The Palestinian people in Gaza were subjected to three devastative wars; where the land, marine and air Israeli occupational forces killed and injured thousands of civilians and demolished tens of thousands of houses, masjids, factories, hospitals and public and civil organizations.

Manifestations of the Negotiations Crisis

The negotiations failed due to the Israeli vision, as the occupation insisted on splitting the philosophy of the negotiations to take them out of the comprehensive historical and political context. The occupation aimed to divide it into separate pieces that could be negotiated, so that the Palestinians would attain very little (if any). Such attempts were meant to diminish any possible achievements for the Palestinian party and tear down the notion of the comprehensive struggle and the stolen Palestinian right.

The five-year transitional period stated in the Oslo Accords was supposed to end with the declaration of a Palestinian state established on the borders of 4/6/1967 with "Al-Quds Al-Sharqiya" as its capital. However, the Palestinians received nothing but the occupational procrastination and rejection to change the transitional status.

Therefore, Palestinians began to believe that such negotiations had to be ended. They became frustrated after the decided time for implementing the final status had ended and the Camp David Summit negotiations had failed.

The Spark of Al-Aqsa Intifada

The main drive of Al-Aqsa Intifada was the Oslo Accord, because it disappointed the Palestinians about the benefit of negotiating with the occupation that had no intention to fulfill the agreement requirements.

Operation "Field of Thrones" designed by the occupation's Prime Minister in 1999, Ehud Barak, is a clear evidence of the Israelis' intentions in case the Camp David talks failed. The operation plan included the reoccupation of large parts of the Palestinian lands under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

The Intifada sparked on the ground on 28/9/2000; as the Israeli opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, broke into the yards of Masjid Al-Aqsa escorted by more than 2,000 soldiers of the occupation army and the Israeli Special Forces. Clashes ignited and led to seven Palestinian martyrs and more than 200 injured. Thirteen Israeli soldiers were injured.

The confrontations spread to the entire city of Al-Quds and then to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Some analysts expected that Al-Aqsa Intifada would cause a true popular intervention and change the track of the peace operation that had been crippled by the occupation. At that time, the Israeli researcher, Uri Ben-Eliezer, considered the Intifada as a form of "Israel's new wars". The settlers agreed on this vision, as they saw Al-Aqsa Intifada as a war of attrition.

Oppressing the Intifada

The clashes that occurred between the occupation and the Palestinians who were provoked by Sharon's breaking into Masjid Al-Aqsa revealed the occupation's oppressive nature. Barak's Operation Field of Thrones managed to persecute the Palestinians through military targeting that contradicted human and international norms. The Israeli army conducted air, land and sea operations and launched a series of assassination to extinguish the Intifada flare.

The whole world witnessed the occupation's racism, when it shot the child Mohammed Al-Durra with cold blood and on cameras of international media. The child was trying to find shelter with his father near a barrel of cement to the south of Gaza city on 30/9/2000 when he was shot dead, becoming the icon of the Intifada that attained popular support at the international level.

Main Incidents

It is not easy to list all the details of Al-Aqsa Intifada, as the clashes between the Palestinians and the Israeli occupation were countless. However, one can understand the bigger picture upon classifying the occupation's actions into main operation categories:

• The Assassinations: during the nineteen seventies and eighties and throughout the entire Intifada, "Israel" adopted an assassination policy that focused on the leaders and members of resistance movements. The main assassinations included:

• Thabet Thabet (31/12/2000): One of the main leaders of Fatah in the West Bank and was assassinated by the Israeli Special Forces in Tulkarm.
• Abu Ali Mustafa (27/8/2001): The Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was targeted by an Israeli helicopter with two rockets in his office in Ramallah.
• Raed Al-Karmy (14/1/2002): A prominent leader of Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Fatah's military wing. He was assassinated by the Israeli Special Forces in Tulkarm.
• Jamal Mansour and Jamal Saleem (31/7/2001): Two prominent leaders of Hamas who were assassinated in an office in Nablus with a helicopter rocket.
• Mahmoud Abu Hanoud (23/11/2001): The Leader of Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military wing, in the West Bank. He was martyred near Nablus with a helicopter rocket.
• Salah Shehada (22/7/2002): Leader of Izz AL-Din Al-Qassam Brigades. He was assassinated with a bomb carrying 2205 pounds of explosives dropped by an F-16 plane on his house in Gaza.
• Ibrahim Al-Maqadma (8/3/2003): Member of Hamas' political office. He was assassinated with a missile dropped by an Israeli helicopter on his car in Gaza.
• Isma'il Abu Shanab (21/8/2003): one of the founders of Hamas Movement. His car was targeted with a helicopter missile in Gaza.
• Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (22/3/2004): Founder and leader of Hamas movement. He was killed with a helicopter missile as he was leaving the masjid for Fajr prayer.
• Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Rantisi (17/4/2004): One of the main leaders of Hamas and the successor of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. He was killed with an Israeli helicopter missile.
• Yasser Arafat (November 2004): Founder of Fatah, Head of the PLO and President of the Palestinian Authority. The details of his death are still being investigated, but evidence shows he was poisoned, and the fingers are pointed to the occupation.
• Nizar Rayyan (1/1/2009): One of Hamas' prominent leaders. He was killed when his house was bombed in Jabaliya in the north of the Gaza Strip.
• Said Syam (15/1/2009): Prominent leader in Hamas and Internal Minister in the Palestinian government formed in 2007. He was killed in an air strike in Gaza.

• The Arrests:

During the years of Al-Aqsa Intifada, the Israeli forces arrested more than 93 thousand Palestinians, including 11,500 children and 1,300 women, and issued more than 25 thousand administrative detention orders; according to the Palestinian Prisoners Center for studies. The occupation eagerly arrested leaders of different Palestinian factions to weaken them and put an end to the Intifada. Of those leaders were the Fatah leader Marwan Al-Barghouthi, who was arrested in 2002 and received five life sentences, and the Secretary General of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine "Ahmed Sa'adat", who was arrested in 2006 and sentenced for thirty years.

• Military Operations: The occupational Israeli forces invaded many Palestinian lands including:

• Operation Defensive Shield (29/3 – 10/5/2002): the Israeli forces invaded Palestinian cities and camps in the West Bank, murdering 250-350 Palestinians, injuring hundreds and demolishing and damaging more than 2,250 homes.
• Siege of Yasser Arafat (27/3/2002): The Golani Brigade of the Israeli army invaded the Palestinian Presidency headquarter "the Compound" in Ramallah, the West Bank. About 20,000 soldiers with 500 tanks, 50 fighting planes and 80 bulldozers participated in the operation. The Siege of Arafat was largely condemned by Arab countries and Europe. It lasted until the mysterious death of Arafat in 2004.
• Rolling Response (January and February 2002): A military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
• The Siege of the Church of the Nativity (April and May 2002): the church was besieged after some Palestinian fugitives took refuge in it. The siege ended through negotiations between the occupation on one side and international organizations, the European Union and the Palestinian Authority on the other. The parties agreed that the fugitives be banished to the Gaza Strip and some European countries.
• The Invasion of Jenin Camp (April 2002): The invasion led to the martyrdom of 59 Palestinians and the death of 23 Israeli soldiers in the clashes that lasted for days. During that time, resistance teams of different political affiliations worked united in the camp to defy the Israeli invasion.
• Determined Path (June 2002): A military operation to reoccupy all Palestinian cities in the West Bank except for Jericho.
• Colorful Journey (March 2003): A military operation to invade camps in the West Bank, especially the camps of Jenin and Balata.
• Operation Rainbow (May 2004): A military incursion of Rafah city in the Gaza Strip.
• Operation Effective Shield (July and August 2004): A military operation that targeted the north of the Gaza Strip.
• Operation Days of Sorrow (October 2004): A military operation against the north of the Gaza Strip.
• Operation Summer Rains (June-October 2006): against the Gaza Strip.

• Demolishing of Houses: Similar to the Nakba of 1948, the Israeli occupation forces demolished during Al-Aqsa Intifada more than 8,300 houses, 900 of which were in the occupied city of Al-Quds. More than 70 houses were partially damaged.

