Dr Asaf Siniver, Reader in International Security at the University of Birmingham writes for EA, in an article which will also appear on Birmingham Perspectives:


Does this month’s escalation in violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank mean that a third intifada — a Palestinian uprising against the Israel’s occupation, following those of 1987 and 2000 — is imminent?

The latest events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict prove that the next round is literally just a stone’s throw away.

See also Israel-Palestine Daily, Oct 30: Prominent Right-Wing Activist Shot in Jerusalem

On October 19, a 5-year-old Palestinian girl was killed after she was hit by a car driven by a Jewish settler in the West Bank. Three days later, a 20-year old Palestinian from East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighbourhood drove onto a light-rail platform in the city centre, killing a 20-year old Ecuadorian tourist and a three-month old baby, and injuring seven other passengers.

The events did not create the conflict, however. They came atop long-standing tension over the rehousing of Israeli Jews in mainly-Arab districts in East Jerusalem, under Israeli occupation since the June 1967 war. In particular, Silwan has been at the center of violent clashes between local Palestinian residents and Israeli settlers, who moved into houses in the neighbourhood in recent weeks.

On October 25 the funeral of the Palestinian driver, who was shot by Israeli police as he tried to flee from the scene of the incident, was accompanied by more violence across East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The following day, the Israeli Defense Ministry announced that for security reasons Palestinian labourers who are permitted to work inside Israel will no longer be allowed to board Israeli-run buses to and from their homes in the West Bank.

In response to questions from the Attorney General, the military acknowledged that it saw no security threat in Palestinians riding West Bank buses. Then the real reason for the restriction emerged: Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon gave this order in response to pressure from the settler lobby.

With charges of apartheid being levelled at Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did his best not to be outflanked by his right-wing cabinet ministers and the powerful settler movement. He announced the fast-track planning for more than 1,000 new apartments in several Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.

There are now more than half a million Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, including 200,000 in East Jerusalem, compared to a Palestinian population of more than 2.7 million.

Each of these stories is disturbing enough on its own. Taken together, they add to the simmering tension and unilateralism on both sides – in recent years Israel’s settlement activity has been met by several Palestinian moves at the United Nations in lieu of the mothballed negotiations with Israel; earlier this month the Palestinian Authority announced that it would push for a UN vote on a 2016 deadline for Israeli pull-out from the West Bank.

Meanwhile US-Israeli relations are approaching a historic low. Defense Minister Yaalon remains effectively a personae non grate in Washington since his dismissal earlier this year of Secretary of State John Kerry as ‘messianic’ and ‘obsessive’ with his indefatigable efforts to mediate a two-state solution.

The failure of Kerry’s recent mission in the spring had all but confirmed that after twenty years of continuous engagement with the conflict, this framework of American mediation had finally run its course. In the absence of a diplomatic solution on the horizon, and with no evidence to suggest that either party is willing and able to break the psychological barrier towards reconciliation, the remaining course of action seems to be an increased unilateralism which kowtows to domestic pressures: Netanyahu is shackled by his right-wing coalition partners, while Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is determined not to go down in history as a Palestinian Quisling.

Meanwhile in Jerusalem, both Arabs and Jews openly talk about a burgeoning third intifada. There are daily clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police, especially in East Jerusalem, and the rhetoric on both sides is ratcheted upwards in its warnings and threat.

So far this new cycle of violence more resembles the first intifada than the second – it is spontaneous and decentralized, characterized by Molotov cocktails and riot police rather than suicide bombs and military retributions. However — as the recent war in Gaza and the second intifada reminded us — it doesn’t take much of an additional spark to set this tragic conflict ablaze.

(Featured Photo: Reuters)