Guess what? The days of intifada are long gone - by Moshe Elad

Abbas can call for the Palestinians to take to the streets in a new outburst over Israeli policy, but it will fall on deaf ears; both Israel and his own people are familiar with his saber-rattling which ultimately never leads anywhere

Moshe Elad..
Ynet/Opinion..
11 February '20..
Link: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/r1ouz7x7L

Every two or three violent incidents involving the Palestinians is followed by a rush of media pundits all clamoring to be the first to wonder: "Is Israel on the cusp of a new intifada?"

Only a lack of vocabulary forces anyone to brand any series of sporadic clashes as "an intifada." So let me be clear: there has been just one intifada.

It broke out in December 1987 and ended with the signing of the Oslo Accords in the summer of 1993.

The intifada was a resistance movement that touched every household in the West Bank. It brought tens of thousands of people from all sectors of Palestinian society onto the streets of Nabulus, Hebron and Gaza, carrying stones and Molotov cocktails.

It focused on organized rather than popular violence. It was initially perceived as spontaneous but was long-planned by nameless leaders.

It was called the "White Intifada" due to the Palestinian avoidance of terror attacks that later became were far more prominent, a decision that garnered the protesters much international support.

Within the history of the "Occupied Territories," the intifada is merely one in a series of clashes, which include a Great Arab Revolt in 1936 and the Nakba of 1948.

But just like the French Revolution, there is only one intifada to truly earn the name.

Therefore, the labeling of the series of terror attacks between 2000-2005, which included barbaric suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, as the "Al-Aqsa Intifada," is a frustrating misnomer.

It was created by a pen-pusher who got excited at using the word to describe the continuing wave of attacks, pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Yet the international support that the Palestinians received back in the 1980s was completely gone by the early 2000s.

BBC News gives a sentimental and nostalgic account of the first Intifada - by Hadar Sela

...In the past the BBC has promoted the myth that the first Intifada was ‘non-violent’ and has completely erased Israeli casualties from its accounts. While it is therefore good to see those casualties finally acknowledged, this film nevertheless perpetuates the BBC’s long-standing romanticisation of type of Palestinian violence all too often euphemistically portrayed (if at all) as ‘protest’.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
21 December '17..

December 9th marked thirty years since the beginning of the first Intifada and on December 20th the BBC News website published a filmed report on that topic made by Eloise Dicker and Nida Ibrahim and headlined “‘It was an uprising from the heart’“.

“This picture of a woman throwing a stone at Israeli forces in Beit Sahour became iconic and the woman’s identity remained a mystery, until now.

Thirty years on, she has spoken to the BBC about the photograph.”

Whether or not that photograph can really be described as “iconic” – i.e. widely recognised – is of course debatable. BBC audiences are told that:

“This picture of a woman throwing a stone was taken almost 30 years ago but the woman’s identity was not known. The stone was aimed at Israeli forces in Beit Sahour, a village in the occupied West Bank.”

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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(Video) Random or a Plan to be Unplanned? The Knife and the Message

Was this recent terror wave in Israel as random as it seemed?..

The Jerusalem Center..
20 June '16..
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qqyyM2R5Ms





Experts reveal a larger underlying political framework orchestrated by Palestinian leaders and fueled by incitement. It is “a plan to be unplanned.”

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

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The Children's Intifada... Again - by Michael Lumish

...I know that it makes me a "racist" to oppose being targeted for death... but I suppose I can live with it, at least for awhile. Meanwhile, Palestinian-Arab society, via its media, is actually encouraging their children to chase after Jews with knives or scissors or hand-axes in the hope of killing those Jews or dying as beloved "martyrs" with the blessings of Allah. Meanwhile their allies throughout the West honestly want Jewish kids to believe that we are the source of the violence against us.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
12 March '16..

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon.}




This is the Children's Intifada.

"Knife Intifada" or "Stabbing Intifada" does not cut it.

This is the Children's Intifada.

It is, perhaps, the most insidious thing that I have known in my lifetime.

Outside of the various fun-filled activities of, say, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970s, I can think of no more vile political movement than the Jihad, as expressed within organizations like ISIS or Hamas or Hezbolah, and the never-ending effort to screw around with the Jews of the Middle East and Europe by Jihadi Muslims for religious reasons... and coming, I suspect that you know, to an American theater near you.

I know that it makes me a "racist" to oppose being targeted for death... but I suppose I can live with it, at least for awhile.

Meanwhile, Palestinian-Arab society, via its media, is actually encouraging their children to chase after Jews with knives or scissors or hand-axes in the hope of killing those Jews or dying as beloved "martyrs" with the blessings of Allah. Meanwhile their allies throughout the West honestly want Jewish kids to believe that we are the source of the violence against us.

Throughout western college campuses and the western media, elite progressive intellectuals and activists tell one another just what the Nazis told one another: the Jews are bad. Of course, they're not actually brave enough or honest enough - within living memory of the Holocaust - to blame Jews directly, so instead they use the Jewish state as a stand-in for the Jewish people or they conjure up Zionism as some sort-of essential evil that is responsible for everything from global warming to the misery and violent pathologies of the Arab world. Some Arabs even believe, as EOZ readers are undoubtedly aware, that Israel has created Zionist sharks and terrorist Zionist puffer fish and crazed Zionist squirrel spies, or whatever.

The Elder of Ziyon actually put together a referenced list that includes heinous Zionist eagles,

Zionist rock hyraxes, Zionist boars, Zionist storks, Zionist super-rhinos... "super-rhinos"? - Zionist vultures, European Zionist bee-eaters, Zionist puffer fish, Zionist dogs, Zionist jellyfish, Zionist sharks, Zionist cows, Zionist wolves, Zionist lions, rats, sheep and squirrels.

I have to say, if I actually thought that the Jews were so capable of making alliances with so much of the animal kingdom, I might be inclined to think that we must be doing something right!

The price you pay to be free - by Caroline Glick

...From 1982 through 2000, Israel restrained Hezbollah and prevented it from taking over Lebanon by maintaining security control over the security zone in Lebanon. For 28 years, Israel prevented the Palestinians from becoming a terrorist society dedicated to the destruction of the people of Israel, by exerting security and civil authority over Judea, Samaria and Gaza through its military government and its civil administration. And it worked. By fighting our enemies rather than empowering them, we weakened them....Governing enemies is unpleasant. It brings no instant gratification. Instead it promises only thankless, Sisyphean efforts. In other words, governing your enemies is the price you pay to be free.

Caroline Glick..
Column One/JPost..
10 March '16..

This week we learned that Lebanon is no more. It has been replaced by Hezbollah’s Iranian colony in Lebanon.

Two weeks ago, Saudi Arabia listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and canceled its $3 billion aid package to the Lebanese military. The Gulf Cooperation Council followed suit. Rather than support the move by his sponsors and allies, Saad Hariri, the head of the anti-Hezbollah March 14 movement, flew to Syria to meet with Hezbollah leaders.

Saudi Arabia’s decision to end its support for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) doesn’t mean that Saudi Arabia is making peace with Hezbollah.

It means that the Saudis are no longer willing to maintain the fiction that with enough support, the LAF will one day challenge Hezbollah’s effective control of Lebanon.

Hezbollah and its bosses in Tehran don’t seem too upset about the Sunnis’ decision to acknowledge that Hezbollah is a terrorist group. And they are right not to care. In essence, the Saudi move is simply an admission that they have won. Lebanon is theirs.

Hezbollah’s isn’t the dominant force in Lebanon because it has better weapons than the LAF.

Unlike the LAF, Hezbollah has no air force. It has no armored divisions.

Hezbollah is able to dominate Lebanon because unlike the LAF and the March 14 movement, Hezbollah is willing to destroy Lebanon if doing so advances its strategic goals.

This has all been fairly clear for more than a decade. But it took the war in Syria to force the truth above the surface.

And now that it is clear to everyone that Lebanon has ceased to exist and that the country we once knew is now an Iranian colony, the time has come for Israel to reckon with the lessons of its own misadventures in our neighbor to the north.

Since the mid-1990s, Israel has implemented three strategies in Lebanon and in Syria. All of them originated on the Left. All of them failed.

The first strategy was appeasement.

From the mid-1990s until the Syrian war began five years ago, Israel’s strategic framework for understanding Syria was appeasement. Initially, the notion was that Syria was our enemy because we control the Golan Heights. If we surrendered the Golan to Syria, we would have peace in exchange.

In the years leading up to the Syrian war, our leaders embraced the idea that Syria was the weakest link in the Iranian axis. If we gave the Golan Heights to Syria, they said, then the Assad regime would withdraw from the Iranian axis.

As it turned out, these positions had no basis in reality. Appeasement failed.

Then there was unconditional surrender – or disengagement. Then-prime minister Ehud Barak implemented this strategy when he removed IDF units from the security zone in south Lebanon in May 2000.

From the mid-1990s on, Yossi Beilin was the chief advocate of unconditional surrender in Lebanon. The logic of surrender was similar to that of appeasement – of which he was also a principal architect and advocate.

The surrender strategy in Lebanon was based on the idea that Hezbollah fought the IDF in south Lebanon because the IDF was in south Lebanon. If the IDF were to leave south Lebanon, Hezbollah was have no reason to fight us anymore.

So if we were gone, Beilin argued, Hezbollah would stop fighting, ditch terrorism and Iran, and become a normal Lebanese political party.

The war with Hezbollah in 2006 destroyed the credibility of the surrender strategy. But the Left didn’t despair. They simply replaced surrender with the strategy of internationalization.

The Palestinian Knife Campaign: A Policy of Limited Liability - by Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser

...that up to this point the Palestinians are quite satisfied with the results of the campaign, and in discussions held by the Fatah Central Committee and other leaderships forums, the decision was made to continue supporting and encouraging this effort unabatedly. The assumption of the leadership is that the terror campaign would continue as long as there is no decision to stop it. This is based on the assessment that the psychological inculcation of the Palestinian youth will guarantee that at any given time there will still be young Palestinians who will decide to go out and stab a Jew. Just like popcorn kernels explode in the microwave at random with no indication when the first will explode and which will not, so are the Palestinian youngsters randomly ready to explode when the indirect message comes from their leadership.

A Palestinian cartoon after the
Har Nof Synagogue attack 

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser..
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..
March '16..

