The 21st Anniversary of Al-Aqsa Intifada

Today, the Palestinians are commemorating the 21st Anniversary of the Second Intifada (Al-Aqsa Intifada) which erupted in the year 2000 after the Israeli war criminal Ariel Sharon stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of two thousand soldiers of the Israeli occupation.

This Intifada has been a turning point in the history of the Palestinian people’s struggle and steadfastness in defense of their lands and sanctities. To suppress this uprising, the Israeli occupation used all kinds of weapons, leading to the martyrdom of 4412 Palestinians and the injury of about 50,000 and causing destruction to thousands of Palestinian facilities and houses.

The Intifada started from the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque and involved all the Palestinian cities, villages and camps. On its third day, 13 Palestinians were martyred and 623 were injured by the occupation fire. Among the martyrs was the 12-year- old child Mohammad Al-Durra, whose death image shocked the conscience of the world and made him an icon of the Palestinian Intifada.

 Demonstrations supporting the Palestinian people in the confrontation of the criminality of occupation forces swept across most of the Arab, Islamic and western capitals and cities during which millions of people affirmed their rejection of the Israeli occupation’s crimes against the Palestinians.

21 years after this Intifada, the Israeli occupation continues with committing more crimes against the Palestinians, through attacking the Palestinian cities and villages and carrying out assassinations, detentions, settlement expansion, house demolition and displacement. The aim is to end the Palestinian presence and judaize the Palestinian areas.

During Al-Aqsa Intifada, the occupation detained around 126,000 Palestinians, including 19,000 children and 2,200 women, of whom four were pregnant and they gave birth to their children inside the detention centers within harsh conditions, Head of the Studies and Documentation Unit at the Prisoners Affairs Commission Abdel Nasser Farawneh told the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

Farawneh stressed that the occupation used all forms of physical and psychological torture against the prisoners in order to break the will of steadfastness and struggle of the Palestinian people, but it failed due to the Palestinians’ strong determination to defend and restore their usurped land and rights.

Since the outbreak of Al-Aqsa Intifada, the occupation has escalated settlement building operations and built a 728 km long apartheid wall in the West Bank which swallowed 23 percent of its land and separated 72,000 Palestinians in 36 villages from their agricultural lands, Walid Assaf, head of the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, said, adding that the occupation also deprived the Palestinians of  benefitting from 50 water wells that used to provide 7 million cubic meters of water to Palestinian lands captured by the occupation.

On Al-Aqsa Intifada anniversary, the Palestinian people vow never to relinquish their land and continue with their legendary steadfastness and resistance in the confrontation of the occupation’s colonialist plans until they liberate their land and restore their legitimate rights, Assaf pointed out.  

Hamda Mustafa