Arab riots in Jerusalem "have the potential to reach the point of an intifada,” says official PA daily
Excerpt of an op-ed by Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “The prospects of the confrontations in Jerusalem”
“On the night between Friday and Saturday [Aril 24, 2021], the confrontations between the [Arab] sons of Jerusalem, the eternal capital, and the Israeli occupation security forces and settler herds renewed…
Dozens of protests were also held to support the heroes of the holy city in Jaffa, Umm Al-Fahm (i.e., Israeli cities), the Southern Districts (i.e., the Gaza Strip), and many Palestinian cities and towns. A number of the resistance wings also fired salvos of rockets towards the colonies adjacent to the border with the Gaza Strip (i.e., Israeli towns near Gaza)…
According to what is becoming clear from the situation in the flower of cities [Jerusalem], the confrontations will not be stopped at the point they have reached until now, especially because the forces of Zionist fascism… will continue their war crimes against Jerusalem’s residents, their neighborhoods, their property, and their houses of worship, and they will continue to treat them brutally, arrest them, and work to humiliate them. This means pouring oil on the fire burning in the Palestinian street, and this will increase the anger, popular agitation, and [desire] to respond to all the severe crimes of organized terror by the Israeli occupation state against Jerusalem and its defenders, members of the [Palestinian] people. This will certainly lead to a stage of wide popular uprising with the potential to reach the point of an intifada.
Perhaps one who was witness to the Palestinian popular rage and vigor in all the neighborhoods saw with their own eyes how the Jerusalem masses come out from every alley and every street, like a waterfall pouring into the arenas of confrontation. A number of Jerusalem residents even told me that in the previous stages of struggle they did not see this kind of sweeping flood of our people [coming out] to defend themselves against the murderers – the group of [Israeli Parliament Members] Itamar Ben Gvir and [Bezalel] Smotrich, the gang of Lehava (i.e., an Israeli anti-assimilation organization), and the Zionist security forces.”