Five months into the stabbing terror campaign, the Palestinian leadership keeps evaluating its costs and benefits to date and the prospects for its future. As described by Hirsh Goodman, the decision to embark on this course of action was a result of a combination of several factors:

A. The availability of the stealth terror tool, which is a result of the long-time and ongoing incitement and the inculcation of the people in the pillars of Palestinian national identity,1 with particular impact on children’s psychological make-up.

B. The ease of turning this option into action almost instantly by introducing religiously sensitive issues into the discourse such as the fate of the al-Aqsa mosque.

C. The need to employ this activity to restore international attention to the Palestinian issue and compensate for the damage done by the regional turmoil to Palestinian attempts to present the case that Israel’s attitude is the main reason for the tension between the Islamic and Arab world and the West.

D. The existence of a comprehensive Palestinian strategy adopted in the Sixth Fatah conference in 2009, which is based on a combination of unilateral diplomatic effort in the international arena and “popular resistance,” of which the current stabbing campaign is an example.

E. The assumption that the costs to the Palestinians for this kind of terror campaign will be limited and the benefits will be much greater.

Apparently, not much thought was given by the Palestinian leadership to the potential dilemmas that a long terror campaign may eventually present. One reason is that a previous attempt to embark on such a policy, in the second half of 2014, was quite successful. At that time, PA President Mahmoud Abbas called for such a campaign, raised the al-Aqsa alarm, and quoted a well-known verse from the Quran,2 enabling him to halt the campaign after things went out of control following the November 18, 2014, attack in a Jerusalem synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood where five rabbis were brutally murdered.

The Palestinian leadership was also not worried that the terror campaign would spin out of control and turn into something similar to the second intifada. This option, termed “the militarization of the intifada” (Askarat Al-Intifada) in internal Palestinian debate, was considered to be Hamas’ goal, but eventually was hard to execute because of Israel’s proven capability to thwart most of the terror attempts of this kind. Israeli security cooperation with the PA also helped prevent such violence.

(Please Share) The Knife and the Message: The Roots of the New Palestinian Uprising

...As this document will show, the Palestinian president and those under his authority are indeed instructing young Palestinians what to do. Not sending them into battle as soldiers, but goading them into action through deliberate messaging, distortion and fabrication, sometimes stated openly by senior Palestinian officials, but mostly insidiously, aimed at keeping the conflict alive and portraying the Palestinians as the victims in a whitewash of terror.

Hirsh Goodman/Yossi Kuperwasser, editors..
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..
29 February '16..




Executive Summary

The latest wave of Palestinian violence against Jews is something new, an insidious wave of seemingly un-orchestrated attacks, perpetrated by unlikely assailants, and generally untraceable to any particular organization. They were also characterized by brutality, viciousness and randomness, and the purposeful use of the knife, to drive home the intent of bringing a new and unrelenting wave of slaughter to the Jews; a message to all Israelis that neither they, nor their children, will ever be able to live in this land in peace.

As this document will show, the Palestinian president and those under his authority are indeed instructing young Palestinians what to do. Not sending them into battle as soldiers, but goading them into action through deliberate messaging, distortion and fabrication, sometimes stated openly by senior Palestinian officials, but mostly insidiously, aimed at keeping the conflict alive and portraying the Palestinians as the victims in a whitewash of terror.

There is a guiding hand in all this, the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian faction that leads it, Fatah. What is being witnessed today is the end-game of a strategy adopted by Fatah in 2009 and culminating in Mahmoud Abbas’ speech to the UN General Assembly on September 30, 2015, when he announced that the Palestinians are no longer bound by the Oslo (peace) Accords.

A television broadcast that sends a youth on his/her mission of death is part of a carefully calibrated policy of incitement and cynicism, which has brought the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a new level, one that generates terror without fingerprints, but which adroitly serves Fatah’s strategy of an endless war of attrition, by varying means, against Israel.

While the current wave of violence has succeeded in placing the Palestinian issue back on the international agenda to some degree, it has lost the Palestinians a valuable asset: the Israeli political center. Israelis have lost trust in the Palestinians and their leaders, even those Israelis who believe that Israel should relinquish the territories as part of a peace agreement between the sides.

No society can live in fear and with anarchy at its doorstep, where suspicion lurks at every turn.

And no society can live with and tolerate the hatred being spewed against them, via social media and other means, with calumnies and lies reminiscent of the dark days that led to even darker days in the not-too-distant past of the Jewish people.

Israel will learn and adapt to this new situation as it has done in the past. The question is whether the Palestinian leadership will do the same and come around to understanding that the monster they have created, a generation of children led to believe in the culture of death, is not in their own best interest.

Israel can control the damage, but only Fatah and the PA can end it, and it is they, the Palestinian leadership, who have to do so if the path to negotiation and conciliation is to be opened again, and this endless and senseless wave of violence extinguished.

