The intifada: It’s over, they lost

This is what defeat looks like:

Every year, large rallies in the territories and abroad commemorated the anniversary of the Palestinian uprising that broke out in 2000. But this year, there was nothing and Palestinians are asking themselves whether anything at all was gained from the revolt.

Many Palestinians say they are worse off now, increasingly worried about internal fighting and further from statehood than when the uprising erupted on Sept. 28, 2000, after former Israeli leader Ariel Sharon visited a disputed holy shrine in Jerusalem and a U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace summit failed.

“It is a silent admission on the part of Palestinians that the uprising has been an unmitigated disaster,” prominent pollster Khalil Shikaki said of the absence of commemorations.

Of course, this is what AP media bias looks like:

For years, Palestinians hit Israel with suicide bombers and rockets, and Israel struck back with aerial attacks, ground incursions and arrest raids.

But the vastly outgunned Palestinians have been exhausted by the armed confrontation. A total of 4,453 Palestinians have been killed, along with 1,114 Israelis. Israel has built a West Bank barrier which it says was designed to keep out attacks. But the enclosure dips into the West Bank at various points, putting 8.5 percent of the territory on the “Israeli” side. In Palestinian eyes, it is a thinly veiled land grab.

But then we get back to the failure talk:

“Everything came to a standstill for seven years. We didn’t move forward but backward,” said Adnan Attari, a 30-year-old merchant from a village near the West Bank town of Ramallah.

But the lack of commemoration reflects more than the uprising’s failures. With the militant Islamic Hamas and Fatah factions locked in a battle for power, Palestinians are more concerned about their internal security than their conflict with Israel, polls show.

And then we get back to the AP media bias:

Fierce infighting began after the Islamists won 2006 parliamentary elections, then came to a head in June, when Hamas violently seized control of Gaza from Fatah. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah immediately expelled Hamas from power and set up his own rival government in the West Bank.

You know what’s missing from that paragraph? The body count. Whenever Palestinians are killed by the IDF, the body count is kept, added up by the day, the week, the month, the year, and the war, and then turned into a boilerplate. Whenever Palestinians are killed by Palestinians, well, it’s turned into “infighting” or “violently seized control”—nice little euphemisms for these actions:

Early Tuesday, three women and a child were killed when Hamas militants attacked the home of a senior Fatah security official with mortars and grenades, security officials said. The gunmen seized Hassan Abu Rabie and killed his 14-year-old son and three other women in the house, hospital officials said.

[…] The fighting took a grisly turn on Sunday, when Hamas militants kidnapped a member of Abbas’ elite presidential guard, took him to the roof of a 15-story apartment building and threw him to his death.

Of course, not a single Palestinian can be found to call those actions “war crimes.” But if the IDF had done anything remotely like them? Sure.

Now, to the numbers. Buried deep within that article is a tally:

Monday’s deaths brought to more than 80 the number of Palestinians killed since the latest round of infighting erupted in May.

You see, the AP editors do have the reference. But they won’t use it in the current article, because that makes the Palestinians look bad. And they never really kept an accurate tally, just as they don’t have an accurate tally of civilian and “militant” casualties in the Lebanon refugee camp bombed over the summer.

Because if the IDF doesn’t kill them, it’s not worth keeping track.

All the same, it’s great news that the Palestinians no longer have the heart to celebrate the intifada. Not that I think they’re internalized their defeat. Not when Abbas can talk about final status issues and a state in six months, while promising absolutely nothing in return.