Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Featured

Night of Destiny in Palestine: A Third Uprising?

Juan Cole 07/25/2014

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

By Juan Cole

A new element entered the current Gaza war on Thursday, as Israel shelled a UN school full of displaced persons taking refuge there and large protests broke out in the Palestinian West Bank. The shelling of the UNRWA school, which killed 15 and injured 200, was a war crime. The UN had given the school’s coordinates to the Israelis, so they knew it was a school and was holding displaced persons. The UN, when informed it would be shelled, asked for more time to evacuate people but were denied it.

Some 10,000 Palestinian protesters marched from the Amaria refugee camp near Ramallah toward Jerusalem, stopping at the infamous Apartheid South Africa-style Qalandia checkpoint that often bars or makes difficult and time-consuming Palestinians access to the third holiest city in Islam. The crowds threw rocks and bottles at the Israeli troops, who replied by firing into the crowd, killing two young men and wounding others.

The march had been called for, in part in reaction to the shelling of the UN school, by “youth groups” and “popular organizations.”

The primary hospital in Ramallah said that they had admitted dozens of “live fire victims.”

Protests were also held in towns throughout the West Bank. There are roughly 2.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, but they are denied the basic rights of citizenship in a state and are kept stateless and under military occupation by Israel.

There have been demonstrations and protests every night in the West Bank, which is mobilizing against the attack on Gaza in ways it did not in 2012.

Thursday’s demonstration at Qalandiya was the biggest since the 2nd uprising of 2000-2005. The first uprising broke out in the late 1980s and led to the Oslo Peace Process. That process was deliberately destroyed by Binyamin Netanyahu, something he has boasted about on video. The buzz on the web is about the possibility of a third uprising.

The Night of Power is the holiest night in the Muslim calendar and involves people staying up late to pray.

Related video:

AP: “Raw: Protesters, Soldiers Clash in West Bank”

Filed Under: Featured, Israel, Israel/ Palestine, Juan Cole, War

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....