A longer article on the Israel-Palestine situation will be posted tomorrow, but in the meantime, here are some essential comments to get you through the day:
1.
Don't underestimate the weather.
It is supposed to rain on Tuesday evening and Wednesday. Rain is good. It is good for agriculture and is good for having water. It is also good for calming things down in the West Bank and in Jerusalem. The sooner winter shows up, the more rain we have in the coming weeks, the better the chance we’ll see people prefer their homes to the streets, holding their umbrellas rather than holding, and then throwing, stones.
That is to say: sometimes eruptions of violence have no clear logic to explain them. They begin because of small things, and they end because of small things.
2.
When the first Intifada erupted in the West Bank and Gaza, in December of 1987, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin was in the US and was very late to realize that a fundamental change was taking place. Since then, the fear of not understating the situation is prevalent in commentary about the West Bank every time a sequence of events raises the possibility of long term escalation. In the last days there has been a lot of talk about the prospect of “this” being the “third Intifada.” And it might be. But remember that talk about a third Intifada began as soon as the second Intifada subsided. We were warned about a third Intifada in 2006 (here's proof), and 2009, and 2013, and last year, and in all the years in between. One day a third Intifada might come. But it obviously did not come every time it was supposed, or expected, to come.
3.
Israel's right wing got its dream coalition just a few months ago. In this coalition, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yaalon are on the far left – and in the coming days or weeks you will see the two of them having to wage a battle not just against the opposition (Herzog, Lapid, Livni) but also against members within their coalition. These members are going to want more force, more building in the territories and in Jerusalem, more measures to contain Palestinian violence, more manpower to protect settlements.
4.
What are the criteria for declaring a “third Intifada”? If it is the time passed in constant strife, we have to wait and see. If it is an active cooperation of Palestinian security forces and officials in carrying it out – we are not yet there.
5.
Two days ago I heard a Palestinian speaker warning of a “third and fourth” Intifada. And this isn't the first time Palestinian leaders are warning of a third and fourth Intifada. By saying this they are kind of admitting that they don’t expect the third Intifada to have much success in changing the situation, aren't they?
6.
Two questions worth answering:
What are the causes that might trigger a third Intifada at this point in time?
What would be the purpose of a third Intifada at this time?
To answer the first question: frustration with the lack of prospect of a better future is surely is a factor. The Palestinian leadership is communicating a sense of frustration and (as the New York Times opined) bitterness over the current state of affairs. Regional upheaval is also a factor: what happens in neighboring countries influences Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
To answer the second question: an Intifada doesn't necessarily correspond with a defined strategy. The Palestinian “street” might erupt without much consideration of the fact that benefits are unlikely to occur as a result of more violence. But if we still want to see reasons behind this wave of violence, you can count the following possibilities: to get the attention of the world that turned elsewhere (competing with Syria would require a lot of violence); to remind Israel that the status quo is costly; to make Israel enact policies that will complicate its international situation even further.
7.
How likely is a third Intifada to achieve all of these things? That depends on a lot of factors. But before we turn to slogans about Israel not surrendering to violence – and surely, the second Intifada proved that Israel is more resilient than what many people assumed it would be – consider this: the first Intifada led to Oslo. The second Intifada led to the disengagement from Gaza. Are the Palestinians in a better situation today as a result of these two changes? It’s not clear that they are (Here's Rami Khouri, no admirer of Israel's policies, saying: “The two previous intifadas generated no lasting improvements in Palestinian national rights due to both the intransigence of Zionism and the incompetence of the Palestinian leaderships headed by Hamas and Fatah in Gaza and the West Bank”).
Can we count these two events as the outcome of Intifadas? – I think we can. That is to say: a third Intifada might trigger more changes. Of course, these would not necessarily be the changes Palestinians envision, nor the changes Israelis on the right, left, and center are talking about.