(Continue to Full Publication)

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Notes
1 Raoul Wootliff, “Videos teach would-be Palestinian attackers ‘how to stab,’” Times of Israel, October 15, 2015, http://www.timesofisrael.com/videos-teach-would-be-palestinian-attackers-how-to-stab/
2 Yoav Zitun, “Eisenkot: IDF searching for every possible solution to tunnel problem,” Ynetnews, February 9, 2016, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4764074,00.html

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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Where peace overtures are tantamount to harbingers of death and destruction

...Predictably, the announcement of any peace parley unavoidably brings with it heightened danger. This is an irrefutable reality which no obfuscating words can conceal – not even if they come from the present White House resident, who insinuates that Israel’s existential interests somehow negate harmony in the Arab/Islamic sphere. The upshot is that PA head-honcho Abbas needn’t necessarily issue explicit orders for an orchestrated intifada as Arafat had fourteen years ago. It’s quite sufficient for Abbas to shift his war against Israel to international forums amid much fanfare and bluster.

Twin inspirations: Abbas inflames
his volatile masses in eerily
the same idiom as Arafat

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
20 November '14..

It’s a perplexing fact of our life: anything that remotely and vaguely resembles peace in Israel’s neighborhood is serially shattered once peace negotiations are kick-started. This is how it has invariably been – all the more emphatically so since the advent of Oslo.

According to this unique pattern, unequalled anywhere else, peace overtures are tantamount to harbingers of death and destruction.

Then, once the violence of peace somehow subsides, we briefly luxuriate in the lull of an impasse – the closest we ever get to calm.

But these rare respites inevitably rub do-gooder meddlers the wrong way both in the US and in the EU. With obsessive peevishness they begrudge us our breather. They summon summits, draw road maps, determine deadlines, weave tapestries, formulate fantasies and in short terminate the temporary time-outs.

It’s an inexorable rhythm. After each round of jibber-jabbering about peace comes the carnage.

Sometimes the weapons of choice are rockets from Gaza. Sometimes they comprise rocks, axes, knives, Molotov cocktails, vehicles, guns and suicide bombs from Mahmoud Abbas’s Ramallah realm.

On occasion, if the mayhem lasts long enough, we call it an intifada. There are those among us who already opine that we are now in the preliminary throes of the third intifada. Others shudder to use such terminology.

In truth, it almost doesn’t matter whether the accumulation of apparent acts of Arab terror in recent weeks signals the start of a new intifada, whether the violence was plotted by an unseen mastermind or whether it’s nothing but a meaningless random accrual of unrelated “lone-wolf” felonies.

What matters is that the combination of the Palestinian Authority’s negotiation-stymieing with an implicit terrorist threat isn’t something which – by the light of our past experience and objective observation – can be reasonably ignored.

Whenever the PA appears to engage in talks, a latent but omnipresent intimidation fills the air. In itself, this serves to issue a potent threat to Israel that outright hostilities remain a viable option should Israel not cave in to Ramallah’s demands at the negotiating table, where the PA’s own representatives consistently show zero predisposition to any hint of compromise.

This underlying threat is later implemented in full force – after the PA scuttles yet another bargaining session –for whatever pretext.

Recent history has taught us – with alarming regularity – that the launching of any round of haggling with the PA inevitably brings with it bloodshed. Prattle about peace in our region is consistently accentuated by slaughter. The quest for coexistence is accompanied by casualties.

Obama's Peace Process and the Palestinians' "Car Intifada"

...Moreover, it would also be a good idea for Obama and Kerry to go online and view the most recent Palestinian campaigns that encourage and applaud terror attacks on Israelis. Perhaps then they will understand that as long as the incitement continues, there is no chance — zero — for the success of any peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
07 November '14..

It began as a "children's intifada" in Jerusalem, where Palestinians aged eight to 18 were encouraged to take to the streets and throw stones and shoot fireworks at vehicles driven by Israelis and policemen.

Now, however, Palestinians are referring to it as a "car intifada" after two Palestinian drivers deliberately ran over Israelis in Jerusalem over the past two weeks.

The "car intifada," which has claimed the lives of four Israelis, including a three-month-old infant, is being hailed by many Palestinians as a "natural response to Israeli crimes."

The "crimes" they are referring to are visits by Jewish groups and individuals to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority [PA], Hamas and Islamic Jihad are using these visits to stir up Palestinians against Israel. The recent terror attacks in Jerusalem are the direct result of this campaign of incitement.

The widow of Ibrahim Akkari, the 48-year-old Palestinian who drove his car into a group of Israelis in Jerusalem on November 5, said that her husband was influenced by TV scenes of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli policemen at the Temple Mount.

The widow, Amira, said that her husband carried out the attack in retaliation against Israeli "assaults" on the Aqsa Mosque. "He was martyred for the sake of the Aqsa Mosque," she said.

Recent statements by PA President Mahmoud Abbas may also have convinced Akkari to go out and run over Israelis. Two weeks before the attack, Abbas called on Palestinians to "use all means" to protect the Aqsa Mosque.

"It is not enough to say the settlers came (to the Temple Mount), but they must be barred from entering the compound by any means. This is our Aqsa, and they have no right to enter it and desecrate it," Abbas told Fatah activists during a meeting in his Ramallah office.

As if not enough, Abbas indirectly encouraged Palestinians to resort to violence against Israel by praising the Palestinian who shot and severely wounded activist Rabbi Yehuda Glick in Jerusalem on October 29.

A special Israeli police unit caught up with the shooter a few hours later and killed him in a gunfight.

