"Drive By" Intifada in Jerusalem Unrest?

social media is driving this intifada that's not necessarily a bad thing for either party

The whole question of whether it is or is not an intifada distracts from the roots and dynamics of a new generation’s rage and hopelessness.

“We are sometimes using the tools of the 20th century to analyze a phenomenon of the 21st century,” said Shimrit Meir, the Israeli editor of an Arabic news site, The Source, who monitors Palestinian social media. “The way I see it is kind of a postmodern intifada."

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said clearly in an Israeli television interview last week, “We are not interested in an intifada.” But Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s central council and a leader of the first intifada, issued a news release the next day saying the third one had already begun.

“To me when I say intifada, I mean a general status of public opinion and public readiness to engage in resistance actions,” Mr. Barghouti said in an interview Thursday. “If we follow that definition, we are definitely at a new stage."

972mag.com comment fri:
"bureau chief Jodi Rudoren’s new article doesn’t even rise to the level of false moral equivalence"

_A view of the Dome of the Rock, which along with Al Aqsa Mosque is on the site in Jerusalem known as the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims and Temple Mount to Jews.
AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS
By JODI RUDOREN
NOVEMBER 6, 2014_

JERUSALEM — One cartoon circulating on social networks on Thursday depicted a car as the barrel of an automatic weapon, captioned in Arabic, “Revolt and resist, even by your car.” Another showed an odometer with the slogan, “Oh, revolutionary, use more gasoline, so we can have Palestine back.” A third simply had a vehicle in the red, white and green of the Palestinian flag hitting two men with Jewish stars on their black hats.

The new campaign called for a “run-over intifada,” apparently inspired by episodes Wednesday and last month in which Palestinian drivers plowed into Israeli pedestrians, killing three and injuring more than 20. It intensified discussion of whether the violence that has gripped East Jerusalem in recent weeks, fueled by a struggle over a site in the Old City sacred to both Jews and Muslims, amounted to a third intifada, or uprising, by Palestinians against the Israeli occupation.

Most Israeli and Palestinian leaders and commentators deny there is a new intifada, because the current unrest lacks the coordinated leadership, momentum and mass participation of the stone-throwing protests of the late 1980s or the suicide bombings of the early 2000s. But others say the whole question of whether it is or is not an intifada distracts from the roots and dynamics of a new generation’s rage and hopelessness.

“We are sometimes using the tools of the 20th century to analyze a phenomenon of the 21st century,” said Shimrit Meir, the Israeli editor of an Arabic news site, The Source, who monitors Palestinian social media. “The way I see it is kind of a postmodern intifada. So we might see periods of intense violence followed by long periods of containment and calm.”

The literal meaning of intifada is “shaking off.” Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist, defined it as a way “to reject the status quo and to seek to change it through concrete and meaningful steps,” and said it has come to stand for “a history-making event, a turning point.”

“Could the current conditions escalate to become a ‘turning point?’ I do not see it yet taking that route,” Mr. Shikaki said in an email interview. “For it to become that, it needs a major spark. Is the ground fertile for a ‘turning point?’ The answer is yes.”

The spark that lighted the first intifada came on Dec. 8, 1987, when an Israeli military truck hit cars carrying Palestinian workers returning to the Gaza Strip, killing four. Funerals that night exploded into a huge demonstration, and within days a new organization, the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, was issuing leaflets calling for general strikes, civil disobedience and boycotts.

Most experts say the second intifada’s spark was the Sept. 28, 2000, visit by Ariel Sharon — then a candidate for prime minister — to the holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary — the same revered plateau at the heart of the current conflict. The ensuing years of violence were directed by the Palestinian president, Yasir Arafat. About 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis had been killed by 2005, a trauma still raw in both societies.


There have been several potential sparks in recent months, including the July 2 burning alive of a Palestinian 16-year-old from East Jerusalem, a revenge attack for the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank. But Ingrid Jaradat Gassner of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem said the underlying conditions had fundamentally changed.

Former grass-roots leaders are now entrenched in the Palestinian Authority or nongovernmental organizations, Ms. Gassner said, with mortgages and other middle-class trappings that make them less willing to take to the streets. Political parties are disconnected from the populace. The separation barrier Israel built after the second intifada, and security coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, hampers mobilization.

“People are not willing to take risks and to sacrifice and to leave their daily lives if they do not think that they can accomplish something,” Ms. Gassner said. “It’s more like an outburst of frustration and anger than really an uprising that at the end has to have some coordination and some leadership, which we don’t have right now.”

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said clearly in an Israeli television interview last week, “We are not interested in an intifada.” But Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s central council and a leader of the first intifada, issued a news release the next day saying the third one had already begun.

“To me when I say intifada, I mean a general status of public opinion and public readiness to engage in resistance actions,” Mr. Barghouti said in an interview Thursday. “If we follow that definition, we are definitely at a new stage.”


Analysts on both sides agree that the most dangerous accelerant is the tension around the holy site, which is revered by Jews as the place where ancient Jewish temples once stood, and by Muslims as the site of Al Aqsa Mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock.

Right-wing Jews — including several Parliament members — have been agitating against Israel’s prohibition against non-Muslim prayer. Muslim worshipers have clashed frequently with Israeli security forces around Al Aqsa Mosque, a focal point of the “run-over intifada” social-media campaign.

“This is the one thing that could change the analysis,” said Ehud Yaari, a Jerusalem-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Politics and co-author of a book on the first intifada. “In order to have an intifada you need scale, you need it to be spread, you need to see participation of many, many sectors of the population. Al Aqsa, because of its sensitivity, it could propel wider sections of the population into a cycle of violence.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel reiterated Thursday that he would not change the status quo at the site. At the same time, Israel continued its crackdown on East Jerusalem, where Palestinian residents have complained about roadblocks to their neighborhoods and an increase in parking tickets and other fines.

The authorities on Thursday added concrete barriers around light-rail stations, two of which were the sites of the deadly vehicular attacks. An extra 1,000 officers are patrolling Jerusalem’s streets, and observation balloons now hover over Arab neighborhoods where about 800 youths have been arrested since July for throwing stones, gasoline bombs and fireworks. The Israeli cabinet this week increased the punishment for such offenses to 10 or 20 years in prison.

Anshel Pfeffer, a columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz, said these measures might well contain the violence but would do nothing to address Jerusalem’s deep challenges. Israelis and Palestinians both claim the city as their capital. Of its 800,000 residents, a third are ultra-Orthodox Jews who mostly do not work or serve in the military, and a third are Palestinians who refuse to vote in municipal elections to protest Israeli annexation of their neighborhoods.

“It’s a symptom of the dysfunctionality of this place, people don’t have any hope here, this is the most poor and intolerant city,” Mr. Pfeffer, whose five siblings have all moved out of Jerusalem, said of the unrest. “We don’t have a viable group of people who actually are invested in the city’s future, getting together and saying how can we build a city that our kids can live in.”

Majd Al Waheidi contributed reporting from Gaza.


#Jerusalem #intifada #Israel #Palestinians

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Misreading the Intifada

Israeli commentators, Yaron Friedman, of “Ynet News” and Haviv Rettig Gur, of the “Times of Israel” are clueless about the driving force behind the Palestinian mobilization and collective struggle. In two recent articles, and with unmistakable conceit, they attempted to highlight what they perceive as the failure of the current #Palestinian uprising, or #Intifada.

