Blog Post: Intifada denied?

Dateline: March 11 2008, the Ramallah Stars and Bucks bureau, 4:35 p.m.

"Never believe anything until it's been officially denied," said famous radical British journalist Francis Claude Cockburn.

Since Thursday's attack on Jerusalem's Mercaz Herav yeshiva the ideological home of Israel's religious settlers, there's been enough denials issued by Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to indicate the existence of a commonly-held belief. In the days following the attack, first Jerusalem's police chief, Aharon Franco, and then Avi Dichter, the head of Shin Bet came out denying the likelihood of new Intifada. At the same time, Hamas claimed and then denied responsibility for the Jerusalem shooting, while the PA denied, in response to the killings, that the Annapolis peace process is dead.

If these denials were indeed ironic admissions, then the statements form the parties involved might actually reflect what the feeling on the ground is.

First hearing about the shooting on Thursday night at vernissage for street artists and culture jammers in a Florinten café, I couldn't have felt further from the events of Gaza or Jerusalem. It wasn't until preparing to head back to Ramallah the next day, realizing I had to pass through Jerusalem to get home, when my Tel Aviv bubble burst and I saw the news of the military imposed closures of the West Bank.

The ride back to Ramallah is always a strange journey as you feel the realities of occupation that make the Tel Aviv bubble possible start to wash over you. However, this time's the ‘Serveece' - a shared taxi - ride heading to Jerusalem didn't only carry the tension of approaching a front line city, but also a city on the edge of erupting from the stress of foreign military rule.

By the time I arrived in West Jerusalem, the morning's funeral processions, with chants of "Death to Arabs" had ended, and the streets were nearly empty apart from Israeli soldiers remaining on every corner. By the time I reached the Old City's Damascus Gate, the frustration and atmosphere of repression was so thick it could have cracked a diamond. Outside the Old City, busloads of police with riot gear were unloading, engaged in briefings on their assignments, with the Palestinian population that live and work there steering clear. Walking through the gate, there were soldiers on patrol everywhere, engaging in overt, yet random searches of Arab passersby.

Speaking to a friend the next day who's lived in the old city for ages and is used to the usual tension and military presence, he said "I didn't leave my house all day." While he was skeptical about a new Intifada, my friend acknowledged that the situation was being pushed in the direction as Israel's post-yeshiva assault's security crackdown intensifies with no end in sight.

It's a situation that the PA doesn't want to recognize out of fear and real possibility of an uprising sweeping them away. So they press on with the rhetoric of negotiations while streets of Ramallah and Jerusalem carry a quiet but pronounced electric air of anticipation, with people just waiting for the spark.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government has no interest in acknowledging that it has created the foundation for a whole new Intifada through its repression and abuse of the Palestinian population, and its inability to allow Palestinians self-determination. Yet, while denying that the context is ripe for an uprising, the attack on the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva provided ample opportunity for Israeli conservatives to incite against Palestinians and Palestinian Israeli's along racial lines.

"Yesterday's attack can not be disconnected from the Arab MKs incitement, which we hear daily in the Knesset," said Yisrael Beiteinu chairman MK Avigdor Lieberman last Friday.
Last month, Meir Sheetrit, Israel's Interior Minister grabbed headlines with his statement that the Israeli Military should evacuate and flatten neighborhoods in Gaza. A few weeks later, Matan Vilnai the Deputy Defense Minister threatened to bring a worse holocaust upon Gaza. Naturally Israel then denied that the use of "Shoah" - the Israeli word for Holocaust, was meant to be perceived as a noun, but instead an adjective - in Hebrew, it also means ‘catastrophe' in that context. With the Deputy Defense Minister - a Labour party parliamentarian- dispensing with such explosive rhetoric, Israel is now witnessing the mainstreaming of ethnic cleansing-language in public discourse. During the height of the Gaza invasion, the Defense Minister, Ehud Barak asked Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann to look into the international legality of targeting civilian areas in Gaza, while rightwing MK's called for the expulsion of Palestinians Israeli's opposed to Israel's Gaza actions.

This shift was clearly seen last Friday night, according to my Old City friend, as settlers held a loud and boysterous march through the Palestinian part of the city, singing songs about their entitlement to the place while Israeli police and soldiers protected them. With announcements of new settlement expansion taking place in East Jerusalem and today's end to the short lived informal ceasefire over Gaza - which all parties had denied negotiating, what's becoming clear is that it might just take one admission to get this party started.