In the fall of 2000, a wave of violence swept through Israel and the Palestinian territories. Ultimately, around three thousand Palestinians and one thousands Israelis died during a period of violence that came to be known as the Second Intifada, or the Al-Aqsa Intifada (intifada means “uprising” in Arabic). Some claim that Yasser Arafat, who was the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) preplanned the intifada. Others mark September 28th, 2000, as the beginning of the Second Intifada; this was when then-candidate for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, surrounded by hundreds of Israeli riot police, visited the Temple Mount, where the al-Aqsa Mosque is located.
This site is considered the third holiest site in Islam, after Mecca and Medina: the prophet Mohammad is believed to have traveled there in a dream, and it is the site where it is believed he ascended to heaven; the al-Aqsa mosque was built to commemorate this journey. The Temple Mount is also the site where Jews believe that God revealed the Talmud to them, and where a number of ancient temples were built by Jewish Kings (such as King Solomon), so it is considered equally important to Jews. The Temple Mount, where the al-Aqsa mosque is located, is part of the Old City compound, which is under Israeli control; however, the site itself is guarded by Muslims, and there is an understanding that, while anyone is free to visit the site (as I have done), only Muslims may pray there.
In September of 2000, however, Sharon, accompanied 1,000 guards, made an unannounced visit to the temple. Upon reaching the summit, he declared,
The Temple Mount is in our hands and will remain in our hands. It is the holiest site in Judaism and it is the right of every Jew to visit the Temple Mount.
Soon after, Palestinian demonstrations outside the Temple Mount began to swell. The next day, Israeli military and police were deployed, and a demonstrator was killed; very soon, the protests erupted into rioting, and the rioting turned very violent: the Third Intifada was born.
What I want to understand is, was Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount indeed the match that lit the fuse? Or did the “Second Intifada” period merely mark an escalation in a cycle of violence that was already ongoing?
Many scholars agree that the so-called First Intifada, which began in 1987 and lasted until 1991, was the result of an accumulation of events that had built up over the years. The Second Intifada also came about as a result of years of built-up anger towards the Israeli occupation of Palestine; however, a very clear, and very dramatic, spike in violence followed Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount.
In the days that followed, protests swelled to massive proportions. What had started as a few hundred, stone-throwing protesters soon ballooned into massive demonstrations. They quickly spread from East Jerusalem to the West Bank and Gaza. When the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were called in to quell the protests, several Palestinians were killed, sparking a cycle of revenge killings that went on for months. Suicide bombings began to escalate; in June 2001, a young Palestinian man blew himself in Tel Aviv, killing 21 Israeli students and injuring 132 more. Meanwhile, the IDF began using warplanes to attack Palestinians, including military and civilian targets, in the West Bank and Gaza. By the end of 2001, 469 Palestinians and 1999 Israelis were dead.
As stated above, the Temple Mount is the third holiest site in Islam; while it was (and continues to be) under de facto under Israeli military occupation, Arab Muslims still control access to site itself. When Ariel Sharon visited the temple, he was running for Prime Minister of Israel against several other right-wing candidates, all of whom were jostling to prove their hard-line bona fides. Perhaps he knew this would inflame Palestinian anger—and quite possibly lead to another Intifada (as it did)—and perhaps he didn’t care. In any case, it seems clear that, while many factors contributed to the rise of the Second Intifada, Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount was crucial to its development into a virtual Palestinian-Israeli war.
Leave a Reply