Gur argues that “the #terrorism” of the Palestinians is not a surge of opposition to Israel but a “howl against the pervasive sense that resistance has failed.” He reduces the Intifada to the mere act of alleged stabbing of Israelis and points out to the painful truth that the Palestinian Authority “elites” are paying lip service to the “martyrs,” while “simultaneously acting with determination on the ground to disrupt and stop attacks.”

In his long-winded article, “Losing #Palestine,” Gur essentially claims that the current struggle against Occupation stems mostly from Internet fervor and is more a deceleration of defeat than a strategy for victory, and that no Palestinian leader dares to be the first to accept this.

Friedman, on the other hand, describes the “knife Intifada” as a “fire without coal;” that the “insane actions of the stabbers” is designed to ignite religious fervor, ultimately aimed at blaming the Jews.

There is little sense in arguing against the unsympathetic approach #Zionist commentators use to describe Palestinians or their insistence on seeing Palestinian collective action, violent or otherwise, as an act of “terror;” on their refusal to see any context behind Palestinian anger or on how they inject a religious narrative at every turn, and lob “anti-Semitic” accusations unfairly, whenever they see fit.

But what is particularly interesting about the #Israeli take on the Palestinian Intifada, as presented by Friedman, Gur and others in the media, including from within the Israeli political establishment, is the attempt to display an exaggerated sense of confidence, that unlike other uprisings, this one is a farce. In fact, the Israelis are certain that the uprising is likely to deflate once the limited tools at its disposal are contained. This supposition has led #Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely to meet with representatives of YouTube and Google “to discuss ways to cooperate in what she calls the fight against ‘inciting violence and terrorism’,” reported MEMO, citing Israeli daily, “Maariv.”

This hasty self-assurance among Israeli state officials and media is predicated on several suppositions:
First, while the #PA has not yet moved to take part in crushing the Intifada, it has done its utmost to thwart the people’s effort at mobilizing Palestinians beyond the limited confines of the ruling #Fatah faction and its worthless promises of peace and statehood.

The PA knows well that if the Intifada escalates beyond its current scale, it could undermine — if not entirely challenge — the PA itself, which has served for many years as a line of defense for the Israeli Occupation. Thanks to the “security coordination” between the Israeli army and the PA, Palestinian resistance in the West Bank has, until recently, been largely contained.

Second, Hamas, although it has openly called for an escalation of protests against Israel, is swamped in its own problems. The siege on #Gaza, tightened further with the closure of the #Rafah border and the desperate need to rebuild what successive Israeli wars have destroyed, makes it difficult for #Hamas to take part in any effort that could open up another war front with Israel.

One must recall that the Israeli war on Gaza in the summer of 2014 was, itself, an Israeli attempt at redrawing the battle lines. At that time, a momentum for an Intifada was taking shape in the West Bank following an increase in Israeli army and settler violence against Palestinians. The war on Gaza managed to change the narrative of that budding conflict into an Israeli war aimed at defending its own borders, as Israeli hasbara dictated. Israel is now relying on the assumption that Hamas would avoid, at least for now, a repeat of that scenario which cost Palestinians over 2,200 lives and thousands of wounded and maimed, let alone the massive destruction of the already impoverished Strip.

Third, #Arabs are consumed with their own regional fights, whether for political or sectarian domination.
Previous Intifadas succeeded, or so goes the Israeli logic, because of Arab backing. But the most that Arabs have done is to pay lip service and nothing more. In fact, if the PA itself is keen on spoiling popular Palestinian initiatives, little can be expected of the Arabs, who are busy fighting one another.
Previous uprisings, but more importantly the 1987 “Intifada of the stones,” was not constructed as a strategy for liberation, but was a spontaneous reaction to a series of Israeli provocations and the failure of the Palestinian leadership, all positioned within the larger context of the ongoing Israeli occupation.
Palestinians do not revolt when “the time is right” for them to do so, but whenever their collective sufferings have reached to the point that they cannot be silenced anymore. Those, whether Israeli or even Palestinian intellectuals, who opine about the need for the Intifada to do this or that, change directions or tactics, stop altogether or move forward, are simply unable to understand that the momentum of a collective struggle cannot be dictated from above.
This is not to argue that a grassroots, genuine Palestinian leadership that operates outside the confines of fatalism and defeat as demonstrated by the PA is not a necessary step needed to galvanize the popular efforts. But that is a decision to be taken by the youth themselves, and its timing and nature should be determined based on their own reckoning.

The Israelis are counting on their shoot-to-kill policy. The Palestinian leadership is waiting for the anger to fizzle out before resuming its endless quest for a frivolous peace process and financial handouts. The Intifada itself, however, operates on the basis of an entirely different arithmetic: A collective spirit that can neither be intimidated by violence nor procured by funds.

In fact this is precisely why the Intifada started in the first place and, as long as the factors that led to its inception remain in place, it, too, is likely to continue and escalate, not for the sake of liberating Palestine through some magic formula, but for the urgent need to regain national initiative, redefine priorities and a new sense of collective, as Palestinian first and foremost.

http://www.arabnews.com/columns/news/843716

First Palestinian intifada erupted dramatically on 9 December 1987 after twenty long years of brutal Israeli military occupation

A #Palestinian protest agaisnt Israeli repressions that started on December 9, 1987, has become know in history as the "First #Intifada". The First Intifada lasted up until signing of 1993 Oslo Accords. 

The immediate cause of the uprising was when an Israeli army truck ran into a group of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, killing four and injuring seven. The traffic collision had not been an accident. The day after the traffic deaths, Palestinians throughout #Gaza Strip, West Bank and the East #Jerusalem exploded with pent-up rage.

Even though the traffic killing triggered the protest, mass demonstrations had occurred a year earlier when, after two Gaza students at Birzeit University had been shot by Israeli soldiers on campus on 4 December 1986, the Israelis responded with harsh punitive measures, involving summary arrest, detention and systematic beatings of handcuffed Palestinian youths, ex-prisoners and activists.

The overall Intifada was a protest against Israeli repression including beatings, shootings, killings, house demolitions, uprooting of trees, deportations, extended imprisonments, and detentions without trial.

According to the Save the Children Fund, in the first two year of the First Intifada 7 percent of all Palestinian minors were wounded by Israeli fire, beating or gas attacks. During the six-year-long Intifada over a 1,000 Palestinians were killed by #Israel, over 120,000 were arrested, and thousands were injured. 

Palestinian casualties have brought widespread international condemnation. UN Security Council resolutuions No. 607 and 608 were aimed to end Israel's deportations. In November 1988, the majority of countries in the UN General Assembly condemned Israel's actions against the Intifada. Any initiatives from the UN Security Coucil had little impact on Israel as its biggest ally on the issue happened to be the United States. 

The First Intifada ended with signing of the Oslo Accords, the first ever high-level agreement between Israeli and Palestinian representatives. 

The #Oslo Accords marked the start of the Oslo process, a peace process that is aimed at achieving a peace-treaty based on the #UN Security Council Resolution 242 and 338, and to fulfill the "right of the Palestinian people to self-determination". 

Palestinian want change: Sharp drop in support for intifada and Hamas

Less than half of Palestinians support a third intifada, compared to the 63 percent who supported it last month; poll also finds that Hamas would lose general Palestinian election.

Less than half of the Palestinians support a third intifada, a recent poll has shown, compared to 63 percent who supported the #violence at the beginning of the current #escalation. 

According to the survey, conducted last week in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, only 42 percent of Palestinians support a third intifada, a sharp drop from the 63 percent who supported it in November.

