Violence of the Second Intifada
Read this selection from Khalidi on the consequences of the violence of the Second Intifada, and discuss with your small group: Clearly immoral and a war crime to target civilians. Let’s ask: How effective was Palestinian use of violence as a strategy of resistance during the Second Intifaday?
In stark contrast to the first, the Second Intifada constituted a major setback for the Palestinian national movement. Its consequences for the Occupied Territories were severe and damaging. In 2002, with its heavy weapons causing widespread destruction, the Israeli army reoccupied the limited areas, mainly cities and towns, that had been evacuated as part of the Oslo Accords. That same year, Israeli troops imposed their siege on Yasser ‘Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters, where he fell mortally ill. […] Coming after the collapse of the Camp David summit, Israel’s reoccupation of the cities and towns of the West Bank and Gaza Strip shattered any remaining pretense that the Palestinians had or would acquire something approaching sovereignty or real authority over any part of their land. It exacerbated the political differences among Palestinians and underlined the absence of a viable alternative strategy, revealing the failure of both the PLO’s diplomatic course and the armed violence of Hamas and others. These events showed that Oslo had failed, that the use of guns and suicide bombings had failed, and that for all the casualties inflicted on Israeli civilians, the biggest losers in every way were the Palestinians. Another consequence was that the terrible violence of the Second Intifada erased the positive image of Palestinians that had evolved since 1982 and through the First Intifada and the peace negotiations. With horrifying scenes of recurrent suicide bombings transmitting globally (and with this coverage eclipsing that of the much greater violence perpetrated against the Palestinians), Israelis ceased to be seen as oppressors, reverting to the more familiar role of victims of irrational, fanatical tormentors. The potent negative impact of the Second Intifada for the Palestinians and the effect of suicide bombings on Israeli opinion and politics certainly bear out the trenchant critique of the Palestinians’ employment of violence expressed by Eqbal Ahmad back in the 1980s.