Analysis | Jerusalem Has All the Ingredients for a New Intifada - but So Far It Hasn't Happened

A Palestinian protester running near a burning barricade in Jerusalem's Old City last night. Credit: EMMANUEL DUNAND - AFP

Laylat al-Qadr, one of the holiest nights of the year for Muslims, passed in Jerusalem with a little less violence than expected overnight Saturday – certainly when compared to the previous night, when over 200 were injured in serious clashes at Al Aqsa mosque and around Temple Mount, Damascus Gate and the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. On Saturday night, any clashes between the police and Palestinians were much shorter and self-contained.

 
For the most part, the police stood around as thousands of Palestinians passed through the passageways to Al Aqsa throughout the night. Occasionally, someone threw a bottle at the police and they waded in. Earlier in the evening they employed mounted police, while a water cannon sprayed the area around Damascus Gate with “skunk water,” leaving a terrible stench that hadn’t cleared by morning. Later, the police made do mainly with firing stun grenades.

But despite the funk, the shops and open-air cafés remained open. Even when police fired grenades over their heads, the reaction of most Palestinian youths was to run away laughing. 
No one on either the Israeli or Palestinian side had an answer as to why Saturday was different to the previous evening.

What's happening in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah? Watch the video HERE

  
Some credited the police for being slightly less heavy-handed. One Palestinian activist said: “We’ve already made our point that Damascus Gate will remain ours and we won’t let the authorities ‘Judaize’ it like they did with their flags and signs at Jaffa Gate.” Others said that after one night of fierce clashes and with the Jerusalem Day marches still looming in the days ahead, they simply wanted a day in-between to try to enjoy the end of Ramadan. 

 
Palestinian worshippers praying during the Laylat al-Qadr, or the night of destiny, in front of the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem last night.Credit: Mahmoud Illean/AP

Some of the police units, but not all, were notably less aggressive than on Friday night. One unit made a point of removing their riot helmets while on duty and stopping for coffee at one of the Palestinian stalls at the end of their shift. It was a bizarre contrast, which highlighted how bad decisions by the police throughout Ramadan – from the now-removed fences around the steps leading to Damascus Gate and to the firing of grenades inside Al Aqsa on Friday – precipitated much of the violence. 
 
The fact that Israel’s police chief, Kobi Shabtai, and Jerusalem District Commander Doron Turjeman are both new to their posts and lack the experience to handle such situations was evident throughout the past four weeks. But that shouldn’t be an excuse. 

 
It shouldn’t have taken an operational genius to realize that the confluence of events was a recipe for chaos. Ramadan was taking place during a heat wave and after a long, tough year in which the coronavirus badly impacted East Jerusalem, with thousands of young people remaining unemployed. It also coincided with the imminent Supreme Court ruling on the possible eviction of 13 Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and the now-postponed Palestinian elections.

  
You can also throw into the mix the increased number of far-right Otzma Yehudit thugs, emboldened now that their leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is a lawmaker and an honored partner of Benjamin Netanyahu, and the fact that the Jerusalem Day marches – seen by the Palestinians as direct provocations – happen to fall right at the end of Ramadan this year. 
 
All the ingredients for a much wider conflagration are in place. It is already spreading to the West Bank, where the number of Palestinian attacks on Israel Defense Forces soldiers and settler violence against Palestinian farmers have both risen. It’s spread to Gaza, from where 40 rockets were fired at Israeli towns last month, and now incendiary balloons have started floating over the border again. And perhaps even to the Palestinians within Israeli itself, many of whom have been taking part in the Ramadan clashes around Al Aqsa. The first and second initifadas both started in similar circumstances.

Israeli mounted police deploying to disperse Palestinian protesters outside the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City last night.Credit: EMMANUEL DUNAND - AFP

And yet, while the next couple of nights will probably see more violence, the dynamic for a full-blown third intifada doesn’t yet seem to be in place.

 
In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority and its Fatah members are anxious about losing control, lest Hamas assume power (after all, that’s why the election was postponed). Hamas would like to see Jerusalem and the West Bank erupt, but it doesn’t want a war on Gaza’s borders right now. And Israel’s Palestinian citizens are more focused on what the parties representing them in the Knesset may get out of a deal with the incoming government. So far, there have been no large demonstrations outside of Jerusalem protesting the situation at Al Aqsa. Just verbal condemnations. 
 