 However, the question that was posed to respondents focused on an intifada that has not yet erupted. Perhaps the intention is for an armed intifada similar to the second #intifada.

Palestinian riots in Bethlehem (Photo: Reuters)

 The survey was conducted by #Awrad, a Palestinian research institute that is considered reliable and prestigious, and whose publications are taken seriously.

 Despite frequent threats by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and other officials in the Palestinian Authority to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and return control over the territory to #Israel, the survey found that only 14 percent support such a move, while 79 percent are against it.

 The survey also examined the politicial views of the Palestinians, finding that if elections were held today in the #WestBank and Gaza, Fatah would win over Hamas. In the presidential elections, Abbas would win 36 percent of the vote compared to Hamas leader Ismail #Haniyeh who would only get 22 percent. But none of them should rest on their laurels, because 41 percent of the Palestinians said that they have yet to decide for whom to vote or whether to #vote at all.

 Even in the parliamentary elections, if they were held today, #Fatah would defeat Hamas. According to the survey, 39 percent would vote for Fatah compared with only 17 percent for Hamas. Here also, a number of undecided voters who are did not decide or those who said they would not vote is high, at 34 percent.

 This statistic that should worry Hamas in #Gaza is that 92 percent of Gazans support holding elections, suggesting dissatisfaction on their part. Another factor that strengthens this belief that 56 percent of Gazans agree with Abbas's claim that #Hamas is not interested in establishing a national unity #government and holding elections.

 The survey further found that 58 percent of Palestinians are unconcerned about a scenario in which Abbas resigns. Two-thirds of them believe that if they do so, the preferred option is to conduct elections in order to find a replacement. A solid majority also believes that there is a need to resume the post of vice president, which is not currently manned. According to the Palestinian constitution, the vice president replaces the president if he resigns, dies, or is unable to fulfill his duties.

 In general, most respondents believe that Palestinian society is not going in the correct direction. Two-thirds of West Bank residents indicated that they feel that the security situation has deteriorated in their area of #residence.

 This survey is likely to be met with relief at the #Muqata in Ramallah, after a poll conducted by another surveyor, Khalil Shikaki, published in December raised the alarming claim that two-thirds of #Palestinians support armed struggle against #Israel and showing a steep drop in support for Abbas.

 Shikaki's survey shocked #Ramallah and led #Abbas to make series of statements signaling #hope and appealing to the younger generation. It contrasted with the #despair expressed in his speech in the #UN General Assembly that according to some estimates was one of the catalysts that led to the outbreak of #escalation.

This week on Al Jazeera World: Stories From the Intifada

Between 1987 & 1993, during the First #Intifada, over 1300 Palestinians were killed.

Watch: http://aje.me/1yyBCIR

Selma Dabbagh -The Electronic Intifada-16 April 2015
When I started reading properly about the first Palestinian intifada, it was all over. I had experienced the tail end of it. I lived in al-Eizariya and worked in Jerusalem in 1992, within the then dynamic, yet family-like atmosphere of the Palestine Human Rights Information Centre, which alas, is no more.

Its demise is a long story involving its support of banned organizations, disputes over funding, restrictions on West Bank fieldworkers traveling to East Jerusalem and the death of Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini. It was finished off by the closure of its offices and raid of its database by Israeli forces almost ten years ago.

When I read about the first intifada, I saw Gaza as the shield, Ramallah the brain and Jerusalem the heart. But there was always a curious little town on the outskirts of Bethlehem that attracted me: Beit Sahour, which seemed like a flower.

The stories from Beit Sahour uplifted and charmed: the organized nonviolent resistance, the coordination committees of teachers, doctors and other professionals, the role of women, the drive for agrarian self-sufficiency and the strike actions of the pharmacists. Yet in all this, I found no reference to cows. I, like the Israeli forces, must have been looking in the wrong place.

The Wanted 18 was a surprise. It is a film about a real story that captivated directorAmer Shomali’s imagination as a child, the story of how the town of Beit Sahour bought 18 cows from an Israeli kibbutz in order to start producing its own milk. It tells the tale of a town trying to attain independence by boycotting taxes and produce. It is the story of nonviolent resistance, its heroics and psychology.

Brave men, women … and cows

I saw the film first at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in Amsterdam, knowing nothing about it or its makers. I assumed it was about brave men and women, which indeed it was, but the story was told in such a way that one could only comprehend the people if one also understood the cows, their individuality and unexplored potential. “Maybe,” says the narrator, “you think cows are lazy, eating all day with nothing in their heads. Maybe you should think again.”

The Wanted 18 is a complex story told playfully. There are comic strips, cartoon figures with big lips, animals with long eyelashes, a magical white calf that defies expectations by leaping over a two-meter-high fence, and jokes that rely on exaggeration and irony. Cartoon cows fart in the opening scenes. Ha ha! It’s a laugh!

After the screening, in a Skype interview from Ramallah, Shomali was sweet, jokey, with a fresh face and a cutely accented voice. “I grew up in a refugee camp in Syria,” Shomali’s voice chirpily explained. “We could not go out,” he added without resentment. “Boring life,” he said, disposing of it.

But none of the humor and buoyancy detracts from the force of this film, its intelligence, politics and careful editorial choices. There are no unwarranted digressions. Each character is given their say and their space as the extraordinary individuals that they are. It is the modestly portrayed gravitas of these personalities that make this film such an achievement. Even more so, when set amid what they have been up against.

“The only thing we controlled was the air that we breathed,” one interviewee states. The occupation, says another, “put it into your head that you are subhuman, you are not equal.” Not subhuman, superhuman. Not unequal, but confidently superior.

These men and women — Jad Ishaq, Siham Taweel, Ghassan Andoni, Jalal Qumsieh, Makram Saad, Anton Shomali and his mother, Ayman Abu Zuluf, Naji Musleh and, importantly, the butcher’s wife — were exceptional in not only coping with, but challenging great difficulties, and developing strategies to survive with dignity and humor. As one Palestinian interviewee states, “It was very clear. Mentally we were superior to them.”

Good guys, bad guys

For any dramatic story to work, you need heroes and anti-heroes, goodies and baddies. The goodies are those characters listed above: brave, grounded, articulate, clear-thinking people, many now in their sixth or even eighth decade of life. All have lost friends and family; many have lost months and years to prison. All live under occupation.

The baddies are two men who seem pretty comfortable in their own skins. They are in need of some dental attention, but otherwise they are doing okay. Their hair is cropped short; they wear well-ironed shirts, and occasionally one of them laughs. They are Ehud Zrahiyya, advisor to the Military General on Arab Affairs in the Israeli Civil Administration and Shateil Levi, with the same unit during the first intifada.

Zrahiyya occasionally spied on cows as part of his job, which essentially tasked both he and Levi with destroying the nonviolent resistance in Beit Sahour. This, they explain, was harder to put down than more violent movements in other towns. But it was critical to do so, they stress, as the movement was about to spread.

In the short-term, it seems that the anti-heroes won this time around. It would have been difficult for them not to. They had, they boasted, “all means at [their] disposal.” They killed, arrested, tortured, imposed curfews, confiscated household belongings. They “made life hell.”

It took a long time, but the Israeli Civil Administration won. Zrahiyya is tanned and laughing, Shateil was promoted. Their zeal to stop the efforts of doctors to sweep the streets and butchers’ wives to milk cows, to destroy the resistance movement of a town where “everybody was giving the little that they [could],” and “the whole society [was] in a total harmony,” did not come across as motivated by ideology, but an unquestioning following of orders, where moral conscience has been trained to shut down in order for military objectives to be achieved.

