Israeli violence recipe for third Intifada: Pundit

Press TV has conducted an interview with Saeed Nimer, a professor of political science at Birzeit University in Ramallah, to discuss fierce clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Why are we seeing such an exacerbation of tension with the situation by the Israelis?

Nimer: As a matter of fact in the last ten days the Israelis were pushing the Palestinians so hard and especially with the al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem, preventing Palestinians from reaching Jerusalem and preventing anyone to reach even into al-Aqsa Mosque and at the same time with the morning incursions in al-Aqsa Mosque and allowing the settlers to come in into the al-Aqsa Mosque and do whatever they like and when the Palestinians after ten days finally reacted, the settlers and the Israeli army became out of their minds and they stared this huge campaign all over the West Bank.

It reminds us exactly with the days of the second Intifada and first Intifada. All cities are now cut off from each other, all roads are occupied by the settlers and settlers are all over the area and the Israeli army and the clashes in all Palestinian cities till yesterday in the late morning the clashes continued in several areas around the major cities - in Ramallah, in Hebron, in Nablus, also in Jerusalem itself.

So it became absolutely unbearable by the settlers and the Israeli army to attack the Palestinians in that way and definitely the Palestinians are reacting. We are witnessing something very much similar to the Intifada – the first one and the second one - at the very beginning. We do not know to what extent that will continue but anyway what we know is that the Israeli army and Israeli settlers are out of their minds and they are really doing whatever they like in the streets and definitely Palestinians are going to try to prevent them and to stop them and consequently there will be high casualty among the Palestinians.

Press TV: You have just told us that the cities are cut off and it is very much like the Intifadas of the past, but tell us as an individual on the ground that what does it mean to life for the Palestinians when we are talking about these Israeli security measures that are being implemented?

Nimer: Well it will make life definitely miserable for all Palestinians. For instance, today we were in one case in the court and there was no judges coming from different areas to Ramallah and most of the work in the court was even stopped because most of the judges are coming from different areas surrounding Ramallah, they could not even reach and that will definitely make life very difficult for the Palestinians if they want to travel, if they want to go from one area to [another] area, for businesses, for everything definitely and generally speaking, again these pressures are going to end up in an explosion by the Palestinians in a way or another.

We believe that the Palestinians had given long time period of really returning themselves not reacting to the settlers, not reacting to the Israeli army for a quite long time and we cannot see at all any hopes at the end of the tunnel, we cannot see light at the end of the tunnel and definitely this is a huge recipe for a third Intifada which we might are seeing today, the beginning of it could be.

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