Rage against the occupation

The latest unrest however is some of the most serious in years, and as I write, it has already claimed the lives of 33 Palestinians and seven Israelis.

As ever such an escalation gives rise to talk of another Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

Oddly enough the belief that another intifada is already in the making found two bitter rivals in agreement last week.

Ismail Haniyeh, the Gaza-based leader of Hamas, and Isaac Herzog, the Israeli opposition leader, could never be said to see eye-to eye on anything, but these sworn enemies are both convinced that what we are seeing right now are the opening salvoes of a third intifada.

I say third, because there has of course been two previous intifadas over the last few decades, the first which ignited in Gaza in 1987 and the second which exploded in Jerusalem in 2000.

As someone who witnessed these two tumultuous uprisings first-hand, I don’t subscribe to the view that what we are seeing right now is as of yet a third intifada.

Where the unrest shares a common denominator with the two previous intifadas of course is that all three are born out of Palestinian anger, frustration and a desire to shake off Israel’s 48-year claustrophobic occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Indeed there are many, myself included, who hold the view that it is the issue of the occupation itself rather than counting the number of uprisings against it that really matters here.

This point was succinctly made last week during a meeting I had with Yehuda Shaul, a former Israel soldier and co-founder of an organisation called Breaking the Silence (BtS).

Comprised of veteran soldiers who have served in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, BtS works to collate testimonies of former combatants and help cast light on the reality of what Israel’s occupation means including abuse towards Palestinians, looting, and destruction of property that have accompanied it for years.

“It doesn’t really matter, whether what we are seeing is a third intifada, years from now we could be sitting here talking about the twentieth intifada, it is the continuation of the occupation and the mechanisms used to enforce it we should be very concerned about,” Shaul told me, as we sat talking in Glasgow where he was visiting as part of a UK wide speaking tour.

To reinforce his case he showed me a copy of ‘Our Harsh Logic’, the title of a book that brings together BtS members testimonies.

Throughout the book these first person accounts are used as direct evidence to powerfully illustrate, the four pillars of Israeli policy that are used to enforce the occupation. These include “prevention,” “separation” “fabric of life,” and “law enforcement.”

Seemingly benign at face value, these terms however only convey a partial, even distorted portrayal of the policies they represent, says Shaul.

Instead, they have become code words for activities that go far beyond their original meaning and represent the heavy hand of Israeli occupation designed to utterly crush any hopes of Palestinian statehood. Any reading of these former soldiers’ testimonies makes this ominously clear.

But if the occupation lies at the core of the conflict what then do we make of the current violence and claims that it is a third intifada in the making?

Let me just say first that this latest unrest 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 weeks 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.

To begin with unlike previous intifadas this unrest appears not to be underpinned by the civil society and militant groups that were such a mainstay in 1987 and 2000. The Palestinian youth or shebab who have taken to the streets wielding kitchen knives and screwdrivers, are a new generation for whom the political dynamics and conditions of the occupation they face have changed since the days of the past intifadas.

Their response is not orchestrated by People Committees, Action Committees or a ‘United National Leadership’, unlike their intifada predecessors. For where does the Palestinian leadership stand in all of this? The short answer when seem through the eyes of such youth on the streets, is simply who cares. So many of this generation of Palestinians have become totally 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 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.

In venting their anger the motives of these young ‘activists’ appear random, uncoordinated and without any command structure. But as ever they remain a reactionary product of the pressures of occupation.

This in itself of course poses a very different kind of problem for the Israeli security services and army. In the past, Israel usually dealt with an intifada by massive military deployment and muscle, such as Operation Defensive Shield that ended the Second Intifada in 2000.

As a columnist writing in the Israeli daily Haaretz put it last week: ‘This time it isn't a conflict for armies or diplomats. You can't send a tank to fight a mother with a master’s degree wielding a knife. You can't negotiate with a hate-filled 15-year-old armed with a screwdriver’.

This of course is not to say that Israel will not use blunt force. More than ever given the current pernicious nature of Israeli politics and the disproportionate influence of militant settlers on that political mix, the use of force is a given. As I said, this is not a third intifada, but it could still yet become one.