The occupation demolished the houses under pretexts of lack of licensing (especially in Al-Quds) and punishment of the families of jihadists who had implemented martyrdom operations. Their true incentive of such punishment was to provoke the Palestinian community against the armed resistance.

• Bulldozing Agricultural Lands: The Israeli occupation forces bulldozed hundreds of Agricultural Donums in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to damage the agricultural sector and build the apartheid wall to protect the occupation forces and the settlers.
• The Apartheid Wall: The Israeli occupation approved the apartheid wall project across the borders with the occupied Palestinian interior in the West Bank in June 2002. The main objective was to destroy the physical structure of a possible connected Palestinian state in addition to the confiscation of land and seizure of water resources.

The area of the lands that would be isolated by the wall reached about 10% of the West Bank. About 159 Palestinian compounds would be afflicted by the wall that would endorse 99 settlements and settlement outposts.

• Violations in the occupied city of Al-Quds: The occupation targeted the Palestinian presence in the holy city through several actions:

• Canceling the credentials (ID cards) of the people of Jerusalem
• Not giving the people of Jerusalem construction permits
• Demolishing homes and buildings under the pretext of lack of licensing
• Enacting the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, forbidding the people of Al-Quds and the Palestinians of the occupied interior married into spouses of the West Bank to obtain family unification. The law, thus, forces such spouses to live separately.
• Targeting the holy places such as digging under Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa and building a Jewish synagogue under the masjid, desecrating the Mamilla Cemetery and building a museum on its ground, and conquering a Christian church to turn it into a Jewish synagogue.
• Trying to indirectly move the ownership of land properties in the holy city to Zionists.

The Intifada and the Armed Resistance:

Al-Aqsa Intifada was different from the first intifada in 1987, due to the improved Palestinian armed resistance and the occurrence of martyrdom operations by different Palestinian factions, especially Hamas. The martyrdom explosive operations targeted Israeli restaurants and transportation in the occupied interior, leaving many dead and injured Zionists.

In the Israeli entity, a new term known as the "stay-at-home culture" emerged to indicate the people's refrainment from going to restaurants, malls or public transport unless necessary.

Al-Aqsa Intifada (2000-2005) witnessed 22,406 martyrdom operations, which dispersed terror among the Israelis and broke the interior security theory and the invincible army theory.

The Zionists' extremism escalated. Many surveys revealed that more than 50% of the Israeli people saw that achieving peace with the Palestinian people was heading to a dead end. They believed that the Palestinian resistance had to be vanquished.

Settlers are the favorable category in the occupational state, according to the Israeli author, Yehuda Litani. Indeed, succeeding governments seek their approval. Therefore, it was not strange that the right current took the lead of Israel's political scene or that Ariel Sharon became the prime minister.

Key Resistance Operations:

The Palestinian resistance managed to conduct quality operations that crucially affected the course of the intifada.

• The assassination of the occupation Minister of Tourism, the right extremist, Rehavam Ze'evi, who called for ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. He was shot by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on 17/10/2001 in his hotel room in Al-Quds.
• The captivation of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and the killing and injury of several others during operation Dispel Illusion launched by Al-Qassam Brigades and other factions on 25/6/2006. The operation targeted an Israeli military post in the south of the Gaza Strip.

Resistance and the Zionist Extremism

A Zionist leader once said, "What cannot be achieved with force can be achieved with more force". As such, the Israeli public felt that keeping the leftist Labor Party in charge was ineffective, and the majority of them voted for Ariel Sharon in the elections of March 2001.

Sharon's policy against the Palestinians clearly aimed at undermining the peace operation through crushing the Palestinian political and economic capabilities and violating international laws and regulations. His actions included:

• Targeting the Palestinian people with planes and missiles
• Taking steps to grab as many Palestinian lands as possible and kill the hope of an independent Palestinian state.

Sharon also laid down prohibitive conditions for restoring peace and resuming the political efforts. He demanded:

• Halting the Palestinian people's resistance
• Excluding Yasser Arafat and finding an alternative leader of the Palestinian people
• Disarming and arresting the Palestinian resistance factions
• Destroying the infrastructure of the Muslim movements (Hamas and Jihad) and cutting their support through shutting down the charity and social associations run by these movements.

