Intifadet al-Aqsa
On September 28, 2000, violent protests again erupted on the Haram al-Sharif following a visit to the site by Ariel Sharon. Palestinians, who recalled Sharon’s role in the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut (1982), regarded the visit as a deliberate provocation and an attempt to assert Israeli sovereignty over the site.
A twelve-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhammad al-Dura, became a symbol of the new Intifada after he was shot to death at Netzarim Junction in Gaza by Israeli bullets as he hid beside his father. The incident was filmed and broadcast worldwide. Between September 28 and October 6, 2000, more than seventy Palestinians were killed and 1,900 injured in clashes with Israeli police. By mid-October, the unrest was being referred to as “Intifadet al-Aqsa,” the al-Aqsa Uprising.Many observers of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict viewed these events as the logical outcome of the floundering peace process. The Sharm El- Sheikh Fact-Finding Commission, known as the “Mitchell Commission,” established at the Sharm el-Sheikh Conference was called on to determine the cause of the unrest. The committee, headed by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, spent five months in the region before releasing a report in April 2001 citing Israel’s settlement activity in Palestinian territories as a root cause of the violence. Israel did not reject the report. It had its reservations just as the Palestinians had theirs. The Israelis were obviously happy with the report’s conclusion that Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount was not the reason for the outbreak of violence, a conclusion the Palestinians were understandably not happy about. The Mitchell report was a carefully balanced document that more than dealing with the root causes of the problem tried to establish the premises for a return to negotiations.
Indeed, the Mitchell report was later endorsed by both the Palestinians and the Sharon government, together with the Tenet Plan, as the basis for a possible shift from violence to political negotiations.The situation escalated in March 2002 when, in a reaction to a series of massive suicide attacks by Palestinians, the last on Passover’s eve leaving more than twenty people dead in the lobby of a Natanyah hotel, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, during which Israeli forces made incursions into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to arrest terrorists, find and confiscate weapons, and destroy facilities where explosives were manufactured. Simultaneously, Israeli troops occupied and surrounded the West Bank city of Ramallah and laid siege to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat’s compound for five weeks with Arafat inside.
After fighting broke out in Bethlehem, Israeli forces laid siege to the Church of the Nativity, the traditional site ofJesus’ birth, with more than 100 armed Palestinians inside. The siege lasted five weeks, until a deal was brokered that allowed remaining fighters to be evacuated from the church unharmed. On April 4, Israeli forces reoccupied all but two of the major West Bank towns and, on April 17, Israeli forces reoccupied sections of the Gaza Strip, undoing much of the work of the peace process.
After concluding the operation, the government of Israel, authorized a plan to build a “Security Wall” running the full length of the West Bank at an estimated cost of $lm per kilometer. Since that time, the Security Council and General Assembly have passed resolutions condemning the construction of the wall inside the pre-1967 borders (the Green Line). International criticism of the wall was bolstered by the International Court ofJustice (ICJ) Advisory Opinion ofJuly 9, 2004, which found Israel’s wall in violation of international law.
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