Good morning. For months, the question of whether Israel and Palestine are on the brink of a third intifada has loomed over every story to come out of the region, with fears that the conditions for a major escalation in bloodshed are inexorably being put in place. In the last week, those fears have appeared closer than ever to being realised.
After an IDF raid in the West Bank that killed nine and the massacre of seven Israelis by a Palestinian gunman in occupied East Jerusalem the next day, Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government has cracked down on the West Bank – and a series of copycat Palestinian attacks in response have only heightened tensions. Overnight on Thursday, Israel conducted air strikes on militant training centres in the central Gaza Strip, prompting a new round of rockets in response.
So what would it take for the crisis to turn into a full-blown Palestinian uprising – and how different would that look from the status quo? Today’s newsletter, with the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, Bethan McKernan, is after the headlines.
Five big stories
UK politics | Officials at the government’s spending watchdog are examining the controversial decision to provide £220,000 of taxpayers’ money to fund Boris Johnson’s legal defence for the inquiry into his Partygate denials. Meanwhile, No 10 refused to say whether Rishi Sunak knew of complaints about Dominic Raab’s alleged bullying before appointing him to the cabinet.
Strikes | Unions and the government appear as far apart as ever after widespread strike action closed or partly closed more than half of schools across England and Wales. But Network Rail made a “newly revised” offer to the RMT which the rail workers’ union said was under consideration.
Joe Biden | The FBI has conducted a planned search of the president’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware as part of its investigation into potential mishandling of classified information. The search followed a 13-hour review of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on 20 January.
Cost of living | Households in England and Wales are facing the biggest increase to water bills in almost two decades from April. The industry body Water UK said the typical water bill will increase to an average of £448 a year from April, a hike of 7.5%.
Australia | A tiny radioactive capsule lost in the Australian outback that posed a “significant public health risk” has been found by the side of the road. The 8mm by 6mm capsule, which fell from a truck travelling from a Rio Tinto mine site, was described as “quite literally … the needle in the haystack”.
In depth: ‘A lot of younger Palestinians don’t see there is anything to be done other than take up arms’
One week ago, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) entered Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, acting on intelligence suggesting a cell linked to Palestinian Islamic Jihad was planning an imminent attack. Seven men linked to militant groups and two civilians were killed.
The next day, a Palestinian gunman identified as Alqam Khayri, 21, drove to a neighbourhood of Israeli settlers in occupied East Jerusalem, where he opened fire outside a synagogue. He killed seven Israelis, including a 14-year-old boy and a 68-year-old Ukrainian woman, before being shot dead by police as he fled. He is believed to have acted alone.
While last year was the bloodiest in Israel and the West Bank since 2005, those incidents a day apart felt different, Bethan McKernan said. “These are the deadliest single events in Israel and the West Bank going back at least 15 years,” she said. They again raise the question of whether a third intifada – or popular Palestinian uprising – is near.
An uprising might be distinguished from the current violence by its coordination and scale. Two features besides the increase in bloodshed are ominous: the growing number of young Palestinian men aligned with a new generation of more loosely associated militant groups, among them the Lions’ Den in Nablus, and the prospect of that tendency spreading from the north of the West Bank, where it is currently strongest.
Still, it is difficult to define exactly how unrest tips into an intifada. “At the moment, it does feel as if we’re ticking off the boxes,” Bethan said. “But how do we know if we’re in it? I don’t think anybody exactly knows the answer.”
Here are some of the factors to keep in mind.
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Palestinian hopelessness and disillusionment with a two-state solution
Last July, Joe Biden visited the West Bank, and expressed his theoretical backing for a two-state solution, but declined to offer any concrete support for measures that would bring a Palestinian state closer. “The ground is not ripe at this moment,” he said, adding: “I know that the goal of the two states seems so far away.”
“He literally told a Palestinian audience that the peace process is not on the table,” Bethan said. This week, US secretary of state Antony Blinken visited Jerusalem – a diplomatic mission which one analyst said had no more impact than “an extended condolence call”.
In a sense, Biden’s intervention was a statement of the obvious, corresponding to conditions like an IDF siege of Nablus, unlawful targeted West Bank assassinations and house demolitions, and the deaths of 146 Palestinians at the hands of Israeli security forces in the West Bank, as well as 29 Israelis killed by Palestinians, in 2022. Much of that violence was the product of Operation Breakwater, an IDF response to a surge in knife and gun attacks. (Read more about Breakwater in this September piece.)
“There is very little hope that things will improve,” Bethan said. Nor is there any faith in the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has not held elections in 16 years and is viewed by many younger Palestinians as “a security subcontractor for the occupation”, as Bethan wrote on Sunday. She added: “A lot of younger Palestinians don’t see anything to be done other than to take up arms.” More than 30 Palestinians have already died this year, and support on both sides for a two-state solution is at an all-time low (£).
The other part of the equation is economic desperation – and this may cut the other way. “Many families in the West Bank are reliant on paycheques from the Palestinian Authority,” Bethan said – and that is continuing for now, though Israel is withholding a portion of the tax revenues it collects on the PA’s behalf. “Until those families start being hit economically, I don’t see this spreading into a popular uprising.”
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A draconian Israeli response to the latest violence
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government believes that “nothing that happens to Israelis in occupied East Jerusalem can pass without a response – and probably a very harsh one”, Bethan said. The response since Friday’s attack has been exactly that.
