The Peace FAQ:
Intifada
Frequently Asked Questions:
- Why did the Palestinian Arab kids seek out Israeli soldiers and bases and then start throwing rocks and petrol bombs at them? Weren't they afraid of getting shot?
- Didn't the Israeli soldiers over-react to this confrontation?
- Wasn't the intifada a justified response to Israel's occupation of their land?
Why did the Palestinian Arab kids seek out Israeli soldiers and bases and then start throwing rocks and petrol bombs at them? Weren't they afraid of getting shot?
- During school riots against what we called the Israeli occupation
I would prepare speeches, slogans, and write anti-Israel graffiti in
an effort to provoke students to throw rocks at the armed Israeli
soldiers. We shouted "No peace or negotiations with the enemy", "Our
blood and our souls we sacrifice to Arafat", "Our blood and our souls
we sacrifice to Palestine", "Death to the Zionists" etc....
I vowed to fight my Jewish enemy believing that I was doing God's will on earth, and was true to my word as I participated in many riots against the Israeli army, always trying to inflict harm to them and by all means and methods I could come up with. I would start and participate in any riot I can make, in schools, streets, and even on the holiest place (the Temple mount site) in Jerusalem called by Arabs (Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa), and all through high school I would always be one of the first to provoke a riot.
Many others got involved in terror tactics against the Jews using bombs and armed assaults on Jews as to force them to leave Israel, but they never could pluck them out.
Nothing could change my heart, I could only die or a miracle needed to happen. The simplest way to describe myself is that I was one of those whom one would view on CNN throwing rocks and molotov cocktails in the days of the Intifada or 'The Uprising', I was one of these who Jews would call a terrorist, the interesting thing is that I was not only terrorizing but I was terrorized by my beliefs, since I had to gain enough merit and good deeds to go to heaven but never was sure if my good deeds would outweigh my bad deeds in the scale when I get judged by God, of course to die fighting the Jews will ease Allah's anger towards my sin and I will be secured in a good spot in heaven with beautiful wide eyed women to fulfill my most intimate desires, either way I will win, and terror was the only way.
- Walid, a Palestinian Arab defector, quoted from "Answering Islam"
- "The Israelis are mistaken if they think we do not have an alternative to negotiations. By Allah I
swear they are wrong. The Palestinian people are prepared to sacrifice the last boy and the last girl
so that the Palestinian flag will be flown over the walls, the churches and the mosques of
Jerusalem."
- Arafat (Ha'aretz, September 6, 1995)
Didn't the Israeli soldiers over-react to this confrontation?
- Many say the Israeli restraint itself was excessive. In fact, many Israeli soldiers died in those confrontations because of this policy of restraint. The restraint prevented them from taking the kind of action which most, if not all, countries in the world would take under similar conditions. Perhaps it is this apparent weakness on the part of the Israelis which fueled the continuation of the intifada, and prolonged world sympathy with the 'weaker' side in the conflict. Perhaps the world would have respected Israel more if they saw the soldiers standing up for themselves and their nation's right to exist, instead of acting on orders to show restraint to the mobs. But then, who really cares what the UN thinks anyway?
Wasn't the intifada a justified response to Israel's occupation of their land?
- Read Walid's testimony above to see that the motivation for the intifada was edenistic and religious in nature, and not primarily a rebellion against 'oppression'.
- Whose land? Read the sections on The Occupied Territories, The West Bank, The Six-Day War, Jordan, East Jerusalem, etc...
- RELATED SECTIONS:
Incitement, War, Terrorism, Islam, Media Bias, Oslo, Occupied Territories, Palestinians, Jihad, Refugees
- WWW RESOURCES:
- BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
- Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising--Israel's Third Front, by Zeev Schiff
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Covering the Intifada: How the Media Reported the Palestinian Uprising, by Joshua Muravchik
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Arafat's War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest, by Efraim Karsh
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars, by Yaacov Lozowick
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - The Jewish Wars: Reflections by One of the Belligerents, by Edward Alexander
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - The High Cost of Peace: How Washington's Middle East Policy Left America Vulnerable to Terrorism, by Yossef Bodansky, Jim Saxton
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israel Conflict, Second Edition, by Mitchell Geoffrey Bard
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Why I am a Zionist, by Gil Troy
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations, by Benjamin Netanyahu
[VIEW BOOK HERE]
- Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising--Israel's Third Front, by Zeev Schiff
© 2002 Copyright Yahoodi Communications
