Friday has always been a flashpoint day in occupied East Jerusalem. As Palestinians leave the neighbourhood mosques after Friday holy day prayers clashes with Israeli police and troops is not uncommon, especially during times of heightened tension.

Today it will doubtless be much the same despite an extensive Israeli security crackdown in Arab areas of the city.

It is estimated that six companies of Israeli soldiers have been deployed in Jerusalem over the last few days to back up thousands of armed Border Police – themselves effectively soldiers - but the chances of this completely stopping the violence is unlikely.

So once again we find ourselves watching Israelis and Palestinians in a grimly familiar and deadly standoff, with speculation rife that what we are witnessing is the beginning of a third Palestinian intifada or uprising.

Oddly enough that prognosis finds an unusual agreement between Ismail Haniyeh, the Gaza-based leader of Hamas, and Isaac Herzog, the Israeli opposition leader, with both these bitter rivals convinced that what we are seeing are the opening salvoes of the third intifada.

Before examining whether that indeed is the dangerous route on which the region is now embarked, let me just say that the latest outbreak of violence has been predicted by local observers for months now.

During a visit I made in June to Jerusalem and the West Bank, both Israeli and Palestinian political leaders and activists not only told me they were expecting a major eruption of violence within a maximum of eighteen months, but in some instances accurately outlined the shape the current violence is now taking.

That shape over the last few days has been defined by seemingly random, spontaneous, individual attacks and street protests instigated by a largely leaderless and disillusioned Palestinian youth. And it is this very loose almost spur of the moment nature of these actions that makes it difficult to see this as a third intifada.

As someone who witnessed first-hand the previous two intifadas that erupted in 1987 and 2000, I too am firmly in the camp of those analysts who find the characteristics of the current protests to be different from their predecessors.

Deriving from the Arabic terms nefada meaning to “shake off”, the latest actions and protests while themselves an expression of Palestinian anger, frustration and desire to shake off the Israeli occupation, appear to lack the cohesive structure of organised resistance that were the hallmarks of last two intifadas. I well remember talking with local leaders during the 1987 intifada who described to me the creation of what was called the ‘United National Leadership’ that emerged barely a month after the uprising began.

Throughout that intifada and indeed during the second in 2000, I spoke with many Palestinian activists who explained the extensive and often sophisticated network that supported the uprising. They told of the creation of People’s Committees, Action Committees and even something called Shock Committees, who took the action to the streets and drafted communiques that provided direction and impetus.

Not for a moment am I saying that such a level of organisation no longer exists, for the Palestinians have long maintained such activist structures, but today’s actions seem less underpinned by civil society and militant groups.

Instead it is being generated by a new generation for whom the political dynamics and conditions of the occupation they face have changed since the days of the past intifadas.

As Dr Nadia Naser-Najjab associate research fellow at the European Centre of Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter put it recently, this is a younger generation who have not issued one single appeal to the Palestinian political leadership. The reason for this simple, many have become very disillusioned with the old guard like Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and bodies like the PLO and Palestinian Authority (PA).

The extent of this scepticism was vividly summed up in a quote the other day from a young Palestinian man interviewed by a journalist from Foreign Policy magazine on the streets of the fiercely contested Jabal al-Mukaber district near Jerusalem.

“The first intifada gave us the Palestinian Authority, the Third Intifada, maybe we’ll give it back,” he quipped cynically.

If this is indeed a third intifada then it is one purely a product of the streets, coming from a generation of Palestinians who because of Israel’s apartheid style rule in the occupied territories are more divided geographically than ever and subsequently less politically cohesive.

Most significant of all it would be an uprising largely carried by its own momentum and seemingly without any credible leadership. And therein lies a worry for the Palestinian cause, the existence of a power and leadership vacuum that could so easily be exploited by the likes of groups like Islamic State (IS). Any serious courting of this kind of support would spell disaster for the credibility and justice of the Palestinian cause.

During my visit in June and while in the city of Ramallah more than one veteran senior Palestinian activist I met flagged up their concern in this regard.

For its part the Israeli government’s latest response to recent events once again makes clear how it derives from a dogged and unyielding colonial mindset. More than ever given the complexion of Israeli politics today and the influence of militant settlers on that political process, we can expect the current Palestinian unrest to be engaged as ever with blunt force.

During the first intifada, then defence minister, Yitzak Rabin, called upon the Israeli army to “break the bones” of Palestinian protesters. Right now it will be more of the same except perhaps carried out with even greater robustness. Meanwhile of course the international community, to use an Arab expression, sits on its hands.