Second Intifada 2000-2005: The Al-Aqsa Uprising and Its Toll

The Second Intifada, also called the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation that broke out in late September 2000 and continued until about 2005. It was far deadlier than the First Intifada of 1987, combining mass protests, shootings and suicide bombings in Israeli cities with large Israeli military operations in the West Bank and Gaza. It killed roughly 4,000 people, destroyed what remained of the Oslo peace process and reshaped the conflict for a generation.

Background: the end of Oslo

The Oslo Accords of 1993 had created the Palestinian Authority and promised a final settlement within a few years. By 2000 that promise had faded. Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza had continued to grow, Palestinians still lived under checkpoints and closures, and Islamist groups such as Hamas carried out bombings intended to wreck the process. The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 had removed one of its architects.

In July 2000 US President Bill Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Camp David to settle the core issues of borders, Jerusalem, refugees and security. The summit ended without agreement on 25 July. Each side largely blamed the other, and the question of who was responsible for the failure remains contested among historians.

Outbreak

On 28 September 2000 Ariel Sharon, leader of the Israeli opposition Likud party, visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, the site Muslims call al-Haram al-Sharif, accompanied by hundreds of police. Palestinians saw the visit as a provocation. The next day, after Friday prayers, protesters threw stones and Israeli police opened fire, killing several Palestinians.

Protests and clashes spread rapidly across the West Bank and Gaza. On 30 September a 12-year-old boy, Muhammad al-Durrah, was filmed sheltering with his father at a Gaza junction during an exchange of fire and was reported killed, an image that became a symbol across the Arab world, although responsibility for the shooting was later disputed. In early October, 13 Arab protesters, 12 of them citizens of Israel, were killed by police during protests inside Israel, and on 12 October two Israeli reservists were killed by a crowd in a Ramallah police station.

Whether the uprising was planned in advance by Arafat or erupted spontaneously, and then was exploited, is still debated.

From protest to armed conflict

Within months, the uprising became an armed conflict. Groups including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, linked to Arafat’s Fatah movement, sent suicide bombers into Israeli buses, restaurants, markets and hotels. Among the deadliest attacks were the bombing of the Dolphinarium nightclub in Tel Aviv on 1 June 2001, which killed 21 people, most of them teenagers, and the attack on a Passover meal at the Park Hotel in Netanya on 27 March 2002, which killed 30.

Israel responded with closures, curfews, raids, air strikes and “targeted killings” of militant leaders. Barak resigned, and in February 2001 Ariel Sharon won a landslide election as prime minister on a promise of security.

Operation Defensive Shield and the barrier

After the Netanya bombing, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield on 29 March 2002, its largest military operation in the West Bank since 1967. Troops reoccupied the main Palestinian cities and besieged Arafat in his headquarters, the Muqata’a, in Ramallah. Heavy fighting in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002 killed 52 Palestinians, at least 22 of them civilians according to Human Rights Watch, and 23 Israeli soldiers. Early claims of a large-scale massacre there were not supported by later investigations, but the destruction was severe.

In June 2002 the Israeli government approved the construction of a separation barrier, made up of fences and, in some urban areas, concrete walls. Israel says the barrier played a large part in the decline of suicide bombings in the following years. Its route, which runs largely inside the West Bank rather than along the 1949 armistice line, was challenged internationally. On 9 July 2004 the International Court of Justice gave an advisory opinion that the sections inside occupied territory were contrary to international law, a view Israel rejected.

In 2003 the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations presented a “Roadmap for Peace”, and Mahmoud Abbas briefly served as the first Palestinian prime minister. Violence continued. In March and April 2004 Israel killed the Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi in air strikes.

The end of the uprising

Yasser Arafat died in a hospital near Paris on 11 November 2004. Mahmoud Abbas, who had criticised the armed uprising, was elected Palestinian president in January 2005. On 8 February 2005, at a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Abbas and Sharon announced a mutual halt to violence, a date often used to mark the end of the Second Intifada. In August and September 2005 Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip.

By the numbers

Exact totals depend on dates and definitions, and sources differ.

Consequences

The Second Intifada left deep scars on both societies. Its economic toll was heavy: Palestinian unemployment and poverty rose sharply under closures and curfews, while Israel’s economy fell into recession in 2001-2002, partly because of the collapse of tourism. Many Israelis concluded that a negotiated peace was impossible, and the political centre moved towards unilateral steps such as the barrier and the Gaza withdrawal. Palestinians suffered heavy loss of life, economic collapse under closures and the destruction of Palestinian Authority institutions. Hamas grew stronger and won the Palestinian legislative elections of January 2006, which led in 2007 to its takeover of Gaza and a lasting division of Palestinian politics.

Key people

Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO and president of the Palestinian Authority, was blamed by Israel and the United States for failing to stop, or for encouraging, the violence, and was confined to his Ramallah compound from 2002 until shortly before his death. Ariel Sharon, a former general whose Temple Mount visit preceded the uprising, led Israel’s military response as prime minister and later pursued the withdrawal from Gaza.

Ehud Barak, the Labour leader and prime minister at Camp David, lost power within months of the outbreak. Mahmoud Abbas, a veteran Fatah leader and one of the negotiators of Oslo, argued that the armed uprising had damaged the Palestinian cause. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, defended the suicide bombing campaign until he was killed in 2004.

Timeline

• 2000, 11-25 July: The Camp David summit ends without agreement.
• 2000, 28 September: Ariel Sharon visits the Temple Mount.
• 2000, 29 September: Deadly clashes in Jerusalem mark the start of the uprising.
• 2001, 6 February: Sharon is elected prime minister of Israel.
• 2002, 29 March: Israel launches Operation Defensive Shield.
• 2002, June: The Israeli government approves the West Bank barrier.
• 2004, 9 July: The International Court of Justice gives its advisory opinion on the barrier.
• 2004, 11 November: Yasser Arafat dies in France.
• 2005, 8 February: The Sharm el-Sheikh summit announces a halt to violence.

Why it matters

The Second Intifada marked the collapse of the 1990s hope for a negotiated two-state solution. The barrier, the separation between Gaza and the West Bank and the deep mistrust it left behind still define the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today.