Your periodic Third Intifada watch

It’s time, again, to ask whether things are heading toward a third general Palestinian uprising in the West Bank:

Israeli police have limited access to the Old City of Jerusalem after two Israelis were killed and three injured by Palestinians in separate stabbing incidents. The restrictions allow only Israeli citizens, tourists, and residents into the Old City, effectively banning Palestinians from East Jerusalem from entering the area. As they have during past periods of unrest, authorities have also banned praying at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, on what Jews call the Temple Mount. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also announced new security measures including the “administrative detention”— jailing without trial—of rioters and terrorism suspects and reintroduced the controversial policy of demolishing terrorists’ homes, all of which is likely to further stoke Palestinian anger.

Tensions surrounding the Haram al-Sharif and in East Jerusalem more broadly have been escalating for several weeks now, but they really kicked into another gear during Rosh Hashannah and the confluence of Yom Kippur and Eid al-Adha in mid-September. In only a couple of the many recent violent outbursts, an Israeli settler couple was gunned down by Palestinians last week, and a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by the IDF on Monday. Around 500 Palestinians have reportedly been injured in clashes with Israeli security forces since Saturday.

On Tuesday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that the Palestinians want to avoid escalation with Israel, while Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be trying to forcefully respond to Palestinian attacks (via the standard Israeli policy of demolishing attackers’ homes, which is arguably a war crime but I digress) without pushing things so far that he totally undermines Abbas (I mean, any more than he already has over the past six years) which could remove the only thing keeping West Bank unrest from boiling over into that full-on uprising that he would presumably like to avoid. Limiting access to East Jerusalem, thereby cutting most Palestinians off from Al-Aqsa, is a risky move in itself, in that it plays in to the widespread Palestinian sentiment that Israel is planning to change the tenuous status quo at the contested holy site.

All of this is happening in the aftermath of Abbas’s September 30 speech to the UN General Assembly, in which he said this:

Thus, we declare that as long as Israel refuses to commit to the agreements signed with us, which render us an authority without real powers, and as long as Israel refuses to cease settlement activities and to release of the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners in accordance with our agreements, they leave us no choice but to insist that we will not remain the only ones committed to the implementation of these agreements, while Israel continuously violates them. We, therefore, declare that we cannot continue to be bound by these agreements and that Israel must assume all of its responsibilities as an occupying power, because the status quo cannot continue and the decisions of the Palestinian Central Council last March are specific and binding.

Abbas had promised before his speech that he would deliver a “bombshell,” but his declaration that the Oslo framework (which is what he meant by “these agreements”) is kaput went over like a lead balloon, mostly because he declared Oslo defunct without actually announcing any concrete steps in that regard. I mean, in any practical sense Oslo hasn’t been relevant for years, but for Abbas’s declaration to have any teeth he’d have to take a real step, like ending the Palestinian Authority’s security cooperation with Israel or, hell, dissolving the Palestinian Authority altogether. He didn’t do anything like that. The only fallout from Abbas’s UNGA speech has been that right-wing Israeli politicians are now blaming Abbas for the upswing in violence rather than, say, critically examining their own behavior toward Al-Aqsa or (God forbid) the occupation itself.

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