Young residents of this large refugee camp inside Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries on Sunday celebrated the beginning of the 34th month of the intifada with scenes reminiscent of the early days of the Palestinian uprising.
The road leading to the camp was covered with improvised barricades. Youths standing among the remains of old cars, barbed wire and other junkyard material waved the Palestinian flag and yelled slogans of support for Saddam Hussein and Yasir Arafat.
A small force of border policemen were on hand to scare the youths back into the camp. Only two shots of tear gas were fired to disperse them, a far cry from the violent early days of the intifada.
But the minor clash was enough to get some smiles out of local residents. “You see,” said one resident, who had just come from Jerusalem, where he sued the strike day to do some shopping, “it is not true what they say that the intifada is dead. It is reviving.”
But in fact, the intifada is ailing, judging by the overall scene in the administered territories Sunday. The streets were empty and while all stores were closed in observance of the strike, many schools in the West Bank remained open.
Outwardly, there are still manifestations of Palestinian nationalist strength. But many Palestinians admit privately that the intifada seems to be over, at least for the time being.
“The people are tired, and there is no one to wake them up,” said one Palestinian journalist.
But preoccupation of the local population with the Persian Gulf crisis seems to be even a bigger factor. People are well aware that as long as the crisis remains unresolved, there is little chance for the local crisis to capture headlines.
FINES RATHER THAN JAIL TERMS
Another reason for the slow pace of the intifada is the army’s new policy, under Defense Minister Moshe Arens, of reducing points of frictions with the local population.
The army received strict orders to refrain almost categorically from using firearms against the local population. In the entire month of August, only one Palestinian was shot dead in a clash with the security forces, compared to almost daily casualties in the past.
The latest move toward liberalization initiated by Arens is a guideline issued to the military prosecutors to request fines, rather than imprisonment, for Palestinian stone-throwers who have caused no physical or property damage.
That is a clear departure from the iron fist policy of former Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
A senior security source explained that the shift is a logical consequence of the reduction of violence. “Don’t forget that we adopted stricter measures as a reaction to growing violence, and not as a trigger to the violence,” he said.
Jewish settlers in the territories were alarmed by the change. “Instead of using the momentum of success and doing away with the stone-throwing phenomenon altogether, they reward stone-throwers with a soft hand,” said Yisrael Harel, chairman of the Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea and Samaria.
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