ABSTRACT
Following the Friday prayers on the Temple Mount, the day after Sharon’s visit there, a large demonstration of worshipers was organized at the Haram al-Sharif Mosque. This demonstration was suppressed with an iron fist. Israeli policemen armed with rifles and live ammunition entered the Temple Mount compound and shot to death seven demonstrators; scenes of the clash flashed across the global media. These killings sparked a new Intifada – anticipated by the leaders of the Palestinian opposition organizations and the Tanzim, and prepared for by the IDF since September 1996. What incensed the Palestinian masses was not Sharon’s visit, but the scenes of Palestinians killed and wounded in the grounds of their mosques. Only then was there an outburst of rage, pent up during five years of imagined peace in which Israeli politics ignored Palestinian suffering, economic distress, and despair caused by the expansion of settlements, the construction of bypass roads, and the erection of checkpoints. This Israeli indifference was symbolic violence – violence that only dominant elites can allow themselves – but after five years, it turned into very real violence.
