End of the Intifada?

The Palestinian Intifada has been a thorn in the side of the Middle East peace process for years, but there are signs that it might be ending. These years of Israeli pressure have taken a heavy toll on participants and their support structure and they just aren’t able to mount the large-scale operations of the past.

  The Jerusalem Report Magazine explains:

[A]rmed men are not walking around here anymore, certainly not in broad daylight. The few of them left after the army’s frequent raids, targeted killings and arrests are said to be feeling hunted and alone. ... "Everybody’s either dead or in prison," says Nidal Jallad, who is hanging around the store shortly before Aweideh makes his entry. "It’s over. We’ve had enough. All we want now is for the prisoners to come home."

Residents of Tul Karm are no longer willing to provide refuge for the armed men in their houses, local sources say, for fear of ending up on the army’s demolition list. Furthermore Aweideh, his fingers nervously drumming on the back of his chair, an eye fixed on the door, reveals that it is not only the Israeli actions that are curbing the militants. "The Palestinian Authority used to support us, but we’ve had no funding from them for the past two months," he claims.

Aweideh attributes the difficulty in launching attacks to the recently constructed security barrier that now seals Tul Karm off from Israel, as well as the strict checkpoint regime that controls movement between the city and the rest of the West Bank and "the pressure put on us by the PA." He says that the people he deals with in Ramallah "are scared for Arafat" following Prime Minister Sharon’s veiled threats on the Palestinian leader’s life.

Many people may have problems with this because it suggests a certain amount of success on the part of Israel’s tactics: building the fence, demolishing houses, and a constant crack-down on suspected militants. For a long time people complained that such tactics would only make things worse and time may yet prove them right, but for the moment at least it is possible (assuming the accuracy of the article) that those tactics are working.

Read More:

• Palestine and Israel
• War on Terrorism
• Islam, Violence, and Terrorism
• What is Jihad?
• Islamic Extremists