In a letter to the family of the would-be assassin, Mu'taz Hijazi, Abbas wrote: "With anger, we have received the news of the vicious assassination crime committed by the terrorists of the Israeli occupation army against your son, who will go to heaven as a martyr defending the rights of our people and its holy sites."

The letter of condolences contradicts Abbas's promise to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to work toward calming the situation and refrain from fiery rhetoric that leads to more violence and bloodshed.

What is more disturbing is the widespread support among Palestinians for the recent terror attacks in Jerusalem.

This support is being expressed mostly on social media, where Palestinian activists have launched campaigns that praise the perpetrators and encourage others to follow suit.

Finally starting to see this is not some passing wave of disturbances

...Those who want to "re-liberate Jerusalem" must understand that sovereignty in all parts of the city, including the most remote Arab neighborhoods, cannot be only defined in a rule book alone, it must be seen in the streets, everywhere, over time, by the renewal of Jewish settlements in all parts of Jerusalem, even if it makes Obama angry.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
23 October '14..

An intifada is breaking out in Jerusalem. Wednesday was its 112th day. It may be a (semi) popular movement but it has long not been spontaneous. The disturbances and continuous attacks on Jews in Jerusalem's periphery is organized and funded by elements identified with Fatah and Hamas.

Many of the 900 arrested in this intifada enjoy legal defense funded by the Palestinian Authority. The huge number of incidents, more than 10,000, their wide distribution over Jerusalem's periphery, their nature, the use of "cold weaponry," such as stones, Molotov cocktails and fireworks -- are all reminiscent of the First Intifada.

This time there are no popular resistance committees, but many small organizations that operate on the neighborhood level. They all carry the slogans of a "popular resistance," preached to them by the Palestinian Authority its president, Mahmoud Abbas. The car attacks, like Wednesday's, may be on one man acts for which intelligence cannot be gathered, but their inspiration comes from the general atmosphere in the city, the loss of deterrence, the continued riots at the al-Aqsa mosque that police seem unable to put down.

There have also been isolated incidents of gunfire, primarily from Shuafat into Pisgat Zeev, which could be seen as the next stage in the third intifada in Jerusalem and the transition to using guns, which are present in the Arab towns and have stopped only being used for "celebratory gunshots."

An Intifada with a Twist?

...If Hamas can cause the downfall of Abbas in the West Bank before elections can be held, they can avoid the trouble of pretending to be on the outside for those elections and can simply rule directly. The Obama administration officials who thought this was a good idea were pretty clearly outsmarted–but they probably thought they had more time before that became clear. Hamas seems to have other ideas.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
23 June '14..

During the earlier, more hopeful days of the Arab Spring it was common for people to wonder aloud if the revolutionary momentum would reach the Palestinians. One major difference between the Palestinians and Egyptians or Syrians was that the Palestinians have a degree of self-rule. Any uprising in the Palestinian territories might therefore target the Palestinian Authority or Hamas before Israel, and would likely result in less, not more Palestinian freedom because of it: Hamas would crackdown brutally in Gaza, and if the PA fell in the West Bank it would be replaced by a more authoritarian ruler (probably Hamas).

In part that was the folly of having elections in the territories that included Hamas back in 2006: if you gave the Palestinians a chance to punish the ruling party when Hamas was the only alternative, you would get Hamas in government. In the end, that’s exactly what happened. And it’s why many were warning against the United States giving its blessing to a Hamas-Fatah unity government that would soon call for elections. Mahmoud Abbas has been in office twice as long as his legal term; given the corruption of Fatah and the pent-up desire to register their discontent, the Palestinians could be expected to once again empower Hamas.

But now we’re seeing the possibility of Hamas gaining the upper hand without having to wait for an election. Both Haaretz and Khaled Abu Toameh are reporting the rumblings of a new intifada in the West Bank–only this time aimed at Abbas. As Jonathan mentioned earlier, the unrest is tied to Abbas’s criticism of the kidnapping of Israeli teenagers and the Israeli army’s West Bank operation to track them down. Here’s Toameh:

The attack on the Palestinian police station came amid growing Palestinian discontent with PA President Mahmoud Abbas over his opposition to the kidnapping of the three Israeli youths.

Palestinians representing various Palestinian factions, including Abbas’s own Fatah, have resorted to social media to denounce Abbas and his security forces as “traitors” for helping Israel in its efforts to locate the three youths.

One campaign on Facebook entitled, “I’m Palestinian and Abbas doesn’t represent me” has drawn hundreds of supporters.

Palestinian protests against Abbas and security coordination with Israel have recently become a daily occurrence in the West Bank, where Palestinian protesters are no longer afraid to express their views in public.

The Palestinian Authority has begun to feel the heat and that is why its security forces have been instructed to use an iron-fist policy not only against its critics, but also against Palestinian and Western journalists in the West Bank.

On June 20, Palestinian policemen broke up a protest in Hebron by families of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, and beat a number of journalists, including a CNN reporter who had his camera smashed.

But the Haaretz piece gets right to the point. Its subheadline, echoed in the article as well, is: “The Palestinian president will soon have to decide whether he’s in favor of Israel or his own people.”

Which is the Bigger Threat to Peace? Houses, Terror or Kerry?

