Pushing Palestinians to a third Intifada

The Jerusalem Day was celebrated this weekend in many Arab and Muslim capitals by street demonstrations and public events reminding heads of states of their duty towards the Holy City.

For the last 36 years, the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan has been assigned as a day for Jerusalem.

The parades in Tehran this week had high government and military officials taking part in them, including President Hassan Rouhani. 

But the Arabs of Jerusalem gained nothing from all this commendable effort of solidarity and support.

The Islamic fraternity did not translate itself into financial aid to pay the exorbitant taxes imposed by the occupation authorities on houses and shops, which forced many Arabs to sell or leave their premises.

Imposing high taxes is one of the tactics used by the municipality of Jerusalem to complete the master plan of Judaising the city by forcing the remaining 400,000 Arabs to leave.

The International Jerusalem Day, as celebrated in the Islamic world, has become an opportunity for rhetoric and false show of sympathy towards the Palestinians who are about to start a third Intifada, offering more martyrs and sacrifices.

The first Intifada, of 1987, which lasted five years, cost the Palestinian people 1,312 martyrs, while the second Intifada, of 2000, claimed the lives of 4,444 men and women.

Since such a day does not evoke real tangible support to Jerusalemites, and since it does not intimidate the Israeli occupation authorities and does not make them stop executing their master plan to Judaise the city, it would be better to stop this waste of effort and breath.

The Israeli prime minister is relentless in his effort to keep Jerusalem, with its one million citizens, as an undivided capital, and is equally keen to change the status of Al Haram Al Sharif compound, including Al Aqsa Mosque, from an exclusively Islamic religious shrine into a place to be shared with ultra-orthodox Haredim fanatics.

It is Jerusalem that will ignite the explosive belts of the new Palestinian generations, whose accumulated frustration is bursting at the seams.

They are different from all former generations, born years after the Oslo conciliatory accords, disappointed with the leadership of Fateh or Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

They have no faith in Security Council resolutions or in Arab efforts to save them. The only way to be rid of their humiliation, degradation and alienation is to resort to the holy concept of Islamic martyrdom, which seems to be occupying their whole psyche, influenced by what they see in Iraq and Syria.

Netanyahu’s aggressive, provocative policies in Jerusalem are bound to create a chain reaction, forcing more desperate Palestinians to join the third uprising, the knife Intifada, both in the occupied territories and in Israel.