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<h1 class="page__title title balance-text" id="page-title">This
uprising is about more than knives</h1>
<header class="node__header">
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/budour-youssef-hassan"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Budour Youssef Hassan</a></span> <span
class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2016-01-27T21:18:00+00:00">27
January 2016<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/uprising-about-more-knives/15416">https://electronicintifada.net/content/uprising-about-more-knives/15416</a></small></small></b><br>
</span></span> </p>
</header>
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<p>When the “intifada of the knives” set off in October last year,
Western reporters flooded in to <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jerusalem">Jerusalem</a>
to cover the new “escalation,” interview people from “both sides
of the conflict” and raise several variations of the old question:
“Is this the beginning of a third intifada?”</p>
<p>Inevitably, the journalists left once a massive crackdown
significantly reduced the number of deadly attacks against
Israelis in the city. It is an all too familiar pattern for
Palestinians, who know by now that it’s only “escalation” when
there are dead or wounded Israelis. Deaths, injuries, arrests and
<a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/home-demolitions">home
demolitions</a> inflicted on Palestinians by Israel are deemed
business as usual, not worthy of further inquiry.</p>
<p>The daily acts of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/collective-punishment">collective
punishment</a> suffered by Palestinians in Jerusalem and their
slow <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ethnic-cleansing">ethnic
cleansing</a> are too routine to be considered newsworthy.</p>
<p>The temporary <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/checkpoints">checkpoints</a>,
closures and concrete blocks imposed during the crackdown may have
gone and the numbers of Israeli troops on the streets may have
been reduced. Yet the Israeli repression — and Palestinian
resistance — remains.</p>
<h2>Holding the dead hostage</h2>
<p>One of Israel’s most troubling tactics is its withholding the
bodies of slain Palestinians.</p>
<p>In mid-October the Israeli security cabinet <a
href="http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2015/Pages/Security-Cabinet-approves-anti-terror-measures-13-Oct-2015.aspx">endorsed</a>
several measures to quell the unrest. One involved reviving a
decades-long policy of withholding the bodies of Palestinians
accused of carrying out attacks.</p>
<p>Since then, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-forces-kill-palestinian-mother-disabled-man">more
than 80 bodies</a> have been withheld. Israel began gradually <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-transfers-bodies-slain-palestinians">releasing</a>
the bodies in late December after weeks of mass protests, most
notably in <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/hebron">Hebron</a>,
but the bodies of 10 Palestinian Jerusalemites remain in Israeli
morgues.</p>
<p>The families of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bahaa-alayan">Bahaa
Alayan</a>, Thaer Abu Ghazaleh, Hassan Manasra, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/alaa-abu-jamal">Alaa
Abu Jamal</a>, Ahmad Abu Shaaban, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/mutaz-uweisat">Mutaz
Uweisat</a>, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/omar-iskafi">Omar
Iskafi</a>, Abd al-Mohsen Hassouna, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/musab-al-ghazali">Musab
al-Ghazali</a> and Muhammad Nimer are <a
href="http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=769980">still
battling</a> for the right to lay their children to rest.</p>
<p>Exploiting the geographic and political isolation of Palestinians
in Jerusalem, Israel has attached repressive conditions to the
release of the bodies. Their families must bury them on the
opposite side of the wall Israel has built around the city, limit
the number of mourners present at burial, bury the dead only at
certain late hours and pay a surety in lieu of those conditions.</p>
<h2>International apathy</h2>
<p>Bahaa Alayan’s father Muhammad has led the popular campaign in
Jerusalem protesting these measures.</p>
<p>“We are being deprived of our right to mourn and Israel is using
the dead bodies of our children to break us,” Alayan told The
Electronic Intifada. “Yet the issue is not receiving a fraction of
the coverage and attention it deserves.”</p>
<p>The 60-year-old lawyer believes that the families of Jerusalem’s
martyrs have been completely abandoned by the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinian-authority">Palestinian
Authority</a>. He struggles to understand the apathy of the
Western media.</p>
<p>None of the Western journalists who had approached him following
his son’s killing to ask why such a bright young man should carry
out a knife attack have bothered to come back and ask about
Bahaa’s body, Muhammad said.</p>
<p>Had they done so, they would have found the Alayans sleeping in a