Shateil Levi even understood where his opponents were coming from: “If I were them, I would not want to pay taxes. I would only pay taxes to my own government.” He understood, he empathized, but yet he destroyed to get a promotion. If you look a little closer, maybe his eyes seem a little tired. It is a terrible legacy to leave behind on a personal basis, even if professionally he was rewarded.

Shomali told the Amsterdam audience what it was like to show the film in Ramallah and invite the protagonists from Beit Sahour. “They walked out of the cinema like kings,” he said, smiling. And so they should have. They deserve reverence, their names graffitied on walls, a place in Palestinian history and the history of civil resistance, while the rest of us await the return of the white cow, or maybe go out and find one ourselves.

Selma Dabbagh is a British-Palestinian writer. Her debut novel, Out of It, is published by Bloomsbury (2012).
The Wanted 18
Directed by Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan
Intuitive Pictures, National Film Board of Canada, Bellota Films, Dar Films
#Intifada #FreePalestine #BoycottIsraHELL





The German Intifada
+Vijeta Uniyal, Israellycool 

...It was just last week when German interior ministry was basking in its success, taking Twitter jibes at the French, faulting the ‘lack of integration and inequality’ for causing all those terrorist attacks in France. There is even a fine German word for that; Schadenfreude.

With three major terrorist attacks in less than a week, Germany is now waking up to its own ‘intifada’. As a wise statesman once said, “German problems are rarely German problems alone,” they have a sinister habit of engulfing all those around them – and often at unbearable costs. Two World Wars and the Holocaust are painful reminders of that fact. The European ‘migrant crisis’ is proving to be no exception.

The flood gates were opened when Chancellor Merkel single-handedly scrapped the Dublin Regulation, the legal framework in place for over 25 years to screen and register asylum seekers coming to Europe. What resulted could only be described as mass migration of biblical proportions which continues to this day. Millions of young Arab and Muslim men ‘self-identifying’ themselves as ‘Syrian Refugees’ headed towards the coveted Welfare paradise of Europe. The multi-billion deal offered to Turkey to secure Europe’s land borders is now teetering on the brink of collapse.

The battle that Israel had been fighting alone, has now arrived in the heartland of Europe. Many of these young men from North Africa and Middle East streaming today into Europe have been marinating in doctrine of political Islam that not only hates the Jews, but despises everyone and everything that dares to deviate from its own confounded world view. The prejudices which they bring with them are reinforced in local German mosques, from what they watch and read in Arabic language media/social media.

Read the whole thing: http://bit.ly/2a7HQXx

Below: Courtesy Der Standard, YouTube

#germany  
#intifada  
#terrorism  
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Nobody should be nostalgic for the Second Intifada. It was an ugly period, full of devastating incidents on both sides. Israel’s prime minister at the time, Ariel #Sharon, used aggressive means to thwart Palestinian attacks. But Sharon, for better or worse, was constantly on the initiative: He ordered a military operation to reoccupy Palestinian towns in the West Bank after the Passover night massacre that killed 30 Israelis in March 2002; began construction of a barrier that separated Israel from the West Bank; and later on, fearing a loss of support for Israel in the West as well as growing rifts in Israeli society, ordered a unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu’s never-ending era as prime minister has been far less eventful. To the prime minister’s credit, there is always a significant gap between his tough rhetoric and actual cautiousness when applying #military force. He has avoided unnecessary wars with #Hezbollah, limited the scope of armed conflicts with Hamas, and showed much better recognition of the risks posed by the so-called Arab Spring than Western leaders, who were thrilled by events in #Tahrir Square five years ago.

But the current mini #Intifada has caught Netanyahu, as well as Israeli security agencies, ill-prepared. Out of more than 280 attacks since Oct. 1, only one — the first — has been the work of an organized Hamas cell. Most others were “lone-wolf” attacks, initiated by young Palestinians with no prior record. The Israelis are now trying to develop a better way of monitoring Palestinian social media, hoping that this could provide them with clues for future attacks. But as Army Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot admitted last month, not even one attack has so far been foiled because of an early warning supplied by Israel’s massive intelligence-gathering apparatus.

It is, of course, much harder to identify in advance a 16-year-old armed with a knife he took from his mother’s kitchen than a suicide bomber sent on his way by a small network. But the series of attacks has eroded many Israelis’ sense of relative personal #security, which has been Netanyahu’s main accomplishment — and the source of his electoral strength — during the last seven years. Some attacks initiated by #Arab-Israeli citizens have also damaged the sensitive relationship between Jews and Arabs inside Israel, and there is a growing risk of a new round of violence in Gaza, where Hamas has successfully rebuilt its network of #tunnels.

Faced with such challenges, Netanyahu’s rhetoric has become more bellicose, but little has changed in Israel’s actual military stance. The reason for the Israeli army’s rather restrained approach is the attitude of both Defense Minister Moshe #Yaalon and Gen. Eizenkot. The conduct of these two leaders represents the only source for relative optimism in this rapidly darkening picture: Eizenkot, in particular, has been quite outspoken about lessons he learned from the Second Intifada and has insisted on the need to avoid collective punishment against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Eizenkot has also been wary of suggestions that the army conduct a massive incursion inside the #Gaza Strip as a preemptive measure against the #Hamas tunnels. The two officials support a rise in the number of work permits for Palestinians inside Israel; earlier this month, the security cabinet approved their proposal to increase the number by 50 percent, to 90,000 permits.

Nahum Barnea, a veteran political commentator in Israel and a critic of #Netanyahu, wrote this month that in his unassuming way, #Eizenkot is now filling Israel’s leadership vacuum. A few more of these public compliments, and the #IDF commander might find himself at odds with the prime minister’s office.

Meanwhile, the political discourse in Israel continues to deteriorate. On Feb. 18, two teenage #Palestinian boys stabbed two Israelis at a supermarket in a settlement north of #Jerusalem; one died from his wounds, and the other was severely injured. An Israeli citizen shot and wounded the two boys, who were evacuated to an Israeli hospital, along with the wounded Israelis.

The Israeli right quickly pinned blame for the attack on an unlikely source. “I hope that Eizenkot’s remarks yesterday [Wednesday] against the use of automatic weapons while dealing with attackers didn’t cause life-threatening hesitation,” Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz wrote on Facebook. “Terrorists who attack #Jews should not come out of this alive.”

Abbas fears an internal intifada

Analysis: The chairman of the Palestinian Authority is worried that ongoing economic woes will lead to an uprising against him and in recent speeches has focused on social issues. Hamas is waiting for the PA to collapse even though they could be brought down at the same time.

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has given two speeches in the last few weeks, an exceptional occurrence following an extended period in which he was not heard and rarely seen. The Muqata'a is making sure to create noise and to parcel out vague clues regarding the importance of the speeches, in order to gain extensive media coverage among Palestinians.
 
The first speech came on the last day of 2015, in order to mark the 51st anniversary of #Fatah's founding. A few days after that Abbas delivered another speech in #Bethlehem.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Muqata'a in #Ramallah (Photo: EPA)

 It would be reasonable to assume that the speeches focused on burning political issues and the current escalation, but Abbas surprisingly dedicated a significant part of his statements to employment and housing for young people.

 Addressing youngsters, Abbas said that they are "the tomorrow and future of Palestine" and that he understands their feelings of fury and their distress at the Israeli occupation and lack of a political horizon.

