[richardfeynman]

This mixes up the first 24 hours with who launched the Intifada as a sustained campaign.

Even if you think Sharon’s Temple Mount visit was provocative and Israeli police used excessive force on Sept 29, senior Palestinian figures later said the uprising was coming anyway and was planned, and Sharon was a convenient trigger.

1) Marwan Barghouti told The New Yorker: the explosion would have happened anyway; Sharon provided a good excuse. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/01/29/arafats-gift

2) PA communications minister Imad al Faluji: this intifada was planned in advance since Arafat returned from Camp David. https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/02/21/history-matters/

3) Suha Arafat said Arafat decided to start an intifada (MEMRI translation; CFR discusses it too). https://www.memri.org/tv/suha-arafat-widow-yasser-arafat-200... https://www.cfr.org/articles/arafat-and-second-intifada

Also, it is not just Israelis saying this. Mainstream sources record these admissions and describe the outbreak as Palestinian violence following the visit.

On Oslo: it was an interim framework with later permanent status talks, not a guaranteed rapid withdrawal and state. The PLO letter explicitly renounced terrorism and other violence. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-107hr3743ih/html/B...

[DiogenesKynikos]

You've actually hit on the most important point: Although Oslo was sold as a two-state solution, the Israelis never agreed in writing to a Palestinian state.

The Israelis showed an incredible amount of bad faith. Rabin said in one of his last speeches that there would never be a Palestinian state - only a semi-autonomous entity under Israeli control. The Israelis never halted settlement construction. After Rabin was assassinated by the Israeli Right, Netanyahu deliberately sabotaged Oslo for years (which he brags about today), refusing to withdraw from the occupied territories as agreed.

After 7 years of this, with a Palestinian state no closer at all, a top Israeli politician (soon to become PM) staged a deliberate provocation, and Israeli forces began massacring Palestinian civilians.

Of course there were thoughts in the PLO about the possibility of future armed resistance. They would have been crazy not to think about that possibility. But they preferred a negotiated two-state solution, and they tried to get it for 7 years. After the Israelis started massacring Palestinian civilians, it would have been impossible for the PLO to keep a lid on the violence.

[richardfeynman]

You are switching topics because the original claim does not survive contact with the record.

You said Israeli massacres sparked the Second Intifada. Your own timeline does not name any massacre that happened before it began. The first deaths were in the clashes after Sharon’s visit. That is tragic, but it is not some prior massacre that supposedly set everything off.

The US-led Mitchell Report is explicit: Sharon’s Temple Mount visit did not cause the Intifada. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/mitchell_plan.asp

And Barghouti later said the eruption would have happened anyway and the visit was just a convenient excuse. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/01/29/arafats-gift

Also, your Oslo framing is backwards. Oslo did not promise a Palestinian state or rapid final withdrawal. It is an interim framework that explicitly defers permanent-status issues like borders, settlements, and Jerusalem to later negotiations. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/isrplo.asp

A politician visiting a holy site under police protection is not a massacre and not a justification for launching an intifada.