THOUGH the dust has finally settled in Gaza, the rubble from the untold number of demolished buildings, homes and mosques is far from being cleared away. Graves continue to receive victims, young and old alike, from Israel’s most recent onslaught. And in the midst of this, with hopes of some respite and recovery on the horizon, rumors of a third intifada are heard among politicians and scholars as well as ordinary people.
While the first and second Palestinian uprisings were spontaneous and natural responses to grave institutionalized injustice, and while they fostered a great sense of community and brotherhood among Palestinians everywhere, it must be said that the many years of uprisings mark some of the most painful years in Palestinian history.
It is not easy to isolate specific dates and events that spark popular revolutions. Genuine collective rebellion cannot be rationalized through a coherent line of logic that collapses time and space; it is rather a combination of experiences that unite the individual to the collective, their conscious and subconscious, their relationships with their immediate surroundings and with that which is not so immediate, all colliding and exploding in a fury that cannot be suppressed.
The eruption of both intifada cannot be easily explained by one individual, for it meant different things to different people. It was a popular and spontaneous retort to the injustice and the humiliation felt on a daily basis by Palestinians living in the occupied territories. But also, it was a bold and collective declaration that Palestinians would struggle until freedom was finally achieved.
There are several factors that have led many to believe that a resumption of the uprising, or a third intifada, is simply the natural response to the current situation on the ground. Mass arrests, unjust imprisonment of people and extrajudicial executions are some of the many cruelties imposed on Palestinians that led them to revolt or fueled their ongoing rebellion. But some of the most contentious issues throughout the years have been the crimes of house demolitions, settlement construction in the Occupied Territories and the increasing number of settlers moving into those ever-growing settlements.
In a recent interview with Ma’an News Agency, the Palestinian Authority’s governor in Jerusalem warned that the planned demolition of 100 Palestinian homes and the displacement of nearly 1,000 people in the area of occupied Jerusalem would certainly increase the possibility of a third intifada. “It is now clear to the international community, and our position within the Palestinian Authority is very clear — no negotiations, no peace process, with settlements,” he stressed.
There is a great fear that the Israeli plan for what some have described as “slow-motion ethnic cleansing” is now coalescing into a fast-paced settlement project. These worries were confirmed by the Israeli Peace Now movement, in a press release on March 2. “The Ministry of Construction and Housing is planning to construct at least 73,300 housing units in the West Bank,” Peace Now reported. It further stated that the plans outlined in the Israeli ministry report “represent only a small part of the total number of the plans existing in the settlements.”
“At least 15,000 housing units have already been approved and plans for an additional 58,000 housing units are yet to be approved,” according to Peace Now’s findings. The group also concluded that of the units already approved by the Israeli government, nearly 9,000 have been built. “If all the plans are realized, the number of settlers in the territories will be doubled.”
It follows that the construction of thousands of units would lead to permanent demographic realities in the West Bank that would strongly obstruct any possibility of Palestinian statehood, according to the standard vision of a two-state solution. Needless to say, the new illegal units are built on stolen land illegally confiscated from their rightful Palestinian owners. By such a move, Israel purposely renders the so-called two-state solution permanently impossible, while insisting that a one-state solution is the equivalent to the “annihilation” of the Jewish state. Israel is once again molding the very desperate environment that led to the revolts of 1987 and 2000, at the cost of thousands of innocent lives.
So what is a nation to do under such circumstances? Can stone throwing, general strikes and boycotting Israeli products deter such a scheme? Furthermore, what is the responsibility of the free world in this conflict? Will it sit by, as it did during the recent tragic attacks on Gaza, and view the crimes from afar? Will it again expect Palestinians to bear down and endure harsh and cruel realities or will the onset of yet another popular revolution come as no surprise?
As for two generations of Palestinians who have lived through the first and second intifada, writing rebellious graffiti, hurling stones at occupying soldiers, refusing to buy Israeli products that were so arrogantly imposed on Palestinians (while impeding the growth of Palestinian local industry), they may not have unshackled a hostage nation. Indeed, they may not in the future either. But a third intifada, in the eyes of many, could accomplish one vital task — it could provide the platform for the Palestinians to reclaim their unity (despite the prevailing factionalism of today) and declare that they will struggle until the day when they finally embrace freedom. If this is all that a third intifada accomplishes, in the eyes of many Palestinians, it is certainly a necessary and worthy endeavor.
— Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com.
