2005-06-14-intifada

By Ira Sharkansky

Has the intafada ended?

The answer depends on perspective. Official figures show a marked decline since April of 2002. Two hundred and forty-seven Israelis killed from September 2000 through the end of 2001, 453 in 2002, 212 in 2003, 118 in 2004, and so far 20 in 2005. The rockets and mortars continue to fall, but since January the only fatalities from them have been two Palestinian workers and a Chinese worker in a Jewish settlement in Gaza.

Every day or two we hear another threat by Hamas and Islamic Jihad to end the cease fire, or that it is already ended, and that whatever they decide is due to Israeli violations. Almost as often Mahmoud Abbas, the chairman of the Palestinian Authority or the President of Palestine (depending on who is speaking) says that unless Israel is more forthcoming, he cannot assure a continuation of the cease fire. In the last week, his Authority has executed a Palestinian charged with providing information to Israel, despite having committed himself a week previously not to execute anyone for that crime as part of a deal that freed about 400 Palestinian prisoners of Israel.

Ranking Palestinian officials say that they cannot disarm the various gangs operating in Palestine until Israel agrees to a final accord, despite having agreed to work against the violence by disarming the various unofficial organizations operating in Palestine. A senior spokesman of the Authority said that the fighters should keep the weapons in their homes for the time being, rather than parade on the streets with them. This week the Authority also released a number of Palestinians involved in the Tel Aviv nightclub killings of five Israelis in February 2005, suggesting that their prisons still have a revolving door for those accused of violence against Israelis.

If we take a look at history, we can see that it does not make much difference if we are at the end of intafada #2 (intafada #1 is said to have occurred from 1987 to the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993), or in a pause before intafada #3.

From various web sites of the Ministry of Foreign affairs (www.mfa.gov.il) and the IDF (www1.idf.il) we can see the long history of Palestinian and other Arab violence against Israelis. Nine hundred and twenty-two Israelis died in attacks between 1951 and 1955. Only 82 died in the relatively peaceful period of 1978 to the onset of intafada #1 in late 1987. One hundred and seventy-two died between late 1987 and the Oslo Accords in 1993. Two-hundred and seventy-nine died during the peace of Oslo from 1993 through 1998.

More than three times the number of Palestinians as Israelis have died as the result of intafada #2. Their cities and public services are not in good shape. They are further from having a state than they were in the summer of 2000, when Ehud Barak made a specific offer. Currently Ariel Sharon's posture is that we will have to see what happens during and after the withdrawal of Jewish settlements from Gaza.

Sometime, someone will make a declaration that this intafada has ended, either by a Palestinian announcement or a further fizzling of the violence. Then we will not know if we should celebrate, or expect another one sooner or later.

Sharkansky is a member of the political science department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem