Are We Witnessing, A Third Intifada?

The question that has been arising since the outbreak of the current flare-up in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is still looking for an answer. With the brutal Israeli response to Palestinian demonstrations in occupied Jerusalem and elsewhere in the area, people keep asking: Is it the third intifada (uprising), will it be a long sustainable one?

The bloody events brought back memories of the past two uprisings: the first in 1987-1990, which had resulted in 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 Palestinian and Israeli observers consider the confrontations between the Israeli military killing machine and unarmed Palestinian protesters, an upheaval or “Habbah” in Arabic — similar to the incidents that happened in occupied Jerusalem at the end of the last year. But other observers believe they are indeed witnessing “the third intifada”, which has taken a religious tone, protesting against Jewish colonists “desecrating the Holy Islamic sites in [occupied] 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 occupied Jerusalem, as exclusively “Jewish lands”.

Thus, religious Zionism, which is also colonial and racist in its present form and practice, has turned the Arab/Israeli conflict into a confrontation between Judaism and Islam.

All religious wars accept no compromise, whatsoever, and are fought to the death, as can be seen by the inhuman brutality of Jewish colonists burning Palestinian babies in their cribs in the West Bank and the other religious toxic waste of Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) chopping heads in Syria and Iraq. Both these groups are two sides of the same coin.

Occupied Jerusalem is now at the centre of events, turning into a volcano that is 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 the 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 Al Haram Al Sharif warning Jews that it is against the Torah to enter the area due to its sanctity”.

In other words, Jews’ entering Al Haram Al Sharif is a forbidden act of desecration of the holy ground, according to the Torah.

As Daesh is ushering in utter destruction in various Arab countries, the same catastrophe is now in the making at the hands of the Jewish colonists in occupied Palestine and Jerusalem, which appears to be the trigger point. Amos Harel said in the Israeli daily 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 organisation. Such acts cannot be predicted nor stopped, whatsoever.”

Harel’s view is that “the security programme of cooperation with the Palestinian National Authority and Israel’s security agencies is destined to end after [Benjamin] 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’ who are 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 shirk 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 Jewish religious right ruling Israel today, the only result expected from these toxic groups is a humongous catastrophe. The independent, unarmed Palestinian youths (known as “lone wolves”) resisting occupation, have no jobs and salaries and could not be addictive consumers without means to even buy a decent meal.

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 United States 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 would be no more. That is the most dreaded scenario for western intelligence experts if the brutal occupational measures, along with the construction of Jewish colonies, culminates in total Judaisation of Palestinian land.

Courtesy: Gulf News