"We are with you in order to turn this anger into energy and to continue building and developing our homeland and society," Abbas said. He then segued into talking about the qualities of the young generation and of the need to build a future and employment opportunities. Exceptionally, he announced the establishment of a national fund to support youth #employment.

 In his Bethlehem speech Abbas presented his vision for housing for young couples and spoke of the efforts that would be made to build #housing units for the next generation.

 Abbas' statements did not come out of the blue. Two weeks beforehand the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, headed up by respected political scientist Khalil Shikaki, published a worrying survey that showed a worrying radicalization among the Palestinian public regarding the current escalation with Israel.

 Two thirds of those questioned expressed support for an armed struggle against Israel and said that such a move would better serve Palestinians better than negotiations.

The last time that a majority supported an armed #intifada was in 2004. Shikaki estimated that the results of the survey show that Palestinian youngsters are significantly alienated from their leadership, and that they do not consider the political system any more legitimate.

 On the same day that the survey was published, #Abbas addressed the escalation and said that it is justified, even saying that has grown out of the despair of the younger Palestinian generation.

 At the same time, another #Palestinian research institute published a survey which questioned Palestinians aged 16-35, thus revealing the frustration of the young generation.

Eighty-four percent of them said that their future is shrouded in danger, while a similar number responded that they do not have sufficient options for the future. Two thirds of those questioned said that the Palestinian Authority is not playing a positive role in the current escalation.

Following loud whispers, Hamas operatives recently arrested a number of bloggers and activists that probably criticized the government in Gaza. It seems that Hamas is very worried about protests against it, which is also perhaps the reason that the organization's deputy leader Ismail Haniyeh is increasingly seen in public, in the street, at mourning tents and in hospitals. Haniyeh and the Hamas leadership all that they can to broadcast the message "we are with you and we are like you" to the public in the Strip.

 #Hamas' strategy is to bring the Palestinian Authority to collapse, between Israel's doing and the Palestinian public's doing. It's not clear to what extent it's understood in #Gaza that an Arab Spring protest in the #WestBank, should it erupt, could within hours – or at most days – catch up with the Gazan public, which is crushed under the burden and under the curfew.

 In such an eventuality, Hamas will try to divert fire towards Israel. This is exactly what the organization did when it felt the sword dangling over its neck at the start of summer 2014 – and then Operation Protective Edge began.

Intifada Jerusalem

Underscoring the forecast of a third and more intense #intifada, Pakistan called for a settlement of the Middle East conflict through an independent, contiguous and viable State of #Palestine, based on the pre-1967 borders, with East #Jerusalem as its capital.


“We believe that durable peace can only be achieved through political solutions, not through heavy-handed tactics and use of live ammunition against unarmed civilians,” Ambassador Dr Maleeha Lodhi, permanent representative of #Pakistan to the #UnitedNations, told the General Assembly's Fourth Committee, which deals with special political decolonisation matters



Palestinian Women: the Intimate Intifada

Recognizing and understanding Palestinian women’s unprecedented engagement in the latest wave of violence in Israel and the West Bank is a small but important step in ending this new uprising.

"Time for peace talks. We don't need government for that."

Kitchen knives. Meat cleavers. Scissors. Stones. The current weapons of choice used by Palestinians in this latest wave of violence in Israel and the West Bank. At the time of writing, 22 Israelis, 150 Palestinians, an American and an Eritrean have been killed. In the past three months, there have been 105 stabbings - and many of the perpetrators have been women.

With murmurings that this wave of violence constitutes a new uprising - a third intifada - I believe that if this is indeed a third intifada, it is very different than the two previous ones: it is less orchestrated - and more intimate.  An Intimate Intifada.

As of now, sixteen of the assailants in this “intimate” #intifada have been #women. Seven of these women were seen stabbing #Jewish men in public spaces, seven of them were apprehended before the attempted stabbing, one of them attempted a car ramming and one of them had an explosive device in her car that detonated early. The disturbing novelty of this intifada is not that women are capable of engaging in violence - women have willingly and passionately committed acts of terrorism for centuries, as has been thoroughly researched by terrorism scholars Mia Bloom and Yoram Schweitzer - but the novelty here is the intimacy of these attacks.

It is intimate because the weapon of choice, knives, requires a physical closeness between the attacker and the victim. Unlike in suicide terror or bomb attacks, there is no physical distance that shields the killer from the eyes of the doomed. It is intimate because its agents are not jihadi foot soldiers but instead self-motivated individuals, acting on their own agency.

These sixteen women assailants embody two main traits: they are young; twelve of the sixteen are under the age of 23, the youngest being 14; and they are self-motivated, acting as ‘lone-wolves.’ These woman were born into the post #OsloAccords era. Born into a time with the continued presence of the #occupation and little to no meaningful dialogue or resolution between #Israel and #Palestine on the table. While I do not condone this violence, the hopelessness and desperation felt by the assailants are important dimensions to it.

Why are such numbers of Palestinian women suddenly up arms?

The first intifada, 1987-1993, did not have a call to action among women. Instead, as Mira Tzoreff argues, women were tasked with being the “birthers” of the revolution, the cultivators, the mothers of the sons who would carry out the attacks. The second intifada, 2000-2005, brought about the first female Palestinian suicide bomber, Wafa Idris. It brought about direct female engagement in the violent acts, in the terror. As suggested by Yoram Schweitzer, these women were mostly in their 20s, unmarried or divorced, and childless. It is believed that these women were looking for some way to absolve the shame and/or dishonor they brought upon themselves and their families. #Martyrdom proved to be a way to combat their dishonor or shame.

What makes the women tick?

I believe that one of the reasons we are seeing an escalation of women’s involvement in this intifada is because the nature of the attacks require little to no planning. A stabbing with a kitchen knife is something an individual can plan without needing the infrastructure of a terrorist organization. Yet I also believe the nature of the attacks is directly related to the desperation many Palestinians, especially women, who bear the main burden, are feeling and the idea that desperate times call for desperate measures. Women are acting because they are desperate to change their situation; women act because they believe that their male counterparts are not doing enough in the fight against the occupation.

As most assailants were killed on site, little is known about what truly led them to engage in this intimate form of violence, what led them to pick up their knives. From the little we know we can only put together an incomplete mosaic of different motivations.

We only really understand two backstories. The first is of Isra’ ‘Abed who committed the Afula attack on October 9th.  She was apprehended for what was perceived to be brandishing a knife at a local bus station. However, law enforcement soon concluded that she, in fact, wanted to be caught and induce the police to shoot her. Murder by #suicide.

She is a divorced mother who suffers from mental illness, has a history of hospitalizations and lost custody of her child after attempting suicide. She posed as a terrorist, hoping and possibly knowing, what reaction it would cause.


'Awakening,' by Akrem Boutora, has been widely shared by Palestinian activists. Photo: Haaretz

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Rasha Ahmad Hamed ‘Oweissi perpetrated the attempted stabbing in Qalqilia on November 9th. Rasha was shot and killed after attempting a stabbing at a checkpoint and left behind a suicide note. In this note, she highlights her motivations for the attack:

“My dear mother, I don’t know what is happening. I just know that I’ve reached the end of the road. And this is the road that I chose with full consciousness. In defense of my homeland, the young men and women, I cannot bear what I see anymore. But what I know is that I can’t take it anymore…Forgive me for everything, I have nothing else but this path. I am sorry for this departure.”

