Israel’s major military operation this week in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank had undeniable similarities to the second Palestinian intifada of the early 2000s, a time that claimed thousands of lives.
But the current fighting, including the raid on Jenin that ended on Wednesday after two days, also differs from those intense years of violence. It is more limited in scope, as Israeli military operations focus on various Palestinian militant strongholds.
The word, which means “shake” in Arabic, was used to describe an uprising against Israeli military occupation in 1987. It ended in 1993 with a mutual recognition agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
What went down in history as the first intifada was marked by widespread Palestinian protests and a fierce Israeli response. In the second intifada, which began in 2000, Palestinian militants carried out suicide attacks on buses, restaurants and hotels, prompting harsh Israeli military retaliation.
The Israeli crackdown has upended Palestinian lives, with harsh restrictions on movement that have stifled a fledgling economy. For Israelis, especially during the frequent attacks of the second intifada, getting on a bus or going out to a restaurant was terrifying.
Those events were fueled by a huge early turnout. Many Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem – areas captured by Israel in 1967 and which the Palestinians claim for a future state – joined the protests.
The protests were also promoted by Palestinian leaders such as President Yasser Arafat, whom Israel accused of encouraging and tolerating the militants. The intifada faded after Arafat’s death in 2004. He was succeeded by the current Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas.
In the spring of 2022, a series of Palestinian attacks against Israelis prompted Israel to launch almost nightly raids on Palestinian areas of the West Bank.
Israel said the raids were aimed at breaking up militant networks. But the Palestinian attacks have continued and the death toll on both sides has been rising. Last year was one of the deadliest for Palestinians in the West Bank since the second intifada.
The violence has only grown since the current ultra-right Israeli government, made up of ultra-nationalist supporters of the settlements, came to power late last year.
More than 135 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem so far this year, according to a count by The Associated Press, nearly as many as in all of 2022. Hundreds of Palestinians have been detained. Some 24 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
The region had not witnessed such a prolonged cycle of violence since the second intifada, which lasted some five years. Recent periods of fighting had not lasted as long or involved such a show of force by the army.
The strategy employed on Monday, with airstrikes, armored bulldozers and a brigade of troops, was a familiar image of the second intifada.
But analysts say that’s where the similarities end.
For starters, a month-long Israeli operation in 2002, considered the height of fighting during the second uprising, involved a tight encirclement of most West Bank cities. In the past year, Israeli raids have been on a smaller scale. Israel’s targets are also more limited to local armed groups and militant cells.
Analysts mention other differences, such as the weakness of the Palestinian leadership and the lack of popular participation. Although there have been protests over the raids, they have not spread to the entire West Bank.
“The intifada is a popular uprising. It is a fighting society,” said Amir Avivi, president and founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, a militant group of former military commanders. Avivi, who served as a battalion commander in the northern West Bank in the 2002 operation, said the current fighting is dominated by armed groups with funding from Israel’s arch-enemy Iran.
Ziyad Abu Zayad, a Palestinian analyst and former government minister, said the current fighting was better described as “waves” of Palestinian outrage than an uprising.
“The problem is not security, but political. And as long as there is no political solution, these waves will continue,” she said. “People, mainly young people, want to live with freedom and dignity. They don’t see a future for themselves and only see oppression from the occupation.”
There is no end in sight to the clashes. Military incursions have tended to trigger more attacks, which in turn trigger even more raids.
As attacks on Israelis continued, including one that killed four settlers last month, members of the government called for a tougher response. They have also pushed a lot of settlement construction, reducing hopes for a negotiated solution to the conflict.
The past 16 months, including Monday’s major operation, have shown that Israel does not have a long-term vision on how to deal with the Palestinians, said Michael Milshtein, a former military officer and director of the Forum for Palestinian Studies at Tel Aviv University.
“We have to start thinking strategically about the Palestinian issue,” he said. “We can’t keep going over it.”
Abu Zayad, the Palestinian analyst, noted that instead, the Israeli government is pressuring the Palestinians “towards more extremism and violence.”
“If there is opposition to the idea of a Palestinian state, these waves are likely to continue for long periods into the future.”
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Associated Press writers Julia Frankel and Josef Federman contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
FUENTE: Associated Press