makeshift tent next to the rubble of their house. The Alayan home
is one of several demolished by Israel in retaliation for
individual attacks. The policy of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/punitive-home-demolitions">punitive
home demolitions</a> was also <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/muhannad-halabi-terrorist-israel-hero-his-family/15316">contained</a>
in the package of measures approved by Israel’s security cabinet
in October and has been endorsed by Israel’s <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-high-court">high
court</a>.</p>
<h2>Pushed to mobilize</h2>
<p>The policies to withhold bodies of alleged attackers and demolish
their families’ homes constitute some of the most egregious human
rights violations against Palestinians in Jerusalem. But they have
also pushed the community to mobilize.</p>
<p>On 1 December, youth held a concert at the Palestinian National
Theatre — also known as El-Hakawati — in support of parents with
children in prison and those waiting for the release of their
children’s bodies. The theater’s largest hall was filled to
capacity; revenues were allocated to home reconstruction.</p>
<p>The <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-revenge-demolitions-only-stiffen-palestinian-resolve/15063%26#10;">communal
solidarity</a> organized by residents in Jerusalem’s <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/shuafat-refugee-camp">Shuafat
refugee camp</a> following the destruction of Ibrahim Akari’s
home was replicated throughout the West Bank, notably in <a
href="http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/palestinians-raise-over-dh600000-to-rebuild-familys-home-demolished-by-israel">Ramallah</a>
and <a href="https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=769330">Nablus</a>.</p>
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<p>There has been direct action, too. Inspired by Bahaa Alayan’s
idea of forming a <a
href="http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=682006">reading
human chain</a> back in March 2014, Palestinians did just that
on 26 December. The chain encircled the walls of Jerusalem’s Old
City, with participants demanding the return of martyrs’ bodies
before the peaceful protest was violently dispersed by Israeli
forces.</p>
<p>Mobilizing mass protests in the face of Israel’s extreme
repression has become even harder for Palestinians in Jerusalem
since October. Israel has <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/jerusalem-expulsions-target-activists-and-community-leaders/15097">deliberately
targeted</a> leading activists in the city by jailing them,
putting them under house arrest, threatening arrest, or handing
down orders to expel them from the city.</p>
<p>These measures did not stop Hijazi Abu Sbeih and Samer Abu Eisheh
from setting up a <a
href="https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=769679">protest
tent</a> in the yard of the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/icrc">International
Committee of the Red Cross</a> building in Jerusalem’s <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/sheikh-jarrah">Sheikh
Jarrah</a> neighborhood. While the tent was initially erected to
provide the two with shelter when they rejected Israel’s order to
banish them from Jerusalem, it was soon transformed into a vibrant
space of civil disobedience.</p>
<h2>Moment of freedom</h2>
<p>For nearly two weeks, the tent brimmed with energy and
revolutionary spirit free of factional divisions. Concerts were
held there along with public lectures and discussions.</p>
<p>More than providing support for the two protesters, those who
attended were imbued with a rare sense of genuine, if short-lived,
freedom. Here they were able to sing, raise their voices against
Israeli oppression, chant “I am not leaving,” immerse themselves
in debate and organize.</p>
<p>Palestinians are often asked about the alternative to their
corrupt and failed leadership. Those who visited the tent could
get a glimpse of what that could like.</p>
<p>On 6 January, both Abu Eisheh and Abu Sbeih were <a
href="http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=769679">arrested</a>
by special Israeli police units on the Red Cross premises. The two
have been charged with defying military orders and inciting
violence via Facebook, Abu Eisheh’s lawyer, Mahmoud Hassan, told
The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>The protest tent, and Israel’s arrest raid there, did not capture
the attention of international journalists, even though these
nonviolent forms of resistance and Israel’s crackdown on them are
at the heart of Jerusalem’s story.</p>
<p>One cannot yet speak of an organized mass movement among
Palestinians, but this current uprising has much more to it than
knife attacks waged by individuals. And Israel’s repression goes
far beyond bullets and checkpoints.</p>
<p><em>Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian writer and law
graduate based in occupied Jerusalem. Blog: <a
href="https://budourhassan.wordpress.com">budourhassan.wordpress.com</a>.
Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/Budour48">@Budour48</a></em></p>
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