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Al-Aqsa Intifada: United States
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The Al-Aqsa Intifada, or uprising, can be interpreted as the outcome of the many contradictions present in the Israeli state and society. The quick spread of the intifada, and the involvement of Israeli Arabs, has brought about a new political equation. Part of this equation is the unprecedented international sympathy this intifada has roused and the anger it has stirred up throughout the Arab world. This naturally has a significant affect within Israel, exacerbating existing problems and causing new ones.
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Although the Palestinians describe the confrontation as an Intifada, a concept which confers upon it the quality of a popular uprising, in actual fact, it is not a spontaneous popular uprising as was the first Intifada. The original Intifada, which broke out in 1987, was directed, at least initially, by the “Palestinian street.” It was initiated from the bottom up. The current uprising on the other hand, was initiated from the top down; it was instigated and directed by the Palestinian Authority. Thus, the al-Aqsa Intifada represents a confrontation, not between occupier and occupied, but rather, between a semi-state authority (the P.A.) and the State of Israel.(6)
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Palestinian culture immediately seized upon this image of Muhammed al Durah and made it the icon of the Intifada - far more potent than any picture of Sharon on the Haram al Sharif. Palestinian TV inserted a picture from the riots in Nazereth into the footage, clearing up any ambiguity that might remain from Talal's work, clearly indicating the Israeli soldier who killed Muhammed in cold blood. Muhammed became the call to a ferocious uprising that would devour everyone. Certainly the educators in Palestinian territories were ready to send every last child to their deaths for revenge. The paroxysm of violence it had inspired in Ramallah became a rite of passage, with kindergarten children taught to dip their hands in red paint and show them, the way one of the killers at Ramallah did from the window of the station, crying: "In the name of the Shahid (martyr) Mohammed al-Dura and the Shahida, the infant Iman al-Haju, we promise to continue with the Jihad, the resistance and the Intifada". It was the very emblem of an unquenchable hatred, and fueled the Intifada long after Sharon's visit became a Palestinian trope for blaming the violence on Israel.
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The casualty data for the Second Intifada has been reported by a variety of sources, often with conflicting results. The statistical picture is further blurred by disparities in how different types of casualties are counted and categorized.
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In November 2000, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell was appointed to lead a fact-finding committee to investigate the cause of the "al-Aksa Intifada" and explore how to prevent future violence. The report his committee issued on April 30, 2001, did recommend a settlement freeze — as one of more than 15 different confidence-building measures — but Mitchell and Warren Rudman, another member of the committee, explicitly stated in a letter clarifying their view: "We want to go further and make it clear that we do not in any way equate Palestinian terrorism with Israeli settlement activity, 'seemingly' or otherwise."
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