...By threatening Israel with another intifada if it does not make more concessions to the Palestinians, Kerry has set in motion a train of events in which Palestinian rejectionists feel justified, indeed encouraged, in engaging in violence. A U.S. policy that treats houses as more of a threat to peace than terrorism is one that is not only bound to fail but is also likely to make the situation worse.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
27 December '13..

The news that Israel is preparing to announce permissions for new housing starts in Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement blocs is causing predictable consternation in the international community. The Palestinian Authority is claiming the building of these homes threatens the peace process. European nations are expressing their unhappiness with rumblings about a “harsh response” that may go beyond their previous efforts to restrict economic cooperation with the Jewish state so as to exclude anything to do with the settlements. Prime Minister Netanyahu can also expect U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to be upset since he has gone on record as branding the Jewish presence beyond the cease-fire lines of June 4, 1967 as “illegitimate.”

Why is Netanyahu doing it? The consensus answer is domestic politics. Having agreed to release more convicted Palestinian terrorists next month, he is hoping to keep his coalition together by throwing a bone to his right-wing supporters in the form of housing starts. But even settlement movement supporters are no more thrilled with a policy that somehow equates building homes with sending unrepentant murderers of Jews back to a hero’s welcome than is the PA about an announcement of new houses within existing settlements. Considering that it is unlikely that these homes will be built any time soon, if ever, the announcement seems to be a lose-lose proposition for the prime minister and his government. But before you join in the chorus of critics lambasting his decision, it is worthwhile to re-examine the question of what is and what is not an obstacle to Middle East peace.

This is a moment when terrorism against the Jewish state is on the rise. Rockets are flying from Gaza into southern Israel. And Israel’s supposed peace partners continue to say they will never recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. Yet the world is about to pounce on Israel for having the temerity to state its intention to build houses. If that doesn’t tell you all you have to know about the skewed moral compass of Israel’s critics and the lopsided morality of Middle East peace processing, nothing will.

The Palestinian Authority, promoter and proud sponsor of atmospheric terrorism

...This is how you plant the seeds of intifada. This is how you kick-start the terrorist mechanism of "reaping and sowing," whereby the Palestinians sow the seeds of terror while reaping the benefits of negotiations. The PA assumes the more it batters the Israeli homefront, the weaker the Israeli government.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
25 December '13..

A new phrase has been coined: "atmospheric terrorism." This is not the Third Intifada, senior officials explain, but rather sporadic, low-level incidents of stone throwing, fire bombs and stabbings; with a few exceptions (for now), such as the Bat Yam bus bombing, these incidents were just spontaneous products of the atmosphere.

Describing the situation in such placating terms has just one advantage. It allows us to grab the bull by the horns and ask: What exactly is the origin of this atmosphere, which has triggered small incidents that may easily develop into something more organized ?

This atmosphere, the one that has spawned these terrorist attacks, developed amid an ongoing festival promoted by the Palestinian Authority, which glorifies terror, jihad and slaughtering Jews and Israelis whoever and wherever they are. Just this week, Palestinian Media Watch revealed a shocking event organized by the Palestinian Authority, under the auspices of President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian culture minister.

In this so-called "cultural" event, certificates were handed out to several of the murderers whom Israel recently released. Palestinian teenagers then staged a play in which two groups of actors assembled on either side of the stage, one representing the Gaza-ruling Hamas, and the other the West Bank-dominant Fatah. The two sides brandished their flags, but then began tossing them into a space in the middle depicting Israel. Finally, the teenage actors coalesced under a single flag, representing the Palestinian Authority, and, once united, started shooting the "Israelis" facing them.

BBC on the first Intifada - Romanticising rocks and stones

...Interestingly though, when rocks, stones and other projectiles are thrown at British civilians the BBC’s portrayal is decidedly less empathic, rightly describing resulting fatalities as murder and the perpetrator as a killer.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
09 December '13..

Exactly twenty six years ago, on December 9th 1987, this writer and a colleague were driving to a meeting when – after turning a blind bend on one of the minor roads near Beit Sahur – we suddenly found our route blocked by a group of some fifteen to twenty young men, their faces concealed by keffiyahs and large concrete blocks or rocks in their hands.

The ensuing incident lasted seconds only. As soon as they saw the car’s Israeli number-plate, the pre-prepared rocks and concrete blocks were hurled at our vehicle. My colleague, who had instinctively braked in order to avoid driving into the people standing in the road, quickly got hold of himself, slammed his foot on the accelerator and we sped through the mob and the hail of rocks until we were out of range.

Thanks entirely to my colleague’s quick reaction, there was only minor damage to the car and although very shaken, we (including the baby I was carrying at the time) had escaped unharmed. Only after we arrived home much later in the evening and watched the news did we realise that what we had witnessed was part of the beginning of the first Intifada.

Several weeks ago we noted here that an article by Tarik Kafala promoting the myth of a non-violent first Intifada still appears on the BBC News website. Members of the public searching for information on the first Intifada on that website will also find two additional items (here and here), one of which is notable for the fact that it also promotes the myth that ” the Palestinians were largely unarmed”.

Another notable feature of both those articles is the way in which stone-throwing is misleadingly described as having been directed solely at Israeli soldiers.

