© Provided by Washington Examiner "History," Mark Twain reportedly said, "does not repeat itself. But it does rhyme."
The latest violence engulfing one of the world's oldest cities, Jerusalem, offers a case in point. Far from being spontaneous, these rioting and rocket attacks were provoked and promoted by both Palestinian groups and Iran to serve their own agendas.
Some have attributed the violence, which erupted on Friday, to the pending eviction of several Palestinian families in Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the "United States is extremely concerned about ongoing confrontations in Jerusalem," linking it to the "potential eviction of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah." Price called on "senior Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work to de-escalate the situation."
Similarly, the Middle East Quartet - the United States, European Union, Russia, and the United Nations - issued a statement expressing its "deep concern" over the violence, which it attributed to "the possible eviction of Palestinian families from homes they had lived in for generations . which will only escalate the tense environment."
It is a fool's game to ask Palestinian leaders to de-escalate a situation that they themselves are inflaming.
As NGO Monitor, an organization that researches NGOs operating in the sphere of the Arab-Israeli conflict, has noted, the evictions of Sheikh Jarrah occurred after decades of litigation. On Feb. 10, 2021, Jerusalem's District Court upheld a previous ruling, which found that the failure of some Palestinian Arab tenants to pay rent, along with instances of illegal building and illegally renting properties to others, was grounds for eviction.
Notably, however, violence didn't erupt in February. But it did erupt in May - and it has continued despite Israel's decision to postpone the lawful evictions. That's because it serves the purposes of Palestinian leaders and Iran.
In January, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, promised to hold elections. The PA, which rules over the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank, hasn't held elections in nearly 16 years, and its legislative council has not met in more than a decade. And Abbas, an octogenarian in the 16th year of a four-year term, is deeply unpopular.
Abbas's promise of elections, part of a strategy to curry favor with the Biden administration, backfired, as polls showed Abbas's Fatah movement losing to rival Hamas, the U.S.-designated terror group that rules the Gaza Strip and calls for Israel's destruction. Confronted with a crisis of his own making, on April 28, Abbas announced that the long-awaited elections were "postponed" and disingenuously blamed Israel, hoping, no doubt, to refocus the ire of disenfranchised Palestinians.
On Friday, attendees at Jerusalem's al Aqsa mosque began throwing rocks and other items at police. Abbas praised the rioters, declaring "full support for our heroes in Aqsa." The PA president's words were carefully chosen.
As the Middle East analyst Nadav Shragai documented in 2012, there is a long history of Palestinian leaders claiming that the Muslim holy site "is in danger of collapse - and that the Jews are to blame." In 1929, the Palestinian leader Amin al Husseini used this lie to provoke anti-Jewish violence in Jerusalem, leaving hundreds dead and wounded. In 2000, Abbas's predecessor Yasser Arafat similarly invoked al Aqsa to launch a five-year terror campaign commonly known as the Second Intifada. Arafat even created a unit known as the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to carry out attacks.
In 2015, Abbas inaugurated what was later known as the "Stabbing Intifada," in which more than 200 Israelis were stabbed, shot, run over, and more than 30 murdered, by proclaiming on Palestinian television, "We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem . al Aqsa is ours."
Abbas knows what he's doing. By pouring gasoline on a fire, he is purposefully inflaming tensions. Regrettably, however, he is not alone.
Hamas and other Gaza-based Palestinian terrorist groups are also inciting violence. Hamas flags were visible in footage taken at the mosque and elsewhere in Jerusalem. Flush with funds from their primary backer, Iran, these groups have launched rocket barrages into the Jewish state. As the journalist Seth Frantzman has highlighted, "days before the latest clashes developed," Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps "prepared speeches and media engagements in which they pushed messages throughout the region, arguing that . Israel is destined to fall apart." Both Iran and Hamas seek to exploit the violence, the latter hoping to make gains at Abbas's expense, and the former seeking to position itself as capable of destroying Israel and "reconquering" Jerusalem.
But if the past is prologue, in the Middle East, it is also a tired tactic with a long history of failure and death.
The writer is a Washington, D.C.-based foreign affairs analyst and a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis. His views are his own.
Tags: Opinion, Beltway Confidential, Blog Contributors, Israel, Middle East, Palestinian Authority
Original Author: Sean Durns
Original Location: The Palestinian Authority is trying to set Jerusalem ablaze