Is the Intifadha of Rajab only the Beginning?
1. The Intifadha Of Rajab
After a few years, short in the perspective of time, but long and heavy in the perspective of the night of subjugation and hopelessness, what has happened? Ears pound, eyes stare, breathlessly awaiting. At each sign of the latest news or event, the same questions are on every lip:
Where? Who? How many? Jews? Americans? An uprising here, martyrs there…
Scenes pass through the mind even faster than they do on the TV screens: the shredding of the pages of negotiations and their burning in the flames of anger and rage, the shameless shepherd of peace who punishes the sheep in his charge every time the wolf attacks them.
Slingshots of David manufactured by shackled hands, standing before rockets of Goliath. Military vehicles driven back by stones. A single man opposing hundreds of soldiers protected by the latest of American technology. Israeli brutality that shocks even her most loyal friends, disturbs her secret friends, and drives those who previously had wavered into the camp of her open enemies.
An unprecedented Muslim consensus that the only solution is jihad, these are the words of leaders, scholars, thinkers, strategists, populists, preachers, the illiterate masses, men, women, children…Everyone agrees with these words which no sooner enter the ear and settle into the depths of the heart, then new questions arise: how? From where? With whom? When? Will the rulers do this? Will the Americans do that?
A government-appointed scholar of the Azhar declares on the most widely-viewed satellite television channel that the only way to deal with the Jews is with the principle: “Slay them wherever you find them.” The interviewer asks, “But Shaykh, do you mean actual killing?” (That is, “Do you understand what you are saying?”). “Does the Azhar agree with you?” And the answer is unequivocally: “Yes.”
Tremendous anger everywhere, new terms of rejection, and new attempts at solution, what happened? Why?
After a long, winding labyrinth of fruitless negotiations and content-less meetings, the term ‘peace’ as understood by the Jews has become all too clear. The new crisis was born between the triviality of the ‘doves’ and the violent opposition of the ‘hawks,’ when the other side was exposed like a lamb among wolves. (In Israel, or so we have been told since the time of Sadat, there are hawks and doves). Many of us believed this since we are accustomed to seeing opposing sides on different issues within every human community, whether family, tribe, or state. But in the entire world there are no stranger opposing sides than within the ranks of the Jews. You hear communiqués or read announcements and are unable to tell whether they come from the hawks or the doves unless you know the name of the speaker or his party. When you hear two Jewish leaders -one a politician, the other a Rabbi- threatening the Palestinians and refusing to cease Israeli expansion, your first thought is that they represent the hawks, but when you learn who they are they are assumed to be doves. And when you hear one of the hawks calling for the total annihilation of the Palestinian then you know that the dove only disagrees with him concerning method and timing.
Attendance at Madrid, Oslo, or Camp David II does not mean the attendees are doves. Whichever party happens to be in power at the time attends. Strange terms which have no equivalent in other countries. In Jewish logic those whom they call hawks and those whom they call doves, compete against each other in zealotry, excess, crookedness, and delay. They oppose each other, yet they are both the same. They are not two sides of the same coin, either party can be either side. Thus, Jews are Jews. There are no hawks or doves.
The single permanent factor, whether in war or peace, in government or in opposition, is the Jewish belief system and psyche, which has not lost its particular characteristics since ancient times. This is attested by the books of the Bible that have been collected over many centuries (as we shall see).
Therefore, the doves maneuver and delay in order to concede some issue or semi-issue, while the hawks debate and contend so that no concession is made. Between the insignificance of the concessions and the violence of the opposition this Jewish belief system and psyche was clearly exposed, and the crisis exploded.
Concession:
After a long and confused process of negotiations, mediation attempts, and procedural disputes, Barak agreed, or nearly agreed, to a strange project of dividing the al-Aqsa mosque complex which was, nevertheless, in harmony with the Jewish mind. The mosque complex was to be divided into three levels:
1) The mosque and its adjacent courts.
2) All that lies below the surface.
3) The air space above it.
Israel was to have total sovereignty on everything below the surface since they conjecture that it may contain the remains of the temple. They were also to have sovereignty over the airspace. Mentioning this was hardly necessary since Israel is the only of the two parties permitted to possess military aircraft of any kind. Thus, Arafat’s Palestinian authority is limited to that which is between these two Israeli levels, and its authority is itself limited to a nominal, caretaker jurisdiction over the mosque and its environs. As a sort of symbolic gesture, the Palestinian authority was allowed to raise the Palestinian flag over this one small area of the Holy City.
Opposition:
The religious and political opposition immediately fell onto Barak, criticizing this minor concession. The groups supporting the rebuilding of the Temple (there are more than a dozen such groups) screamed their threats to kill Barak, and to destroy the Aqsa mosque, and the Palestinians. The crisis-nature of this situation was further enhanced by the fact that the negotiations took place near the day of fasting (the Day of Atonement), and near the day of remembrance of the destruction of the Temple by the Roman emperor Titus.[1] The opposition seized on this fact to connect the criminal Titus with the traitor Barak, as one of the Rabbis said: “We do not mourn the destruction of the Temple two-thousand years ago, we mourn its destruction today.”
The blood-thirsty former general Sharon (responsible for the infamous Sabra and Shatila massacres) then came to the rescue by his inauspicious visit to the Aqsa mosque, thus delaying or finishing off the project.
Sharon’s visit was, without doubt, planned by, or with the knowledge of both the Israeli government which sent along two-thousand troops to guard him, and Arafat’s Palestinian Authority which pledge an explosive popular reaction which they expected, but the extant of which he could never have known.
Since the Aqsa Mosque is dear to every Muslim, and since Jewish arrogance provokes even the most patient of people, and since it is the people who pay the price, they immediately leapt to zealously protect it from Sharon, and the Jews reacted with the barbarity of their distorted Torah and Talmud. All the occupied territories erupted, as did the rest of the Islamic world. The Intifadha of Rajab was like a cyclone, knocking down many barriers and walls, and blowing the cover off many plans and plots.
In brief, it was an expression of:
1) The subjugation which the Palestinian people suffer. The uprising of those who are subjugated is unequalled.
2) The long-withheld anger and silent rejection which the people had endured during the long period of fruitless negotiations.
3) The feelings of the Arab leadership of insult and marginality since there came to be only three players: Israel which sought endless claims, Arafat, who made continuous concessions and compromises, and America, the biased judge who demands that the Arabs get in line with what it has predetermined, to act as their intermediaries to force Palestinians to accept their decision, to finance their projects, to pass along their decisions to the media, and to force them upon their people with no consideration for the religious sensitivity of the issue.
One of the Arab leaders advised America: “If you want to be obeyed, then order that which is possible,” but she remained unchecked in her impudence. These were also the feelings of the Europeans and Japanese, and even more so the Russians, the former superpower whose house had collapsed atop them. Thus, the anger was universal and violent, though for different reasons.
A distinguishing feature of this uprising is the open use of Islamic terminology by everyone, which is the mark of the spiritual strength of the blessed Islamic revival: which is the only remaining path after the exposure of the futility of the all the secular slogans.
Thus, arrived the morning of the day that will end when Allah pours out His wrath and vengeance upon the tyrants of unbelief, and the forces of criminality and destruction.
[1] In 70 C.E.
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