Palestinian Official: Current Palestinian Violence Is An Intifada

TEL AVIV – The current wave of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens is the third intifada, declared Nabil Shaath, acting Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, in an interview with i24news.  

“I would call it an intifada,” said Shaath of the wave of stabbings and vehicular attacks that has killed at least 17 Israelis. Shaath asserted that all three intifadas, the other two taking place in the late 1980s and 2000 respectively, began for the same reasons, including “excessive brutality by the Israeli army” and the “continued taking away of our land, water and resources.”

According to Shaath, the difference with this latest intifada is the lack of support from the PA for “these acts of resistance.”

“This Palestinian Authority has insisted that popular resistance be non-armed resistance addressed against the Israeli army and occupation and settlers.”

Shaath’s statement contradicts multiple reports of current PA incitement to violence, including official PA TV praising the killing of Jews and PA officials honoring dead terrorists as “heroes,” as Breitbart Jerusalem reported.  

“People become very angry and gradually it builds up into something that becomes adopted as a way to resist Israeli occupation,” said Shaath. This echoes a similar statement made by Saeb Erekat, also a negotiator for the PA, who said on Monday, “Our people are just practicing their right to self-defense,” according to a tweet by Jerusalem Post Arab affairs correspondent Khladed Abu Toameh.

Shaath added that Israel’s failure to recognize and implement the agreements outlined in the Oslo accords was also the driving force behind the current uprising. “If you consider that insisting Oslo be implemented is a precondition, then you are really saying that Israel has the right not to really implement what it has signed.”

PA President Mahmoud Abbas, in his speech to the United Nations in September, announced that the Palestinians were no longer bound by the Oslo Accords with Israel, saying “we will not remain the only ones committed to the implementation of these agreements.”