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A Total Non-Event or Precipitating Another Intifada?

... The administration has at times acted as if the secretary’s initiative is a cost-free endeavor that the president can walk away from without consequences. But as Diskin rightly points out, the price of Kerry’s folly may be paid in blood.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
21 October '13..

To say that few Israelis think the current peace negotiations going on with the Palestinians have a chance of success is an understatement. In response to the passage by the Knesset of a bill to make it more difficult for the government to divide Jerusalem in the future, opposition leader Shelly Yacimovich mocked the proceedings as a futile exercise. Wasting time on it was ludicrous she said, “as if peace were in the offing … when we know talks are crawling.” But not everyone is taking the talks that were forced upon the parties by Secretary of State John Kerry as a total non-event. Yuval Diskin, a former head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, is claiming that the net result of the slow-motion failure of Kerry’s attempt to create momentum for peace when virtually no one thought the time was propitious could be another outbreak of violence.

Diskin, whose views put him on the left of Israel’s political spectrum, said that the recent upsurge in anti-Israel violence in the West Bank may show that another intifada may be in the offing next year once Kerry’s folly finishes running its course: “All of the conditions exist in our situation for the Palestinian masses to rise up,” Yuval Diskin told a conference at the Finance Ministry’s Budget Division. “In the West Bank, the intense tension and frustration is worsening among the Palestinians, who feel that their land is being stolen from them, that the state they strive for is getting further away, and the economy is no longer something that they can take comfort in.”

Diskin’s views about what his country should be doing about the stalemate are outside the mainstream since he advocates concessions that most Israelis are currently unwilling to make. But his fears about the way the process is unfolding and Kerry’s error in judgment in excluding neighboring countries from the talks may reflect a wider consensus:

Palestinian Arabs expressing themselves in customary fashion

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
28 September '13..

On Friday afternoon, just as the Sabbath was about to descend onto Jerusalem, we posted here ["27-Sep-13: Clouds"] about signs of increasing violence originating with our Palestinian Arab neighbours. Friday happens to have been the anniversary of the day in 2000 on which an "Intifada" inspired by the now-deceased arch-terrorist Arafat erupted in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip.

Here's how the rest of Friday developed.

Adiv Sterman writing ["Six Israelis injured in clashes in Jerusalem and West Bank, hours after terror groups call for third uprising"] in Times of Israel on Friday, says "violent demonstrations flared up Friday in several locations throughout Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip" hours after exhortations from Hamas and Islamic Jihad spokespersons calling for a "Third Intifada" against Israel. The results included multiple Israeli injuries.

In Jerusalem, three Israeli border policemen were lightly injured by young Palestinian stone throwers during a protest near the Old City’s Damascus Gate. Thirteen Palestinians were arrested over the disturbances.

(Continue)

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On The Way To A New Intifada?

Although Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and some of his aides have been telling Israelis, Americans and Europeans that they are opposed to violence and terror attacks against Israel, they continue to incite Palestinians against Israel on an almost daily basis.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
24 September '13..

A connection seems to exist between the resumption of the peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and the recent upsurge in violence in the West Bank, which reached its peak with the killing of two Israeli soldiers this week.

The resumption of the U.S.-sponsored negotiations has been accompanied by increased calls from Palestinians to launch a new intifada against Israel.

Calls have been coming not only from Hamas and other extremist groups, but also from Palestinians representing various PLO groups in the West Bank, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's own Fatah faction.

Earlier this week, representatives of several Palestinian groups met in Ramallah and launched a public campaign to stop the negotiations and wage an intifada against Israel.

That the meeting was held a few hundred meters away from Abbas's headquarters is significant. It shows that opposition to the peace talks is not only coming from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, but also from the largely secular and relatively moderate city of Ramallah.

A few days earlier, a group of masked men marched in the city calling for a third intifada against Israel. The Palestinian Authority police did not intervene to stop them because, Palestinians say, they were Abbas loyalists from Fatah.

Calls for a new uprising against Israel are also being issued by senior officials of Fatah in the West Bank. These officials argue that stepping up the "popular resistance" against Israel is possible even as the peace talks continue.

"Popular resistance will increase pressure on the Israeli government and draw the world's attention to the conflict," explained a top Fatah official.

By supporting a new intifada against Israel, Fatah is seeking to send a message to its critics that, despite Abbas's decision to resume the peace talks with Israel, its members have not abandoned the option of violence as a way of extracting concessions from the Israeli government.

Third Intifada? Actually, Countdown to the Sixth Intifada

Emmanuel Navon..
For the Sake of Zion..
28 February '13..





The death of Arafat Jaradat in an Israeli jail has raised the fear of a “third intifada.” But if a new intifada were indeed to erupt, it would not be the third. It would be the sixth.

Historically, intifadas have always followed the same pattern: a. the Palestinian leadership comes-up with a lie and deliberately inflames its population; b. once the violence turns lethal, the Palestinian leadership claims it had nothing to do with it; c. the international community steps it, explaining that in order to stop the violence Israel must address the Palestinians’ justified anger and legitimate claims; d. the Palestinian leadership gets from Israel what it failed to obtain at the negotiation table. It always works, so why not keep going?

