This uprising is about more than knive

Israeli police restrict Palestinians from entering Jerusalem’s Old City in October 2015-Yotam RonenActiveStills

Budour Youssef Hassan

27 January 2016

When the “intifada of the knives” set off in October last year, Western reporters flooded in to Jerusalem to cover the new “escalation,” interview people from “both sides of the conflict” and raise several variations of the old question: “Is this the beginning of a third intifada?”

Inevitably, the journalists left once a massive crackdown significantly reduced the number of deadly attacks against Israelis in the city. It is an all too familiar pattern for Palestinians, who know by now that it’s only “escalation” when there are dead or wounded Israelis. Deaths, injuries, arrests and home demolitions inflicted on Palestinians by Israel are deemed business as usual, not worthy of further inquiry.

The daily acts of collective punishment suffered by Palestinians in Jerusalem and their slow ethnic cleansing are too routine to be considered newsworthy.

The temporary checkpoints, closures and concrete blocks imposed during the crackdown may have gone and the numbers of Israeli troops on the streets may have been reduced. Yet the Israeli repression — and Palestinian resistance — remains.

Holding the dead hostage

One of Israel’s most troubling tactics is its withholding the bodies of slain Palestinians.

In mid-October the Israeli security cabinet endorsed several measures to quell the unrest. One involved reviving a decades-long policy of withholding the bodies of Palestinians accused of carrying out attacks.

Since then, more than 80 bodies have been withheld. Israel began gradually releasing the bodies in late December after weeks of mass protests, most notably in Hebron, but the bodies of 10 Palestinian Jerusalemites remain in Israeli morgues.

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