In Jerusalem itself, it looks like the local Palestinian youth are focused on asserting their control of some of their streets, and feel they have made their point by forcing the police to remove the fences from Damascus Gate.

 
They are also aware that a prolonged wave of violence, just when there’s hope of tourists starting to arrive again this summer, could spell financial ruin for thousands of struggling families.

 
Does anyone besides the Jewish far right, which would welcome the chaos and violence, actually want a new intifada? Netanyahu perhaps? Could he be cynical enough to want to provoke something that may disrupt the advanced coalition talks between Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, who are looking to form a unity government that will remove him from office?

 

MK Itamar Ben-Gvir (front), head of the Otzma Yehudit party, speaking as he arrives in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem last week.Credit: AHMAD GHARABLI - AFP

The answer is almost certainly no. It’s not that Netanyahu lacks cynicism, but even now with his political survival and personal liberty at risk, producing a major escalation with the Palestinians simply isn’t in his character. For one thing, Netanyahu doesn’t trust the police – who investigated and brought about his indictments – to be a tool of his will. He’s never trusted the police, whom he sees as an ill-disciplined and unwieldy force, to do his dirty work. And behind his warmonger image, Netanyahu is actually ultra-cautious and risk-averse when dealing with the Palestinians on the ground.

 
It’s no coincidence that a third intifada hasn’t erupted on his long watch. He won’t risk it, even now. 

 
The multiple mistakes by the police during the month of Ramadan are due mainly to the blundering and inexperienced bullies in command, and the lack of any coherent leadership above them. Public Security Minister Amir Ohana is an inexperienced and vainglorious bully too, who has no notion of when to rein in his cops. And Netanyahu, who certainly should know better, is preoccupied by his diminishing political prospects and his trial. 

 
Proof that Netanyahu isn’t trying to set Jerusalem alight can be found in the fact that, belatedly, his people pressured Ben-Gvir to close his makeshift “parliamentary office” on a sidewalk in Sheikh Jarrah; the Jerusalem Day marches are to be scaled down; the police have finally been told to cool it; and the Supreme Court is being asked to postpone its ruling on the evictions.

 
It may turn out to be too little, too late, but these are not the actions of a pyromaniac.

 

Palestinians running from stun grenades fired by Israeli police officers during clashes at Damascus Gate last night.Credit: Oded Balilty/AP

Is anyone else controlling events? Hamas has tried to piggyback on the clashes, with some success. It scored PR points when thousands chanted its slogans at Al Aqsa on Saturday night, but its influence in Jerusalem is limited. At one point during the confrontations at Sheikh Jarrah last week, when older Hamas and Fatah supporters began arguing among themselves, the younger activists shouted at them to “take it to Ramallah and Gaza.” This was their fight and they didn’t want to see any faction claiming credit. 

 
In a statement that drew much derision online, Israel’s Foreign Ministry sought to characterize the events in Jerusalem as “the PA and Palestinian terror groups presenting a real-estate dispute between private parties as a nationalist cause, in order to incite violence in Jerusalem.”

 
If the Israeli government was actually worried about violence in Jerusalem, you would have expected to see police forces deployed in and around the city’s Jewish neighborhoods. There wasn’t any increased presence in recent nights, simply because the security forces have no expectation of terror attacks. They are aware that, for now at least, this is a very localized Palestinian struggle for control of the streets on which they live. 

 
And it’s not only Israel’s government that is mischaracterizing events. Palestinian supporters in the West seem to have lost all sense of proportion too, and believe that a few nights’ violence in Jerusalem is going to draw the world’s attention back – and with it diplomatic pressure. Sadly for them, they’re living in a Twitter bubble.

 
The fact that a handful of Democratic members of Congress have tweeted solidarity for Sheikh Jarrah and criticism of Israel’s actions isn’t evidence of a shift in Washington or in any other capital across the globe. It just proves that tweets are even easier to send than empty diplomatic condemnations, and are of no more use to those actually suffering on the ground. 

 

Palestinian protesters rolling a burning tire amid clashes with Israeli security forces at the Qalandiyah checkpoint between Ramallah and the West Bank last night. Credit: ABBAS MOMANI - AFP