 

 

A New Zionist Transfer

According to the Israeli researcher, Ilan Pappé, the Israeli occupation presented its traditional expulsion-based transfer policy in a new form during Al-Aqsa Intifada. The new form encompassed the siege, the blockade, the assassinations and the killing of civilians in Palestinian regions.

The Israeli occupation continued to destroy the Palestinian society's infrastructure to prevent any attempts of establishing a politically-independent Palestinian economy. It divided the Palestinian cities and villages with cross points and barriers, imposed siege and blockade, bombarded industrial facilities and bulldozed agricultural lands.

Intifada and the Palestinian Power

Despite the strong popular support of the Intifada, it still faced challenges within the Palestinian structure unlike the first Intifada in 1987. For instance,

• Al-Aqsa Intifada did not have a unified leadership
• It did not have clear objectives or political programs

In fact, there was a state of competition between the Palestinian factions without real coordination. This is probably attributed to the different factions' conflicted views on the Oslo Accords.

On the ground, this resulted in discrepant resistance acts that, despite achieving good outcomes, could not be invested to serve the interests of the intifada itself. Each faction aimed to enhance its image in the eyes of the Palestinian people, who were actually drifted with such actions.

Al-Aqsa Intifada started to fade, due to the absence of inner Palestinian agreement on its objectives or methods. The Palestinians could not agree on how to portray the true suffering of the Palestinian people under the Israeli repression or under the occupation's renouncement of the settlement requirements. On the other hand, the Israeli occupation managed to exploit the intifada events to serve its purposes at all levels.

Al-Aqsa Intifada and the Arabs

In addition to the massive Arab popular support to Al-Aqsa Intifada, and the people's rage against the horrific acts of the occupation against men, women and children; Intfadat Al-Aqsa succeeded in imposing the Palestinian cause on the Arab's Agenda.

• In March 2002, An Arab summit was held in Beirut in absence of the Palestinian President, Arafat, who was besieged in the Presidential compound in Ramallah in the West Bank.

The Arab group proposed the "Arab Peace Initiative" which included the Arab countries' recognition of Israel in exchange of the latter's withdrawal from all the lands occupied in 1967, recognition of a Palestinian state with Al-Quds Al-Sharqiya as its capital, and acceptance of a just solution for the Palestinian refugees issue.

The Israeli leadership never considered the initiative. They rather continued their military operations against the Palestinians in all regions.

• In June 2003, The Arab League approved the road map proposed by the Quartet (the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia). The road map called for establishing an independent Palestinian state and freezing settlement in the West Bank.

The Zionists' Investment of the Intifada

Al-Aqsa Intifada negatively affected the Israeli body, as the opposite immigration (from Israel to other countries) increased significantly. A report in the Israeli newspaper, Maariv, in 2006 stated that the numbers of Jewish immigrants to Israel had dropped.

Additionally, many investors and capital owners emigrated from Israel, leading to a drop in foreign investment and tourism income.

However, the occupation could exploit its losses. It documented and published the numbers and images of those killed in Palestinian operations as well as the Palestinian visual documentation of enhanced military power (represented by the manufacture of local missiles). The occupation wanted to accuse the Palestinian resistance of terrorism against it so as to internationally isolate the Palestinian people and its leaders. Despite continuously applying organized terror against an entire people and grabbing its lands and homes, the occupation managed to portray itself as a victim of Palestinian terrorism.

The Flare Cooling off

In 2005, the uprising started to weaken for Palestinian implications including:

• The mysterious death of the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in November 2004 and the suspicions of him being poisoned.
• The election of Mahmoud Abbas as the new President of the Palestinian Authority.
• The preparation for the Palestinian legislative elections
• The Palestinian factions' declaration of a unilateral calm on 22/1/2005

Withdrawal from the Gaza Strip:

After 38 years of military occupation, the Israelis withdrew from the Gaza Strip. They evacuated their settlements and military posts, where about 8,600 settlers had lived, dismantling and destroying everything they had built. The occupation, then, redeployed its soldiers at the borders of the Strip.

