permits, and territorial division are still palpably felt, Palestinians do not see in its framework a guarantee for an eventual Palestinian state along the 1967 borders. Making matters worse, Palestinians rightly sense that their plight has been largely marginalized from the agenda of the United States, the Arab states, and the international community, which has been preoccupied by the civil war in Syria and the fight against the Islamic State.
The expansion of Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—and the rise in settler violence—have further worried and frustrated Palestinians. The burning to death of the Dawabsheh family near Nablus has shaken Palestinians’ already precarious sense of safety. The Palestinian Authority has been unable to offer protection from violence to Palestinians in both the territories it controls and in territories under Israeli control. Together with the worsening incompetence and corruption within Palestinian institutions and security apparatuses, this has exacerbated Palestinians’ sense of hopelessness.
It is no surprise then that the current wave of protests, as well as the random acts of violence, have been spontaneous and youth-based. They reflect the loss of faith in established political parties and actors, especially the Palestinian Authority (PA), which found itself unprepared for the size and spread of the unfolding unrest. For the PA, the possible intensification of the current unrest into a sweeping popular mobilization, of the likes of the first intifada, is a double-edged sword. A popular uprising could force Israel to the negotiation table (as had been the effect of the first intifada). But at the same time, the PA worries it will lose control to a new, younger, Palestinian leadership. The average age of Palestinians killed in the violence and protests is nineteen, according to data by the Palestinian ministry of health. They belong to a generation of Palestinians who were born, or were very young, during the second intifada and therefore have not been cognizant of the enormously painful price of violence that Palestinians endured. Moreover, most of them are not affiliated with the established political factions and do not see any future for themselves under the continuing occupation and the existing stagnant political arrangement.
The situation we are now witnessing in Jerusalem and the West Bank is a reiteration of recurring episodes that have been gradually heightening since the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir in July 2014. The scale is still not close to the one seen in 2000, which signaled the start of the second intifada, but it has already spread from Jerusalem to the West Bank and Gaza, and even to territories inside Israel proper. The development of events depends on the response of the PA, Hamas, Israel, and the Palestinian youth who are at the forefront of both protest and violence. What is clear is that the sense of frustration, suffocation and siege felt by Palestinian youth, which is shared and amplified over social media, will not disappear any time soon.
Hamas Toward a Third Intifada?
Imad Alsoos
Imad Alsoos, a Palestinian researcher on social movements and Islamic movements and a PhD candidate at the Free University of Berlin.
Although the military and the economic siege faced by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza failed to disintegrate it or to overthrow its rule, it has succeeded in weakening its ability to mobilize popular support. Consequently, it significantly reduced Hamas’s ability to maneuver politically. However, the current protests against Israeli violations and the settlers’ extra-judicial acts in Jerusalem and the West Bank created an array of opportunities for Hamas to mitigate the pressure on its rule in Gaza. This gives it a chance to regain its political importance in the West Bank vis-à-vis its internal rival, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. But will Hamas succeed in turning these protests into a third intifada? And what type of confrontations does Hamas aim to produce?
Despite the limited geographical spread of these protests compared to the first (1987-1993) and the second (2000-2005) Palestinian intifadas, Hamas officials and media outlets have already named the protests the “Jerusalem intifada.” Hamas is organizing popular events, and some of its members participated in what it dubs “heroic operations,” such as those that occurred in the village of Beit Furik on October 1 near the city of Nablus. Likewise, Hamas is currently facilitating the arrival of protesters to Gaza’s border and did not impede clashes involving stone-throwing with the occupation soldiers. Despite that, Hamas’s official position in its statements does not indicate the start of a third intifada and does not adopt that label. It seems that Hamas fears that the Israeli military occupation and the Palestinian Authority would use Hamas’s role in the protests to justify harsh repression against its activists and other protesters, ending this popular uprising.
Hamas aims at gradually turning these protests into a popular intifada by which the Palestinian cause can regain its popular momentum—far removed from the armed wings’ monopoly over the second intifada, when they hijacked its mass character and undermined its goals. Hamas is not currently interested in open military confrontations. Rather, it aims to create space for popular protests and limited “heroic operations” while avoiding the militarization of this popular uprising. These tactics are apparently in line with those of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, but the two sides differ over the intended scale and growth of the uprising. Hamas sees them as the beginning of an intifada as widespread as the previous intifadas, by which the movement would impose its “resistance project” and ease the restrictions it faces in Gaza and the West Bank. Meanwhile the Palestinian Authority aims to limit and govern these popular protests so they do not escape its control. Its goal is to improve its position in the negotiating process with the Israeli government and revitalize the political part of the Oslo Accords—currently limited to their military component (or so-called security coordination)—so it can achieve political gains that will necessarily lead to a two-state solution.
The current protests are still in their beginning, characterized by popular action arising from individual grievances. To sustain and expand as Hamas wishes, organized efforts and a consensus-based national program are crucial.
Netanyahu’s Response
Elhanan Miller
Elhanan Miller, Arab Affairs reporter for the Times of Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been resisting calls from his challengers on both sides of the political spectrum to implement harsher measures in tackling a wave of Palestinian violence across Israel and the West Bank.
On Tuesday night, Netanyahu authorized police to impose curfews and closures at their own discretion in Palestinian “centers of friction and incitement” in Jerusalem. He also allowed for a series of targeted measures against terrorists and their families, permitting the police to revoke their permanent Jerusalem resident status, confiscate property, and demolish homes. His security cabinet also augmented Jerusalem’s police force with hundreds of Border Patrol reservists and approved the recruitment of 300 security guards to patrol Jerusalem’s public transportation system, where a number of attacks have taken place.
These relatively modest moves were a far cry from the remedies proposed by opposition leader Isaac Herzog on Tuesday, October 13. These included a full closure of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem (Herzog had previously suggested sealing off the West Bank), temporarily banning all visits to the Temple Mount, and waging an “aggressive war” against Islamic websites and online incitement. On the right, Netanyahu has similarly ignored bellicose calls from legislators in his own Likud party, like Deputy Interior Minister Yaron Mazuz, who advocated “a widespread military operation.”
Netanyahu’s measured response to the violence is well advised—doubtless informed by the opinions of his security brass, who realize that disrupting the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would do more harm than good. Shutting Temple Mount, as Herzog proposed, would only inflame Palestinian spirits and vindicate those who claim that Israel is intent on changing the 48-year-old status quo in al-Aqsa.
However, the prime minister has failed to adequately tackle the root causes of Palestinian violence. By focusing on “incitement” by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel’s Islamic Movement, and militant Arab Knesset member Hanin Zoabi, Netanyahu has avoided identifying (or acknowledging) the corrosive effect of social media on disillusioned Palestinian youth. As proven by their posts on Facebook, those who carried out the attacks were deeply individualistic and anti-authoritarian. If anything, their attacks were committed in defiance of Mahmoud Abbas’s repeated calls for non-violent resistance to Israel rather than with reverence to them.
While correct in pointing to a link between current Palestinian activism and the wave of revolutions sweeping the Arab Middle East, Netanyahu’s messaging has overstated the point by likening the stabbings to Islamic State beheadings. Not only do such comparisons evoke unwarranted hysteria among the Israeli public, but they fail to identify the unique circumstances that lie beneath the Palestinian violence. It is unpopular in Israel to address the ongoing neglect of East Jerusalem in providing education, infrastructure, and social services. The neighborhoods from which most of the attackers hailed have been under full Israeli sovereignty since 1967.
Ultimately, it will be up to Netanyahu’s government to drastically improve the situation in East Jerusalem if any long-lasting calm is to be achieved.
