Are We Witnessing a Third Intifada?
Prof. As’ad Abdul Rahman
The question that has been arising since the outbreak of the current flare-up in the occupied Palestinian lands is still looking for an answer. With the ongoing Israeli brutal response to Palestinian demonstrations in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the area, people keep asking: is it the third Intifada, will it be a long sustainable one?
The bloody events brought back memories of the two past uprisings, the first in 1987-1990 which resulted with the Oslo accords in 1993 and the second one in 2000 which was followed by Israel’s construction of the separation Wall in the West Bank.
Some observers from both the Palestinian and Israeli sides consider the confrontations between the Israeli military killing machine and the Palestinian unarmed protesters, an upheaval or “Habbah” in Arabic, similar to the incidents which happened in Jerusalem at the end of last year and went away soon after. But other observers believe they are witnessing “the third intifadah” which has taken a religious tone protesting against the Jewish colonial settlers “desecrating the Holy Islamic sites in Jerusalem “.
The Middle East in 2015 is no longer the same as it was during the past two intifadas. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict at the time was mainly a political one that has gradually turned into a religious war by the mere claim of the far religious right that is in power in Israel claiming all historical Palestine including Jerusalem as exclusively “Jewish lands”. Thus, religious Zionism also colonial and racist in its present form and practice has turned the Arab/Israeli conflict into a religious confrontation between Judaism and Islam. All religious wars accept no compromise, whatsoever, and are fought till death, as can be seen by the inhuman brutality of Jewish settlers burning Palestinian babies in their cribs in the West Bank and the other religious toxic waste of Daesh cutting heads in Syria and Iraq. Both groups are two opposite sides of the same (takfiri) coin.
Jerusalem is now at the center of events turning into a volcano ready to blow its top. The Jewish right’s political claims in the city are really contrary to the Torah, as revealed by the Israeli writer Nahum Barnea in Yediot Ahronot where he stated that ” there are two metal signs in Hebrew and English attached to the Wailing Wall near a barred gate leading to the Temple Mount (al-Aqsa Mosque) warning Jews that it is against the Torah to enter the Temple Mount area due to its sanctity.” In other words, Jews entering the area of al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock is a forbidden act of desecration of holy ground, according to the Torah.
As the so-called Islamic State of Daesh is ushering in utter destruction in various Arab countries, the same catastrophe is now in the making by the hands of the Jewish colonial settlers in occupied Palestine and Jerusalem appears to be the trigger point. Amos Harel said in Haaretz that “the majority of terrorist acts stem from small local groups made up of lone wolves who have no connections with any central command belonging to a known Palestinian organization. Such acts cannot be predicted nor stopped, whatsoever.” Harel’s view is that “the security program of cooperation with the Palestinian Authority and Israel’s security agencies is destined to end after Netanyahu abandoned the two-state solution.”
A few other observers believe that certain Palestinian factors may prevent a third intifada from happening including ‘economic prosperity’ that made some Palestinians ‘addicted consumers’ unwilling to pay the material price of a third intifada. But the Israeli commentator Barnea disagrees with this outlook writing to say that “this is the third intifada and not calling it by its name allows the political and the military establishments to evade, repress and shrink from responsibility. This third intifada came into being because the Palestinians have lost all hope to attain a political settlement.”
With the facts on the ground attesting to the dominant takfiri powers of Daesh and al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq and the takfiri Jewish religious right ruling Israel today, the only result expected from these toxic groups is a humongous catastrophe. The independent Palestinian youth (known as lone Wolves), resisting occupation unarmed have no jobs and salaries to worry about and could not be addictive consumers without any or even to buy a decent meal. Hopeless youthful individuals without any means to establish a decent life are the future angry ‘lone wolves’ are candidates naturally attracted to the takfiri doctrine of al-Qaeda and Daesh who would be confronting the Jewish takfiri religious right.
Al-Qaeda’s recipes for unconventional weapons are all over the internet to copy and make. It tried four times to explode a ‘dirty bomb’ in New York City and Washington DC, but failed. If such a device were to explode, both cities would have turned into radioactive grounds, unfit for human habitat for the next 185 years, according to a CIA report to Congress. All it takes is a cell or two for al-Qaeda in the West Bank with homemade mortars and special material in the explosive charges obtained from any hospital, and the state of Israel is no more. That is the most dreaded scenario expected by Western intelligence experts if the brutal occupational measures along with the construction of Jewish colonies culminating in total judaization of Palestinian land.