At that time, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, expressed his desire to maintain the settlements except that they had not choice.

Some attribute the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August 2005 to the following reasons:

• Avoiding the demographic danger: The occupation wanted to avoid a new unfamiliar danger that threatened its existence; the demographic danger. Therefore, they had a "disengagement plan" to draw new borders of Israel with the widest possible area and the lowest number of Palestinians. The Israeli withdrawal resulted from their concerns of the demographic disparity caused by the high population in Gaza in addition to the insecurity caused by the Palestinian resistance.
• Easing the Security Burden: Sharon's failure to vanquish the Palestinian resistance had become evident. Therefore, the occupation turned to the idea of an apartheid wall in the West Bank. Sharon admitted that the resistance was the true reason for his withdrawal from Gaza. He said, "The withdrawal was under deteriorating security conditions and settlers' suffering."
• Canceling the choice of a binational state: Sharon's government worked to destroy the choice of establishing a binational state through isolating the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and preventing any connection between them in addition to the establishment of the apartheid wall in the West Bank and the Judaization of Al-Quds.
• Establishing a Jewish state:

The occupation wanted to deepen the idea of a Jewish state and establish it through either expanding the settlement and expelling as many Palestinians as possible or waving the control over the majority of the Palestinians to maintain their state's Jewish identity. This required abandoning some Palestinian lands to the Palestinians, which they did when they withdrew from the Gaza Strip.

However, the Gaza Strip is still a nightmare to the Israeli occupation. Despite its withdrawal, the occupation still controls the Strip's land and sea crossings. It destroyed the only airport and denied the Palestinians their right to independence and freedom of transportation. The occupation still refuses to let the Palestinians reopen Gaza International Airport, establish a harbor or sail for longer than 6-10 kms from the Gaza shore. All these actions isolate the Gaza Strip from the world and deny its population their rights to travel or trade.

The Ending of the Intifada:

Al-Aqsa Intifada ended on February 8, 2005, after a truce was agreed on between the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Authority at Sharm Al-Sheikh Summit. However, the resistance’ weapons had much developed in comparison with the tools used in the first Intifada, when stones and Molotov were the most common.

The Palestinian resistance’ factions’ wings expanded, and Al-Qassam successfully developed its weapons, and manufactured local rocket that could hit the occupied cities and towns.

 

References

• Mohsen Saleh, the Palestinian Cause: Its Historical Background and Modern Developments, Al-Zaytouna Center for Studies.
• Jamil Helal, Al-Aqsa Intifada: The Direct Objectives and the Drivers of Continuity, Journal of Palestinian Studies, V. 44 (Autumn 2000)
• Abdul Wahhab Al-Messeiri, From an Intifada to the Palestinian War of Liberation, Egyptian Association for Culture and Dialogue, 2002
• Samira Al-Hamouz, Explosive Operations and their Impact on Al-Aqsa Intifada, Master thesis, Ber Zeit University, 2009
• Michel Espozito, Al-Aqsa Intifada: the Military Operations, the Losses, the Martyrdom Attacks and the Assassinations during the First Four Years, Journal of Palestinian Studies, V. 63 (Summer 2005)
• Ilan Pappé, A Reading of the Transfer Policy from Haim Wiseman to Rehavam Ze'evi, Israeli Affairs Journal, V. 5 (January 2002)
• Bassam Abu Sharif, Self-Criticism: The Way to Re-nourish the Popular Intifada, Al-Quds Newspaper, October 2004
• Dia' Ali, Israel: A Society with a Quiver, Lebanese Al-Akhbar Newspaper

• The Second Palestinian Intifada 2000, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed website
• Al-Jazeera Encyclopedia, Al-Jazeera Net website
• Land and Holy Places, Al-Quds City website

• An Eye for an Eye, How the Decision to Assassinate an Israeli Minister was Made at a Café in Ramallah, Sasa Post website, January 2019
• Mona Awad, Why Isn't Gaza Still Occupied? Ida2at website, March 2016