How the Second Intifada built the walls that failed on October 7

Ariel Sharon’s Temple Mount visit sparked the Second Intifada, reshaping Israel’s security – and setting the stage for October 7.

It has been 25 years since Ariel Sharon, opposition leader at the time, visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The visit led to riots, and it is often seen as a key spark of the Second Intifada.

We now know that the decision to launch the Second Intifada was rooted in much larger decisions of Palestinian terrorist groups. They used the visit to the Temple Mount as a pretext.

It’s worth thinking back about how much has changed since then. In 2000, during the lead-up to the Temple Mount visit, there was continued talk of pursuing peace with the Palestinians.

The Oslo Accords in 1993 and Oslo II in 1995 had been challenged. They were challenged by Hamas terrorist attacks and bombings and also by Israel’s Right, which wanted to prevent a Palestinian state.

The Oslo peace process was made possible, in part, by the end of the Cold War. This was an era of peace processes around the world and transition to democracy.

With the Soviet Union gone, there was less support for various radical, extremist, “armed struggle” groups. The Palestinians were one such group.

The PLO and Yasser Arafat’s version of the Palestinian nationalist agenda brought about the Oslo Accords after years of terrorism.

Many people saw this as natural. The IRA in Northern Ireland was also moving toward peace and accommodation. South Africa was transitioning to democracy.

When people looked at the Israel-Palestinian peace process, they sold themselves a story that there would be bitter people on both ends of the extremes, but the centrists would win out.

What they meant was that just as a few bitter IRA members continued the struggle, they would not be the norm. Instead, they believed, Israel’s far Right would end up like some of the Afrikaners in South Africa’s Bophuthatswana, an apartheid-era “homeland.”

In that 1994 crisis, a few Afrikaner extremists tried to ally themselves to one of the African homeland governments to prevent the transition to democracy. Ultimately, several armed Afrikaners were killed, and Bophuthatswana ceased to exist.

People thought the Oslo process would produce a few Baruch Goldstein moments, and all would be well.

However, all was not well. Hamas, which was founded in the 1980s and rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood, sought to destroy the peace process.

Similarly, the Israeli Right believed that Israel was sleep-walking into a trap. Indeed, that is what happened.

The Palestinian Authority never set up a functioning state-in-the-making that pushed for peace. Instead, many Palestinian groups believed Israel could be forced out of Gaza and the West Bank using violence.

Why did they think this? They saw Israel leave Lebanon in May 2000 and figured Israel would leave the West Bank with a small push. Once the killing began, about 200 Israelis and 469 Palestinians were killed in 2001.

When Israel waited to respond forcefully, the terrorism got worse. In March 2002, a suicide bombing killed 30 people at the Park Hotel in Netanya.

Ariel Sharon had returned to be prime minister the previous year. Now, after a year of waiting, he decided to launch Operation Defensive Shield to retake parts of the Palestinian cities that had been ruled by the PA.

Deadly fighting took place, especially in Jenin. Israel was slammed internationally for sending tanks into Bethlehem, Ramallah, and other places.

The hopes for a Palestinian state vanished, as the airport in Gaza was destroyed, and large numbers of people were killed on both sides.

At the time, Sharon was depicted abroad as a monster who was about to commit another Sabra and Shatila massacre, a “genocide,” as had happened in the 1980s in Lebanon.

The truth about Sabra and Shatila or how many had actually died in Jenin in 2002 didn’t matter. The narrative was set: Israel was massacring Palestinians.

THE OVERALL death toll of the Second Intifada was high, with several thousand Palestinians and more than 1,000 Israelis killed between 2000 and 2004.

Numbers considered high during the Second Intifada pale in comparison to Israel-Hamas war

Those were considered huge numbers back then. Today, they are seen as relatively small because of the disasters that unfolded during the October 7 massacre and the subsequent war.

More than 900 soldiers have been killed, as have more than 1,000 Israeli civilians and more than 60,000 Gazans, including many Hamas members and civilians.

So many civilians have been killed in Israel since the October 7 massacre that there isn’t even an easy place to find the exact number. More were killed in one day than the four years of the Second Intifada.

That is how large the disaster was, and it continued after the disaster. For instance, 31 Israelis were killed in the 12-day war with Iran. However, death has become so commonplace in Israel that this number isn’t seen as some huge amount.

In 2002, when a similar number of Israelis were killed in a bombing, it led to Operation Defensive Shield. Today, it is seen as the normal sacrifice.

How many Israeli civilians were killed by Hezbollah attacks since the October 7 massacre? The number does not appear readily available. The Israel-Hamas War takes the lives of soldiers every week, but so many have been killed that there is barely time to mourn before the new casualties arrive.

The Second Intifada was a break with the past. It was much bloodier than the First Intifada. It led to the creation of the separation fence. It also led to almost complete separation from Palestinians in the West Bank.

The Second Intifada buried any chance at coexistence. The lesson was that separation was the only option. The walls and fences grew, and Israel left Gaza in 2005.

As we all know, Hamas took over Gaza in 2007. Palestinian elections didn’t produce democracy and peace. Instead, they led to cementing the aging Fatah leadership in power.

These bureaucrats, who looked like late Soviet henchmen, promised the Palestinians nothing more than corruption and failure. Hamas promised war.

As such, what we all got from 2005 at the end of the Second Intifada until the October 7 massacre was a status quo. Israel managed the conflict by “mowing the grass” via raids in the West Bank and flare-ups in Gaza.

Israel became arrogant and complacent sitting behind walls defended by Iron Dome interceptors and hi-tech.

Like the French in 1940, or the Americans before the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, or Custer wandering into the Little Bighorn, Israel assumed all was fine.

The October 7 massacre closed the door on the end of the Second Intifada. The lesson of Defense Shield was that tanks and muscle could end the insurgency.

But all that was forgotten – replaced with hi-tech and arrogance.

Then, with more than 1,000 dead and 250 taken hostage – with Jews carted off like it was the Kishinev pogrom, or massacre, in the 1880s in what is today Moldova – Israel went back into Gaza.

One thing can be said about the Second Intifada: No matter how much Israel suffered, it never became as weak as it was on October 7, 2023. The resulting war in Gaza, which has spread mass destruction, looks different than Defensive Shield largely because of the reaction.

Unlike the Second Intifada, Israel let its enemies on all fronts become far too strong after 2005.

Many of the paradigms gifted to Israel by its leaders in the 1990s and early 2000s have now been tossed out. Today, Israel is grasping for a new doctrine.