While these two women represent attempted stabbings and there is an understanding of why they wanted to engage or be perceived as engaging in this #violence, it is important to remember that there are assailants who use being a woman to their advantage. The November 8th attack in Beitar Illit (south of Jerusalem) caught Halawa Alian on camera engaging in several minutes of conversation with an Israeli security guard before ultimately reaching into her purse, pulling out a knife and stabbing him.

And Still...                                             

In October, #Hamas released a graphic 45-second video tutorial instructing Palestinians how to stab a #Jew. In this video, actors portrayed two religious Jews cornered by a Palestinian man and stabbed to death. As disturbing as the video was, it is important to note that women played no role in it. Despite that notable absence, other assailants, such as Muhannad Halabi (stabbing attack on October 3) and Ishaq Badran (stabbing attack on October 10) specifically mentioned the need to protect their #Muslim sisters as a motive for their actions. Ergo, there is a nuance.

Mia Bloom and Yoram Schweitzer argue that only when times get extremely desperate do women get actively involved in terror. So, are Palestinians at a breaking point? Bombs and IEDs are no longer the weapons of choice, instead, going to the streets and stabbing with knives is the new course of action. I believe that such actions highlight an entirely new level of anger and desperation among Palestinians. Recognizing and understanding Palestinian women’s unprecedented engagement in this violence is a small but important step in ending this new intifada.

https://goo.gl/CHN7f8

Women’s liberation: Violence and Palestinian women in the third intifada

Women make good terrorists: They don’t conform to Israel’s traditional security profiles, arouse less suspicion, and their actions can attract more international media attention.

Only a couple of weeks into the current wave of violence, now widely referred to as the "third intifada," came the first attack by a woman: On September 22 Hadeel al-Hashlamon, a19 year old, attempted to stab an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint in the West Bank. 

Stereotypically, women have traditionally been seen as the victims of violence, whether domestic or political. However, the historical record makes it clear that women have not just been the passive victims of #terrorism, but also have played an active role.

In Muslim history, although women took part in battles at the time of the Prophet Mohammed, their participation was gradually restricted, as women's roles became consigned to the private sphere. Due to their proportionally greater prominence, Palestinian women have historically been seen by academics and the media as among some of the most liberated women in Arab society.

Women make good terrorists. They offer a strategic advantage in conducting terrorist attacks; as women do not conform to traditional security profiles, they typically arouse less suspicion, and their actions often garner more international media attention.

While the first intifada saw both Palestinian men and women take part in violence against Israel, the second intifada was more male dominated.  Women were excluded from many aspects of the public and political spheres of the movement. While women did participate and initiate attacks during the second intifada, it was rarer, and the violence was mostly carried out and dominated by men and male-controlled organizations.

While Palestinian organizations, especially religious organizations like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were in the past reluctant to use women in terrorism, they began to change their tune in the early 2000s. Hamas' spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (killed in 2004) went through a significant change in approach and rhetoric regarding the role women could play in attacks.  In 2000 Sheikh Yassin stated that women's participation in martyrdom was problematic. However, by 2002, he noted that women, just like men, were drawn to jihad. 

This current wave of terrorism has seen women playing a more prominent role in the violence rather than being relegated to secondary one. According to the IDF, since mid-September 2015, approximately 54 stabbing, shooting and vehicular attacks have occurred; of these attacks, women have been responsible for carrying out nine attacks, or approximately 16.6 percent of the terrorist attacks.

http://goo.gl/quR5ih

Jerusalem attacks likely do not portend a third Palestinian intifada

The Palestinian point of view because they're getting hammered in the West. There is a power struggle between Hamas and Fatah. And Israel. Israel's security relationship with the PA is parallel to the Jordanian agreement. That is the map that Israel has drawn. Is it a roadmap to peace or just a way to sideline Hamas? One thing is for sure Israel feels that is the same thing and the Jerusalem synagogue massacre and Hamas's response are the reason they are aggressively making their case. the question is will they hear it in the Gulf states and if so what exactly is the trade off? we are here now. no answers. but you can bet they are talking about Palestinians.

picture Reuters via america.aljazeera.com so this is an apology for what has occurred. I believe it speaks for many and not just Palestinians.

Analysis: Violence is increasing but is not being directed as part of a strategy by Palestinian organizations

November 18, 2014 12:00PM ET
by Dalia Hatuqa @DaliaHatuqa

RAMALLAH, West Bank—A deadly attack by two Palestinian men armed with axes and guns on a Jerusalem synagogue on Tuesday has quashed Israeli and Palestinian political leaders’ hopes for a restoration of calm in the city. Tamping down confrontation was the goal of the emergency summit in Jordan late last week, which produced a restrained Israeli approach to policing Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound and a lull in weeks of clashes there between Israeli forces and Palestinian protesters.

But unrest continued elsewhere in the West Bank through the weekend. At the Hizma checkpoint — mainly used by Israeli settlers entering Jerusalem from the northern West Bank — a few dozen Palestinian protesters were met on Friday with a significant police and army presence. Forces lobbed stun grenades at the Palestinians, who gathered to demand what they called their “right to get to Jerusalem” and attempted to stop settlers from entering the city’s occupied east.

Earlier, the same group used makeshift ladders and ramps to scale a section of Israel’s separation wall made of large concrete slabs, close to the Qalandiya airport, which has not been used for more than a decade. Once across, they managed to cut the razor wire around the deserted tarmac. A few hours later, a second group of Palestinians was confronted with tear gas at the Qalandiya checkpoint as a demonstration erupted following prayers.

Two days later, Jerusalem ignited again over the suspected lynching of a Palestinian bus driver.

For months, scenes like these have unfolded across the West Bank. Since July at least 17 Palestinians have been killed — several of them young unarmed teens shot in clashes with Israeli forces. In Jerusalem a series of deadly knife attacks and hit-and-run car attacks have killed at least 11 Israelis, including a baby, a border policeman and a soldier.

The car attacks and stabbings occurred at an alarmingly high frequency, prompting media speculation about a new intifada, or uprising against Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Some have already labeled it the third intifada. Others have called the latest wave of attacks a car intifada, with viral memes — portraying a steering wheel as a rifle and a gas pedal as a magazine — spreading on social media.


The attacks were also the subject of a song, “Run Over the Settler,” written and performed by two local Palestinian musicians and posted on YouTube. The song, set to Arabic pop music, starts off with a reference to a 5-year-old Palestinian girl, Inas Shawkat, who was killed in a hit-and-run incident by an Israeli settler in the West Bank on Oct. 19.

“We took revenge for her death, and for your sake, Aqsa, we will run over settlers,” goes the song by Anas Jaradat and Mohammad Abu al-Kayed. “People don’t need weapons anymore. They are fighting with their cars.”

Most of the men carrying out the car and knife attacks were said to be politically affiliated, and various Palestinian armed groups have praised their actions, but none have explicitly claimed responsibility for what have been widely termed lone-wolf acts, which are difficult for Israeli authorities to control or curb.

These sporadic actions are measures taken by people who have nothing left to lose, said Jibril al-Rajoub, a former security chief in the West Bank and now head of the Palestinian National Soccer Federation. “Frustration, disappointment, losing hope in the future is a syndrome of what’s [happening] on the ground,” he said. “Wherever you move, you face settlements, checkpoints, humiliation, and living conditions in East Jerusalem are different from the western part.”

