Palestine Today is an Islamic Jihad newspaper that has two very different articles about this occasion. The first describes, to the uninitiated, how terrible the intifada was to ordinary Palestinian Arabs. Forgetting the inaccuracies in the descriptions, here is what they wrote:
Wednesday is the eleventh anniversary of the outbreak of Al-Aqsa Intifada 28.09.2000, which came after the storming of the former Prime Minister "Israeli" Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's of the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, accompanied by his bodyguards, prompting crowds of worshipers to protest it.To any sane observer, this description is one of abject failure, of how much the intifada hurt the Palestinian Arab people and how much further they are to a state than they were before they decided to start a terror war.
The uprising marked the use of arms and the large number of martyrdom operations and martyra, killing 4412 Palestinians with 48,322 wounded. There were Israeli incursion to the West Bank and Gaza Strip most notably during 'Defensive Shield' and 'Summer Rain'.
This resulted in the liquidation of the uprising and the assassination of many Palestinian leaders, and the destruction of Palestinian infrastructure, the destruction of national institutions of power, and the seizure of large areas of the West Bank, in addition to the destruction of property of citizens, and the arrest of a very large number of Palestinians.
In 2002 Israel began building a wall of annexation and expansion of apartheid on the Palestinian territories, and in the end of 2006 it reached a length of 402 km, along a winding path.
The wall isolates more than 5 thousand Palestinians in the 'closed ' areas of between the Green Line and the wall, and the Israeli government claims that the purpose of the wall is to protect Israeli citizens from Palestinian attacks.
The agriculture and the economy sectors lost millions of dollars as a result of the confiscation of vast tracts of agricultural land and uprooting of thousands of fruit trees, in addition to besieged cities, which prevented the movement of goods and products between Palestinian cities.
Israel continues to impose a suffocating siege on the Gaza Strip, and practiced various forms of aggression against the people of the sector and most recently the war by the end of 2008.
Yet the very next article praises this same terror war that caused so much suffering. It reproduces an Islamic Jihad press release on the occasion:
In memory of Al-Aqsa Intifada ... Confrontation and resistance for liberation and independence
...
We in Islamic Jihad. Taking this anniversary, we remember the eternal, we would like to underline the following: -
First, the intifada has proved vital, and our ability to cope, with regained the option of jihad and the resistance his presence, and the illusions of settlements being imposed on us to force us to surrender have fallen.
Second, the defeat of the Zionist colonial project the Western contingent on the continued and escalating resistance in Palestine and all the occupied part of the Islamic world, not the language of begging and negotiation, and adoption of this approach demonstrates the strength and vitality of this nation.
Third, it behooves us as Palestinians, to accelerate in the embodiment of national unity, in order to address the evil plots and schemes of Zionism, and we must summon up the energies and unite in preparation for the battle to liberate Palestine and Al-Aqsa.
Fourth: The achievement of the Renaissance sought in our nation is linked to its unity, and the elimination of dependency and normalization with the Zionist enemy, and therefore Palestine must remain the central Muslim issue, from Tangier until Jakarta, they turn and support for the resistance as a spearhead against the Zionist project.
In conclusion: a tribute to the souls of the martyrs who had their blood and fuel the confrontation and resistance, and a tribute to our wounded and our prisoners venerated heroes in the prisons of the Zionist oppression and injustice, and greeting to the masses of our people and rebellious masses of our nation on the path out of the system of tyranny and oppression.
How can one reconcile the two viewpoints? Did the intifada cause huge amounts of pain and suffering, or was it a great victory?
The answer is that the purpose of the terror war is not to help Palestinian Arabs. It is to hurt Israel. Israel would have been seen to benefit from a peace agreement and it would have forced Arabs to recognize Israel on a formal, paper level - something which is inconceivable to most Arabs. The intifada managed to kill over a thousand innocent Israeli civilians and it caused Israeli society to spent millions of man-hours on security issues, checkpoints, rocket shelters, guards and so forth.
It caused fear. That made the terrorists feel relevant. This is the "unity" that Islamic Jihad is mentioning - the Palestinian Arabs initially fully supported all the terror attacks and celebrated them.
Palestinian Arab pain and suffering is utterly irrelevant in the view of these terrorists. Arab blood is cheap, according to Islamic Jihad, and as long as it is used to make an Israeli Jew feel a bit of terror or to take extra precautions before entering a bus, it is all worth it.
This is why the intifada is considered a victory. And this is (another reason) why peace is simply not possible.