The third intifada is inevitable

Nathan Thrall writes: Earlier this month, at a private meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his security advisers, a group of Middle East experts and former intelligence officers warned that a third Palestinian intifada was imminent. The immediate catalyst, they said, could be another mosque vandalized by Jewish settlers, like the one burned on Tuesday, or the construction of new settlement housing. Whatever the fuse, the underlying source of ferment in the West Bank is a consensus that the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has reached a dead end.

Mr. Abbas’s political strategy was premised on the notion that security cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government would make Israel feel safer and remove its primary justification for continuing to occupy the West Bank, thereby clearing the way for a Palestinian state. Ironically, owing to the success of his efforts, many Israelis have had the luxury of forgetting that there is an occupation at all.

Thanks to the American- and European-financed peace that Mr. Abbas’s government has been keeping in the West Bank, Israelis have come to believe they can eat their cake and have it, too. A majority of citizens polled earlier this year said their state could remain Jewish and democratic without relinquishing any of the West Bank. Years of peace and quiet in Tel Aviv allowed hundreds of thousands of Israelis to take to the streets last summer to protest the high price of cottage cheese, rent and day care without uttering a word about Palestinians in the West Bank. The issue has ceased to be one of Israel’s primary security concerns. Mr. Netanyahu would have to be either politically suicidal or exceptionally forward-thinking to abandon a status quo with which a vast majority appears satisfied.

By contrast, Palestinians today see their leadership banging its head against a wall, hoping against reason that a bit more good behavior will bring about an independent state. As a result, longstanding debates over how to achieve national liberation — by comforting Israel or confronting it — have now been resolved. Palestinians of all political stripes are no longer arguing about whether to make Israel’s occupation more costly, but how. [Continue reading…]

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4 thoughts on “The third intifada is inevitable”

  1. Norman

    I can’t help but wonder about the similarities taking place in Israel today concerning the Palestinians as well as other ethnic groups, with what both the Germans & the Russians had done to the Jews and other ethnic groups. Building walls, deporting/imprisoning, treating as second class citizens, the continuing act[s] of bullying, outright theft of land. Could it be possible, that those earlier acts were perpetrated by Jews themselves?

  2. dickerson3870

    RE: “Could it be possible, that those earlier acts were perpetrated by Jews themselves?” ~ Norman

    MY COMMENT: I’m not all that knowledgeable as to European history, but based on what I do know, that certainly does not appear to have been the case. Anti-Semitism has long been endemic to parts of Europe.

    FOR INSTANCE, FROM WIKIPEDIA [Black Death]:

    (excerpts) The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Although there were several competing theories as to the etiology of the Black Death, it has been conclusively proven via analysis of ancient DNA from plague victims in northern and southern Europe that the pathogen responsible is the Yersinia pestis bacterium.[1] Thought to have started in China or central Asia,[2] it travelled along the Silk Road and reached the Crimea by 1346. . .
    . . . Because 14th century healers were at a loss to explain the cause [of the Black Death], Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes, and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for the plague’s emergence.[14] The governments of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis because no one knew its cause or how it spread. The mechanism of infection and transmission of diseases was little understood in the 14th century; many people believed only God’s anger could produce such horrific displays.
    There were many attacks against Jewish communities.[58] In August 1349, the Jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were exterminated. In February of that same year, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 Jews.[58] By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities were destroyed.[59] . . .

    SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

  3. Joe

    Read Israel Shahak on the history of Jews in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Ukraine — he explains a lot that other historians simply do not touch.

    Russian/Ukrainian Jewish writer, Yuri Szlezkine is also essential reading, as is Shlomo Sand.

    The point is, we are not encouraged in any way, to look at Jewish history — in all good faith, we are encouraged to look closely,thoroughly, exhaustively at the history of ALL other ethnic groups, from that of the Anglo Saxons, to the Slavs, to the Africans of all regions, to the Flemish, to the Americans and onwards — but we are never encouraged to look in any way at Jewish history, so all we get is an oversimplified version of Jewish history that usually takes in the the pogroms and anti Semitism, and a little bit of Bible history that owes more to Hollywood,Charlton Heston and Leon Uris than real fact.

    The rest is a blank — we don’t get any idea of how ordinary Jews lived, and often thrived and did remarkably well in Europe and the Arab world, and we don’t get any idea of why they have always been a highly successful, upwardly mobile community.

    We only have ideas of them suffering in ghettos and pogroms.

    You don’t need to read the plethora of badly written, obviously slanted and agenda laden crap written by the David Dukes, Johnathan Hoffmans and Farrakhans and other assorted agent provocateurs and hate figures — just read the Jewish writers , for example, those I listed above.

  4. Joe

    These three Jewish authors are the best sources for understanding Jewish history, in great detail, and they explain how that history impacts on many areas of our lives today.( I strongly advise people to keep away from the agent provocateur so called ‘exposes’ of Jewish history, which are little more than pseudo history — they may have nuggets of facts here and there in them, but are so obviously written with an agenda that in my view, makes them worthless. And they are usually badly written too).

    Israel Shahak —

    http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-History-Religion-Thousand-Eastern/dp/0745308198/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1340591269&sr=8-2&keywords=Israel+Shahak

    Yuri Szlezkine —

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Jewish-Century-Yuri-Slezkine/dp/0691127603/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340591314&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=Yuri+Szlezkine

    Shlomo Sand —

    http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844676234/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340591339&sr=1-1&keywords=Shlomo+Sand

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