Commentary Magazine..
06 October '14..
In the wake of the latest acts of terror against pedestrians in Jerusalem, Palestinian public opinion is again reacting with the same sensitivity that it displayed back in June when a popular campaign mocked the plight of three Jewish teenagers who were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists. Support for the “run over intifada” is endemic on Palestinian social media in much the same way as it cheered the prospect that the lives of the three boys might be bartered for the freedom of captured terrorists. But instead of pondering whether support for the spate of attacks is, as the New York Times speculates today, a new intifada “for the 21st Century, foreign observers would do well to understand that this violence is merely a symptom of the same refusal to accept Israel’s legitimacy that has fueled the conflict for many decades.
Though she recycles Palestinian myths about the reasons for the outbreak of the first two intifadas (including the infamous lie that it was Ariel Sharon’s walk on the Temple Mount rather than a calculated response by Yasir Arafat to Israeli peace moves), Times Jerusalem Bureau chief Jodi Rudoren didn’t find many who thought this outbreak was likely to result in a repeat of the carnage of the second intifada that took thousands of lives on both sides. Indeed, she did her readers a service by reminding them that the security fence built to stop suicide bombers makes a return to the horror of that episode problematic for the architects of terror.
But if she really wanted to explain the origins of the current round of violence revolving around Palestinian anger about the efforts of a minority of Israeli to reverse the ban on Jewish prayer on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount — the holiest site in Judaism as well as the home of the Al-Aksa Mosque — she would do well to go back further in history than 1987 or 2000. Conspiracy theories about Jews planning to blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount go back to the efforts of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem and Nazi ally who led the Palestinians throughout the 1920s, 30s and 40s, to foment anti-Jewish pogroms long before there was a State of Israel, let alone an “occupation.”
Though Rudoren quotes Palestinian Authority Leader Mahmoud Abbas as saying that he doesn’t want another intifada, she fails to mention his efforts to follow in the mufti’s footsteps by urging his people to resist Jews by any means and calling a terrorist who attempted to murder a Jewish activist rabbi, a martyr who went straight to heaven. Yet it’s true that Abbas doesn’t want an intifada since a collapse of security cooperation between Israel and the PA might result in a Hamas coup that could cost him life or at least his control of the West Bank. Despite his incitement of violence, it is still he Israelis who guarantee his personal security. What Rudoren also fails to note is that it is Hamas that wants an intifada for the same reason it rained down thousands of missiles on Israeli cities this past summer even though it created more destruction for Palestinians in Gaza. Their goal is keep Palestinians focused on “resistance” — a synonym for endless war that won’t be solved by Israeli territorial concessions or even greater sensitivity for Muslim desire to deny Jews rights in Jerusalem.
The point about the current violence is that nothing the Israelis are doing — whether it is Jews moving into parts of Jerusalem where Arabs want no part of them or even walking around the Temple Mount — that would prevent the restarting of peace negotiations or even a two-state solution should the Palestinians ever change their minds and decide to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn.
The tone of despair of Palestinian society that we are told is at the heart of the disturbances is, as the meaning of the word intifada indicates, a desire for a “shaking off.” But, as they have demonstrated consistently since the time of the mufti, what they want to shake off is not the supposedly oppressive rule of Israel (which, as even Rudoren notes, allows a Palestinian prosperity that makes many of them reluctant to contemplate another destructive and pointless war), but the presence of the Jews altogether and intolerance for their presence. Once again a new generation of Palestinians are taking up gasoline bombs and even using cars as weapons in order to kill or injure Jews to further that same futile aim and in the name of this ancient hatred. Though outlets like the Times promote the notion that the violence is caused by Jewish actions, the new intifada if it happens will be very much like every other episode in the Palestinians’ hundred years war against Zionism. Those that wish them well should urge them to try to shake off this rejectionist mindset lest they waste another century in pointless conflict.
Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/11/06/whats-behind-the-run-over-intifada-palestinians-jerusalem/
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