On September 27, 2000, Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif or al-Aqsa) sparked the beginning of a new Palestinian uprising against the Israeli Occupation. Immediately, Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered harsh military repression of civilian Palestinian demonstrators, including Palestinians who were Israeli citizens. Within days, dozens of Palestinians of all ages were killed (most often by covert snipers of elite units) or wounded. The wave of repression launched by Barak’s government actually allowed him to extract himself from the impasse of the meeting at Camp David II (July 2000). In fact, at the very moment of the Camp David II talks behind closed doors, the Israeli army was preparing a new plan of intervention. Its code name was to be “Magic Air” if there was “low intensity conflict;” or “Distant World” in the case of an occupation of all the Palestinian towns. This action did indeed take place, but under other names. The plan named “High Tide / Low Tide” was implemented in the first days of the al-Aqsa Intifada by the Barak Government; the total re-invasion of all Palestinian towns in April 2002 by Israeli occupation authorities after the Park Hotel “Pesach” bombing, bestowed on it the name: “Operation Defensive Shield.” Named in reference to the “visit” of Sharon and the bloodbath which accompanied it.

Al-Aqsa Intifada was, well beyond the provocation of Sharon, an expression of Palestinian rejection of the Camp David II Accords, which had attempted to impose a political solution ignoring all the Palestinians’ basic rights and which imagined a future “state of Palestine” in the form of a mere protectorate. During the talks in closed session, Barak set the same “red lines” already laid down since the signature of the Oslo Accords in preceding negotiations by all his predecessors (Rabin, Peres and Netanyahu): no UN resolution to be applied, neither the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees to their town or village of origin (Resolution 194) nor the creation of a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 boundaries (Resolution 242); no independent Palestinian state sovereign within its own borders was envisaged; Jerusalem was the main stumbling block: it was to be an open city, undivided, placed under Israeli sovereignty.

Al-Aqsa uprising was also a response to eight years of a “peace process” during which for eight years Israeli colonization, affirming de facto Israeli
sovereignty on Palestinian land occupied since 1967, was established on the ground. Israeli government policy in the eight years after Oslo concentrated not only on developing settlements in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but also on carving up Palestinian land into isolated enclaves, curtailing freedom of movement for Palestinians, the isolation of Jerusalem, the imposition of economic dependence, daily humiliations and other abuses of basic human rights.

Given the reality of the Oslo Peace Process, members of the PA who had determined the lines to follow in the peace talks were the object of much criticism as to the merits of their strategy, despite their condemnations of the Israeli “acquisitions” during the “peace process” years. In addition, the PA was accused by its people of corruption and nepotism as well as disrespect for human rights, particularly the repression of opposition and the absence of freedom of expression.

Palestinians were deeply distressed by the ambivalence of the international community, especially the United Nations, which had not intervened on their behalf on the basis of its own resolutions, neither before nor after the Oslo Accords. Their expectations of justice had been betrayed: the role of international law seemed to boil down to the innocuous statement “to support the peace process in the Middle East.”