On Sunday, and in the aftermath of several more incidents, Netanyahu’s office set out a range of “additional deterrent measures”, ranging from revoking Jerusalem residence rights to stripping militants’ families of social security and health benefits – all measures illegal under international law. Family members of Palestinian attackers have been evicted from their homes, which will be demolished.
Meanwhile, there have been scores of so-called “price tag” incidents – revenge attacks by Israeli settlers. “There haven’t been any deaths, but we’ve seen shootings, sheep stolen, cars and property burned, and settlers are doing this with impunity,” Bethan said. Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has documented some of these attacks, which were already at unprecedented levels: the IDF recorded 838 such incidents in 2022, compared with 446 the year before.
Some see the Israeli government as complicit: B’Tselem notes that in 14 incidents it was aware of, IDF soldiers were present. Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition includes Religious Zionism, an ultranationalist group that secured the inclusion in the coalition agreement of a promise to annex the West Bank. “Some of them have been preparing for this for decades,” said Bethan. “They aren’t really concerned about the consequences.”
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The ability for Palestinians to organise and arm
The first intifada was “very much a popular, grassroots uprising, distinguished kinetically by things like molotov cocktails and stone throwing”, Bethan said. “The second was much bloodier – it was backed by Yasser Arafat, and characterised by the violence of militant groups, including suicide bombings. A third intifada would not look like either.”
Key to it happening is whether there is any capacity to organise among Palestinians seeking to respond violently. “They don’t have the support of Fatah, or the Palestinian Authority,” Bethan said. “There is no overarching political leadership. And Israeli surveillance is very tight now – I wonder how people can visit their family without the Israelis knowing, much less organise a united Palestinian front. So we may see sporadic episodes of violence, rather than anything more coordinated.”
Then there’s the question of weapons. While Israel’s grip on the West Bank means that rocket attacks and suicide bombings are less likely to be prominent features of whatever comes next, there is another significant factor: the proliferation of illicit guns in the West Bank.
“They are being smuggled in, and stolen from IDF bases in huge numbers,” Bethan said. “If a third intifada happens, it will be guns that make it possible.”
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Whether it has already begun
For some analysts, the question of how a third intifada would begin is moot: they contend that after almost a year of escalating violence and near-daily IDF raids in the West Bank with no obvious route out, it has already started.
“The situation is already so bad that you arguably don’t need a label of intifada to designate it as serious,” Bethan said. “And how do you distinguish meaningfully for ordinary Palestinians, who are already dealing with the everyday violence of occupation? For them, it’s not clear that a change would be obvious – other than that it gets worse, and it continues to get worse every day.”
What else we’ve been reading
Sport
American football | Tom Brady (above), the near-consensus greatest player in NFL history, announced he is retiring from the sport he has dominated for decades. He initially announced he was retiring last year, before deciding to return to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 40 days later.
Cricket | Jos Buttler and Dawid Malan scored backs-to-the-wall centuries before Jofra Archer’s stunning return of six for 40 – the first time he has taken five wickets or more in a one-day international – led England to victory by 59 runs over South Africa.
Football | Goals from Martial and Fred sealed Manchester United’s place in the Carabao Cup final with a 5-0 aggregate victory over Nottingham Forest. Meanwhile, a day after the transfer window closed, Jonathan Liew writes on the Premier League’s £815m “unshakeable fixation on persuading men in shirts to wear other shirts before a clock runs out”.
The front pages
“Watchdog looks into £220,000 bill for Johnson Partygate legal advice” – the lead story in the printed Guardian this Thursday morning. The Daily Mirror says “When will someone care?” about the mauling to death by a dog of Alice Stones, 4, in Milton Keynes. “Has someone got our Nicola” – the Daily Express continues coverage of the disappearance of Nicola Bulley. “Now it really hurts” – the Metro says strikes are imposing a “multi-billion pound cost to the economy”.
“British Gas breaking into homes of the vulnerable” – that’s the Times, which says debt collectors are being sent to install prepayment meters. The Financial Times has for its splash “Adani calls off $2.4bn share sale after price slumps further”. “Footie charter leaked” says the Sun in a “world exclusive”. In the Telegraph they’ve got “RAF faces crisis over drive for diversity”. The Daily Mail leads with “New law to stop school strike mayhem”. And finally, “Liz Truss comeback ignites fears of new Tory civil war” – you could be forgiven for thinking the i is joking.
Today in Focus
Strikes, seatbelts and sleaze: Rishi Sunak’s first 100 days as PM
Rishi Sunak entered Downing Street promising to calm the markets and stop the scandals, but 100 days in it’s proving a bumpy ride, reports Pippa Crerar
Cartoon of the day | Martin Rowson
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
With at least 200 species going extinct every year, the discovery of a new one is always welcome. A deep trawl in the ocean has uncovered what experts say is a potentially new type of anglerfish – those lumpy marine creatures known for their curious mating habits in which the male latches on to the female, fuses with her and draws her blood. They’re unusual-looking, too: one curator at the Natural History Museum says: “I sometimes describe anglerfish as looking like a satanic potato.”
Now a young suspected anglerfish was found in a trawl near Saint Helena on a recent research expedition for the government’s Blue Belt programme. The juvenile has a lure that resembles a tiny bouquet of flowers, a feature seen only in a kind of anglerfish known as footballfish, of which there are only a few types. Scientists are waiting for the research vessel to return to the UK, where the intriguing catch will be studied and – they hope – a new species confirmed.
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Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