The first intifada erupted in 1929, when Hadj-Amin al-Husseini spread the lie (with doctored pictures) that the Jews were planning to overtake the Al-Aqsa mosque in order to rebuild their temple. Al-Husseini used violence because he had failed to convince the British to halt Jewish immigration and land purchases. The violence he ignited was lethal: 133 Jews were killed, and the Jewish community of Hebron was decimated. But the strategy worked: in October 1930, Sir John Hope Simpson’s report cleared the Mufti of any responsibility for the violence, and it agreed to curb Jewish immigration. Al-Husseini realized that this was the way to go, so he kept going.

Al-Husseini launched a second intifada in 1936. He wanted the British to repeal the League of Nations mandate and establish an Arab state instead of a “Jewish National Home.” This time, some 400 Jews were killed. Again, it worked: the Peel Commission (1937) recommended the de facto cancellation of the League of Nations mandate, and the establishment of a mini Jewish state in the Galilee as well as on a narrow strip between Tel-Aviv and Haifa. Al-Husseini rejected the offer, however, and intensified the violence. The British made him a better offer still with the 1939 White Paper, which further curbed Jewish immigration and purchasing rights.

Yasser Arafat, who more than once described al-Husseini as his hero and his model, used the very same tactics. On December 8, 1987, an Israeli truck driver accidentally killed four bystanders in Gaza. Although this was a road accident, the PLO decided to spread the lie that it was a deliberate murder. This is how the third intifada (generally and inaccurately known as the “first intifada”) started. Some 200 Israelis were killed. As a result, Israel agreed (in the Oslo Accords) to give the PLO a foothold in the Gaza Strip and in Jericho. Within twenty years, Arafat had managed to implement the PLO’s “phased plan” adopted in Cairo in 1974.

The Israeli media’s "third intifada"

The bottom line is that Israel’s media set an agenda this past week – “the third intifada.” The most troubling aspect of this “documentary production” is that when it becomes clear that it presents the facts just as accurately as in the Five Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers, no one in the media will have to pay for their irresponsibility.

Yisrael Medad/Eli Pollak..
Media Comment/JPost..
27 February '13..

To many Israelis, the news coming out of Los Angeles at the beginning of this week that the two nominated Israeli films did not win Oscar awards was received with more than a sigh of relief.

The two Israeli-produced candidates in the Documentary Feature category, the films 5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers are a prime example of how Israel successfully manages to subvert its national ethos and Zionist raison d’être; the two films were funded not only by left-wing sources but also by official state bodies. The question debated, and our local media did reflect it, was how is it that the Israeli candidates for the Oscar/Hollywood professional recognition in recent years all presented a one-sided, less-than-positive view of Israel, its life style and its politics? Or, as one observer noted, “Israel’s domestic films... have long been much more self-critical” than those Hollywood has produced.”

Documentaries are the result of an extended period of filming and creative investment. They are directed, edited and produced and benefit from hindsight.

Funding usually comes from ideological sources, interested in promoting a message. These films are more opinion column than news. Yet they possess the potential to inflict immense damage, since they try to present themselves as “objective” truth. Newspapers, which are published day in and day out, are perceived by the public as having biases. Such bias is much tougher to discern in a one-time “documentary” production. Perhaps it is high time a rating agency for documentaries is created, which would provide the viewer with some indication as to the reliability of the content being presented.

But sometimes agenda-setting by the media is even more damaging. The media can create the material which is the basis for the documentary of tomorrow.

Perhaps the so-called third intifada is a prime example.

Palestinian “moderates” relying again on the non-spontaneous outbreak of popular protests

The Al Aqsa group’s rocket launch is a reminder to foreign observers that their assumptions about the peaceful intent of Abbas and Fatah is based on willful ignorance and forgetfulness about the last time the PA decided to play the intifada game.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
26 February '13..

The firing of a single rocket from Gaza today is easy to dismiss as just an isolated incident unworthy of much notice. The rocket was fired at the city of Ashkelon, but fortunately landed in an open field and did not lead to the activation of the Iron Dome defense system. But the attack, which was the first missile launched from Gaza since the cease-fire that ended Operation Pillar of Defense last November, may tell us more about the violent intentions of the so-called moderates of the Palestinians than it does about the Hamas rulers of the strip.

As I noted on Sunday, the Palestinian Authority’s plans to launch a new intifada prior to President Obama’s visit to Israel isn’t exactly a secret. The recent outbreak of violent demonstrations in the West Bank isn’t so much a natural response to anything Israel has done as it is an orchestrated attempt to get the world to focus on Palestinian complaints. Thus it is not exactly a surprise to note that the group that claimed responsibility for today’s rocket wasn’t Hamas or any of its Islamist rivals but the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is part of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party.

The Al Aqsa group’s rocket launch is a reminder to foreign observers that their assumptions about the peaceful intent of Abbas and Fatah is based on willful ignorance and forgetfulness about the last time the PA decided to play the intifada game.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, after all, was created by Abbas’s predecessor, Yasir Arafat, in order to compete with Hamas. In the upside-down world of Palestinian politics, a group or a leader’s credibility is based on how many Jews it kills, not how much it can do to help the plight of their people. That’s why genuine moderates like PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who is so well liked in the West, have virtually no constituency.