At least six Palestinians have been shot dead and dozens more injured by Israeli forces as hundreds of them demonstrated along the border in the eastern Gaza Strip. Friday’s violence comes as clashes have increased in frequency since Israeli security forces began to crack down on Palestinian worshippers at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied East Jerusalem last month. “It is very dangerous here,” Ezz Zanoun, a Gaza-based photographer who was at the protest, told Al Jazeera. “They always shoot at the border, but it’s much worse today than usual.” Among those killed was a 15-year-old boy who was fatally shot at another demonstration in the al-Faraheen village, southeast of Gaza City. Angry and frustrated Palestinian youths, who have been forced to come to terms with the improbability of a peaceful diplomatic solution to the Israel-Palestine problem after the formal abandonment of the Oslo Accords, have reacted to a flurry of social media images of violence being inflicted on Palestinians by Israeli forces and the overall hopeless situation by lashing out in the form of stabbing incidents. These stabbing incidents have in return served as justification of Israel to brutishly respond to these ‘terrorist’ actions without restraint. After a fresh bout of cross-border violence by the Israeli forces resulted in the deaths of many Palestinians including children in the Gaza Strip, young Palestinians are now tapping into the historical memory of the decades-old struggle and have started using the word “intifada” (uprising) to describe this recent turn of events. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has also dubbed the unrest as the launching pad of a third intifada. There have been two popular intifadas in the past when Palestinians launched an asymmetrical armed struggle against the much stronger Israeli state; the first one lasted from 1989 to 1993 and culminated with the aforementioned Oslo Accords and an implicit agreement to reach a two-state solution, while the second one lasted from 2000 to 2005 and ended in a stalemate. In both cases, especially in the latter, Palestinians suffered disproportionate losses of life and property. In both cases however, there was a semblance of organized and united leadership for the Palestinian participants, which seems to be lacking this time around and Fatah is unlikely to be in favour of a mass uprising. If the Netanyahu government does not stop fanning the far right flames and persists with unfettered remorseless violence, a dangerous and irredeemable situation will arise. The Middle East is a powder keg right now, and with many of the Arab countries surrounding Israel-Palestine already in disarray, an outright uprising in Palestine will destabilise the entire region. The US is once again conspicuous by its lack of intervention; its failure to reign in its number one ally will have consequences for decades to come and the mess will be difficult to clean up.
pk.shafaqna.com