Unlike the second intifada from 2000 to 2005, these attacks do not seem to be led by anyone or orchestrated by any group, said Hanan Ashrawi, a PLO member. “Acts taking place in response [to the Israeli occupation] are individual actions. There is no policy. There is no body coming out and saying, ‘Let’s react.’ Israel has succeeded in provoking every single Palestinian.”

Talk of another intifada is deeply troubling to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who — since assuming Yasser Arafat’s mantle as leader of the PLO a decade ago — has pursued a strategy of negotiations to end Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territories. So far he has limited his response to the recent escalation in violence to calls for maintaining the status quo on the Aqsa compound, upon which Israel has placed heavy restrictions. Israel currently bars Jews from worshipping at the mosque compound, which many contend is built on the site of an ancient Jewish temple.

“Israel’s leaders are making a huge mistake if they think they can now establish facts on the ground and divide prayer times at Al-Aqsa mosque as they did at Al-Ibrahimi Mosque [in Hebron],” Abbas told Palestinians gathered at the presidential compound in Ramallah on Nov. 11 for the 10-year commemoration of Arafat’s passing. “By doing these things, they are leading the region and the world into a devastating religious war.”

But Abbas is facing increasing pressure to address the occupation more directly, not only from the disgruntled Palestinian street but also from within his Fatah party. Last week Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah leader who has been in an Israeli prison for more than 10 years after being convicted on multiple murder charges arising from his role in the second intifada, released a message calling “resistance” the “shortest path to freedom, ending occupation.” Barghouti suggested the Palestinian Authority (PA) reconsider its role and support activists’ efforts to promote a boycott of Israel — a tactic that, despite gaining widespread international support, the PA has largely ignored.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to Abbas’ remarks about a “religious war” by accusing him of “incitement.” But Israeli security officials have acknowledged that close coordination with Abbas’ government was key to maintaining stability in the occupied territories. In fact, the principle role of the PA’s security force, formed after the Oslo Accord in 1993, has been to quell anti-occupation protests.

Palestinian forces have frequently quashed protests that erupted for economic reasons or over mounting frustration with the political stalemate and disgruntlement over the security coordination with Israel — which continued unabated even during the height of the Gaza war in July and August .

That coordination continues despite some of the worst unrest in years and no prospect of an end to the occupation for the foreseeable future.

For example, the PA routinely apprehends Palestinian militants in the West Bank at Israel’s request and transfers them to Israel for prosecution. Such practices have led many Palestinians to characterize the PA’s coordination with Israel as collaboration.

But not even the PA’s policing role — whether in the form of physical force or intelligence gathering — has been able to shield Israel from the recent spate of attacks in Jerusalem. Because of their spontaneous nature, acts by Palestinians from the West Bank (the stabbing of an Israeli soldier in Tel Aviv on Nov. 10 was, for example, carried out by a man from Nablus’ Askar refugee camp) have proved difficult to anticipate by Palestinian intelligence officials, who often share information on imminent threats with their Israeli counterparts.

Under mounting pressure from Palestinians, PA officials have threatened on a number of occasions to end security coordination with Israel.

“We need to redefine our bilateral relations with the Israeli occupying power,” Rajoub said. “As long as he continues bullying [us], Netanyahu will not deserve to behave with him as a partner or as a neighbor. Which means that all bilateral relations and channels will be closed in all fields. He [cannot] enjoy both security and settlements at the same time.”

Fear of a domestic political backlash has so far restrained the PA from deploying its forces to stop youngsters from hurling stones and fireworks at Israeli soldiers. Instead, the PA has focused its rhetoric on plans to head to the United Nations Security Council to submit a draft resolution on an end-of-occupation deadline.

If the United States uses its veto in the Security Council or if the council’s nine votes are not secured, Palestinian officials said they would join more international organizations, including the International Criminal Court — which could bring unwelcome scrutiny of Israel.

“[There] are [many] ways of resisting the occupation,” Ashrawi said. “Popular nonviolent resistance or civil disobedience or even going to the U.N. and having recourse to international law. Going to U.N. is not a threat ... This is part of our strategy. It’s not something negative. It’s a way to try and rescue any chance for peace.”

But some argue that Abbas’ security coordination with the Israelis will not disappear, no matter how strained bilateral relations get.

“The security coordination with Israel is sacred, and that’s unacceptable for most Palestinians,” said Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Bethlehem-based activist and university professor. “The PA is trying to squeeze through a tough time back to where it started — back to the path of Oslo, which most people realize is a dead end.”

He said a “crystal ball” would be needed to know whether tensions will eventually give way to a full-fledged intifada, but he acknowledged that it may prove difficult for one to arise because of the intra-Palestinian political divide and a lack of a supportive political leadership.

“The pressure is building as a pressure cooker builds steam,” Qumsiyeh said. “Acts of individual violence that we see are merely a symptom of this unsustainable system.”

#Jerusalem #intifada #Hamas #Palestinians

america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/11/18/why-talk-of-a-thirdpalestinianintifadaispremature.html


Real Palestinians Tire of Bloody Intifada, as BDS Chickenhawks Cheer it On
It transforms their uninspiring coddled Western lives into something heroic
William A. Jacobson, Legal Insurrection

By now, it is common for supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses to interrupt speeches and chant “Long Live the Intifada.”

...The Intifada is the bloody campaign of terror launched by Palestinians mostly against Jewish civilians.

The suicide bombing campaign of the Second Intifada killed almost one thousand Israeli civilians, and led to the construction of the security barrier. That security barrier (maliciously called the “Apartheid Wall” by groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace) is now the focus of protests because it is more important to BDS supporters that Palestinians have unfettered access to kill Jews.

The current wave of terror, sometimes called the Third Intifada, the Knife Intifada, or the Stabbing Intifada) is not as bloody as the Second Intifada (yet) because knives can’t kill as many people as bombs. But that may be changing, as a bus was bombed just a few days ago. It was not immediately known if the bomb was planted or a suicide bombing. Police just released the identify of the bomber, who died in the suicide bombing. His family celebrated his death and handed out candies.

Why do BDS activists chant “Long Live the Intifada”? Because they are chickenhawks.

...An interesting thing happened on the way to “Long Live the Intifada” — actual Palestinians, not the Western wannabees, grew tired of it.

The Washington Post reports, After six months of violence, Palestinians wonder: What was gained?:

After six months of attacks by Palestinian youths against Israeli soldiers and civilians, authorities have begun to hope the wave of violence is subsiding.

What did the Palestinians gain?

Funerals, many say...

...There are no illusions here. There still is a large part of Palestinian society that supports Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Islamist armed factions who have brought far more death and destruction to Palestinians than they ever will to Israelis. In that regard, there is little difference between the Western leftists and the Jihadists.

Read the whole thing: http://bit.ly/1VBc2P1

#palestinian
#terrorism
#intifada
#chickenhawks
-----

Palestinian ‘knife intifada’ reflects a generation's despair

For the past seven months, Israelis have faced an unprecedented wave of violence: not a real “intifada”, but a series of almost daily "lone wolf" knife attacks. These are not organised by militant groups but reflect hopelessness and despair, especially among young Palestinians. Our correspondents in Jerusalem, Pierrick Leurent and Irris Makler, went to investigate this phenomenon and the roots of this violence.

Since October 2015, there have been more than 350 attacks on Israelis, mostly carried out by Palestinians armed with knives, machetes or even scissors. The attackers are very young – some aged just 13 or 14. The attacks have left 34 Israelis dead as well as nearly 200 Palestinians - mainly assailants killed carrying out the attacks. Hundreds more have been injured.

