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from the March 10, 2008 edition

Is a third intifada brewing?

Many Palestinians say they do not want to return to the regimen of daily
violence.
By Ilene R Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Young Palestinian stone-throwers, whose images were synonymous

with past intifadas, resurfaced near Ramallah, the West Bank, Friday
to protest the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip

Bethlehem, West Bank

Fadi al-Amour and his friends – high school seniors – spent more time last week on the
street than in class. Every day, they marched on Rachel's Tomb, guarded by Israeli
soldiers, and, along with hundreds of other young Palestinians, pelted the nearest
symbol of Israeli power with rocks and Molotov cocktails.
"We were implementing what our leaders in the prisons tell us we should be doing.
Even Marwan Barghouthi has warned that this is where we're going: the third intifada,"
says Mr. Amour, mentioning the Fatah figure jailed by Israel in 2002 for his role in the
last intifada, which lasted from 2000 to 2004.
From Gaza rocket strikes and West Bank riots to a deadly shooting inside Jerusalem
late last week, many Palestinians are saying – or perhaps hoping – that these incidents
of violence will spark a new, much broader conflict with Israel.
Those who are encouraging a further escalation say it's overdue. Others, including
many who remember the misery of past intifadas, worry that this will just drag the
Palestinian cause down a dead-end street.
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"There might be an escalation in the coming weeks and months, and an escalation has
already been going on in Gaza in recent weeks and months," says Ali Jarbawi, a
political scientist at Birzeit University, near Ramallah.
But, he says, there might be a danger in rushing to label the events of the last few
weeks as the start of another intifada. "People are feeling a sense of despair. They're
frustrated by the [new Israeli-Palestinian negotiations] leading nowhere, and [by] the
internal situation between Hamas and Fatah," he says. "But I don't see that translating
into a concrete, continuous event, which I think is something that defines an intifada.
Let's wait and see."
But among many average Palestinians, the feelings that were present during the first
intifada (1987-93) and the second one are resurfacing again, and quickly.
On Sunday, at the mourning tent at the family home of Alaa Abu Dhaim, who killed
eight Israelis late last week at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem before being shot
and killed by a security guard, there were many mixed feelings expressed about where
Palestinians are headed, as the Islamic militants of Hamas continue to battle Israel on
one front and secular Fatah leaders are sitting down at the negotiating table with their
Israeli counterparts on another.
Mr. Abu Dhaim, a man in his mid-20s who was due to be married soon, was from the
East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jebel Mukaber, meaning he had an Israeli-issued
residency card and was free to travel and work in Israel.
For many across the tight-knit community of Jebel Mukaber, there was an
acknowledgment that Abu Dhaim's act might be a sign of returning to the days of
intifada. There was also much reluctance to see that happen.
"We hope this isn't the start of something bigger," says Mahmoud Abu Dhaim, an uncle
of the young man being celebrated as a shahid, or martyr. "For years they've been
talking about peace but there's no progress. So now we're going back instead of going
forward."
Another uncle, Tawfiq, says his nephew was "extremely normal and showed no sign of
political affiliations or training."
Conflicting reports have linked the gunman to Hamas and then to Hizbullah; the green
and yellow flags of both movements began springing up in Jebel Mukaber after the
news broke. Family members said that Israeli police here told them if the family didn't
take down all of the flags, as well as the "shahid posters" that already plastered the
walls of the neighborhood, they wouldn't be allowed to have a mourning tent at all.
The celebratory flyers read: "The Islamic Movement in Jebel Mukabar congratulates its
people for the martyr Alaa Abu Dhaim, who answered the call to his God in a heroic
operation in Dir Yassin." Dir Yassin was the name of an Arab village that existed near
the site of the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva until 1948, the year of the war that led to Israel's
establishment.
Just as the use of the name Dir Yassin conjures a sense of decades-old revenge so
close to Israel's 60th anniversary this May, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that
Abu Dhaim's choice of target was itself symbolic.
"The terrorist ... did not choose it by coincidence in his pursuit of victims," Mr. Olmert
said at Sunday's cabinet meeting. "Mercaz Harav is a very special place in Jerusalem
and for the Zionist movement. It is the flagship of religious Zionism. It is the place from
which have come forth the best soldiers for many generations," he said, adding that it
"has educated and nurtured tradition and legacy, as part of Israel's resilience."
At Abu Dhaim's home, from which there is a clear view of a West Bank separation
barrier cutting through the landscape, relatives and friends said the motivation for the
attack might have come from many places, but most palpably, from the recent
violence in the Gaza Strip.
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Responding to Palestinian missile attacks on its southern communities, Israel launched

a short but intensive military campaign on Gaza the week before last, in which
approximately 126 Palestinians died in the space of several days. Two Israeli soldiers
died in the operation; several citizens have been injured by Katyusha and Qassam
rockets launched by Palestinian militants.
According to the Associated Press, Egyptian officials have been meeting with Hamas
representatives in an effort to forge some kind of cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.
Up the street from Abu Dhaim's house in East Jerusalem, a group of men who would
usually be at work on Israeli construction sites sat drinking coffee together for the day
because they deemed the atmosphere too tense to go to work in the Jewish parts of
town, due to the yeshiva shooting.
Most had lived through one if not two intifadas. Now in their late 20s and early 30s
most were less than enthusiastic about the start of a new intifada and hoped it
wouldn't come to be. At the same time, they said, their lives had not improved and the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict seemed to be growing worse.
"No amount of violence is ever going to bring peace. But what we see on television of
what Israel is doing in Gaza is much more disturbing than seeing an army jeep on my
corner," says Mahmoud Abbas, no relation to the president.
For Amour and his friends, they welcome another intifada. About last week's shooting
attack in Jerusalem, they said: "Inshallah [God-willing], there should be more
operations like this."
Amour, the most vocal of his clique, explains it this way. "We welcomed it completely.
And if the Israelis hit Gaza again, things will start up again here."