The violence has extracted a heavy toll, but the phenomenon remains diffuse, elusive. Is it a new intifada? A wave of violence? A revolt by the Palestinian youth? It’s not easy to define what’s been happening in Israel and the Palestinian Territories since October 2015.

Our reporters went to meet various actors in the events of recent months: Palestinian activists, families of attackers, Israeli victims and army officials. They all agree on one fact: the terrorists, both male and female, are often desperate teens. These self-radicalised “lone wolves” take action within minutes. Their acts are rarely planned, barely even premeditated.

A 2.0 intifada, but without popular support

As to their motivations, it’s a mixed picture. Some are fed up with the Israeli occupation and the lack of prospects for #peace, with no diplomatic solution on the horizon; others are disappointed with their own stalled political process. There is also the role of indoctrination via social networks.

This is one of the most extraordinary aspects of this “knife #intifada." For the first time, it is being widely relayed online. #Facebook, #Twitter and #Whatsapp serve as relays between young Palestinians who exchange photos and videos of attacks, as well as #propaganda videos, often within minutes of the violence taking place.

But older #Palestinians are not taking part in the revolt. People who have lived through the first and second intifadas – which began in 1987 and 2000 respectively - are weary of violence. They tell us it will only bring more death and destruction, without paving the way for the creation of a Palestinian state. Some of them even try to convince the youngsters to focus on their future and renounce violence.

With the attacks targeting men, women, civilians and soldiers indiscriminately, #Israel’s response has been a military one: more troops on patrol in Jerusalem and the West Bank, more surveillance cameras and checkpoints, more arrests of militants; plus reinstating the policy of demolishing the family homes of the attackers.

Over the past two months, there has been a decline in attacks, but Israel’s response complicates the daily lives of ordinary Palestinians. And strengthens the anger felt by some of them.

Israel's Twin Towers
BDS/Intifada

Upcoming Third Intifada will Alienate Israel Psychologically and Economically  
by PARUL VERMA

“Let it be clear to any company or organization that’s considering boycotting us: We will hit back. We will attack our attackers. We will boycott our boycotters.”  Education Minister Naftali Bennett, the leader of her #Jewish Home party

 “De-legitimization of #Israel must be fought, and you are on the front lines. It’s not about this or that Israeli policy. It’s about our right to exist here as a free people.”  #Netanyahu during an emergency summit to address #BDS.

“We are preparing to file lawsuits against BDS activists who call for blacklisting the Jewish state.”  Ayeled Shaked

The mere act of considering to sue the  BDS activist on the grounds of racial discrimination and damaging Israeli trade and economy, speaks of the fear seeping among the #Zionist  in the Knesset. This  nonviolent movement for the  justice in Israel/#Palestine has grown more momentum than Israel could have imagined. Considering the figures, Israel’s disquiet over BDS is genuine. Israeli financial newspaper reported ,estimating that BDS could cost Israel’sr economy $1.4billlion a year. The estimate included  exports from the West Bank settlements  and with  the EU’s decision to label the occupied territory products by the Israel ( not part of the BDS movement) , The Rand Corporation  estimates that the loss  could be more than three times higher: $47bn over 10 years.

But how is the BDS campaign related to the upcoming Third Intifada? Will the Third #intifada be a collective participation by the world to show the solidarity with #Palestine, alienating Israel( psychologically  and financially )? Will the outcome of the Third intifada be the break down the economic backbone  of Israel?

http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2015/11/55107/

Is this the third intifada? ► http://bit.ly/ThirdIntifada

As deadly violence escalates across Israel and the Palestinian territories, the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood travels to the West Bank to ask why now – and why Palestinian women are getting involved.
Subscribe to The Guardian ► http://is.gd/subscribeguardian
In the past month, eight Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks – mostly stabbings – and 35 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire, 17 labelled by Israel as attackers and the rest in clashes with Israeli troops.

#israel #palestine #intifada #westbank  

Analysis: Jerusalem’s ‘silent intifada’ is anything but silent

“I’m worried because the political leadership in the city does not realize what’s going on, or what to do about this,” he said. “To leave it to the police is a big mistake, because the police is not part of the solution – they are part of the problem, because they just produce a vicious circle of violence; because when they respond with violence the Palestinians do the same.”

While Margalit conceded that extra police units could temporarily succeed in quelling the rioting, he noted that “sooner or later it will explode if the municipality doesn’t find a political solution.”

The only solution to ending the violence, he said, is twofold


“What the Palestinians are saying in this uprising is, ‘We don’t want to be managed by the Israelis – they don’t understand us or our needs and don’t care about us,’” he continued. “Even if [Jerusalem Mayor] Nir Barkat invests another million shekels in east Jerusalem, the gap is so wide it is impossible to bridge.”

Asked when he believes the intifada began, Margalit cited the apparent revenge slaying of teenage Arab east Jerusalem resident Mohammad Abu Khdeir.

#Jerusalem #intifada

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Jerusalems-silent-intifada-is-anything-but-silent-380001

Al-Quds Intifada and Hamas

Abu-Marzouk promises right of return at Ein Al-Hilwa Refugee Camp in Sidon.

Senior Hamas political bureau member Mousa Abu-Marzouk told the refugees that #Al-Quds #Intifada came to liberate #Jerusalem and pave the way for the return of the #refugees to their homeland.

Abu-Marzouk took the opportunity to condemn the recent suicide attack in Borj Al-Barajneh, in #Beirut’s southern suburbs. While both #Hamas and #Hezbollah agreed that this was a #terrorist attack, they stressed that such attacks serve nobody but the #Israeli occupation, which practices all kinds of torture and violations against the #Palestinians. Both called for support for the ongoing intifada in order to protect it against the #Zionist project.

Young in Palestine: Gen Oslo

Intifada or just fed up?

Palestine Post Oslo

This is a generation that is telling us that they are opposed to all forms of collaboration with the occupier. This is a generation that has seen nothing from Oslo but defeat and humiliation, and they are throwing it off.

What has helped keep the Oslo regime alive for so long is the ever fainter promise that redemption — in the form of “statehood” and “self-determination” — lay at the end of it. But the #Oslo generation, #Palestinians born after or around the time the accords were signed, do not buy it. They are fed up.

#intifada

Social Media Uprising: Digital Intifada (Trailer)

Leaderless Palestinian youth, inspired by memes encouraging people to "Stab a Jew" on social media and viral videos glorifying killers as martyrs, are thought to be behind a new wave of violence in Israel and the West Bank. Uncoordinated and spontaneous attacks by individual young Palestinians, mostly under the age of 25, started to occur almost daily from October 2015, with assailants often using a household weapon — a knife, axe, meat cleaver, screwdriver — before being fired upon by nearby Israeli security forces. So far, the bloodshed has claimed the lives of at least 34 Israelis and 172 Palestinians, 114 of whom Israel says were assailants.

#Israelis believe that Palestinian #Muslim #youth are being radicalized by Islamic groups through online #incitement campaigns. Micah Avni, the son of Richard Lakin who was killed in an attack on a public bus in East #Jerusalem in October, has filed a civil action lawsuit against Facebook. He and 20,000 other Israelis are suing the platform CEO.

VICE News travels to #Israel and the #WestBank to talk to young #Palestinians about their use of social media, and to Israelis who fear it's inspiring a Third #Intifada. We also hear from parents dealing with the consequences of their #children's violent actions and explain their understanding of the situation.

#socialmedia