[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.

[DiogenesKynikos]

Switching topics? We've been discussing the reasons for the 2nd Intifada. The Israelis reneging on Oslo was the fundamental reason for it.

> Your own timeline does not name any massacre that happened before it began.

Huh? I've mentioned the massacres that Israeli forces carried out in the aftermath of Ariel Sharon's storming of the Temple Mount several times now.

> The US-led Mitchell Report is explicit: Sharon’s Temple Mount visit did not cause the Intifada

You cite the Mitchell Report when it agrees with you, but ignore it when it disagrees with you.

The Mitchell Report explicitly states that the PLO had no premeditated plan to unleash violence.

In fact, it says that the proximal cause of the 2nd Intifada was the massacre that Israel carried out on 29 September 2000 against Palestinian protesters. Those protests were in response to Sharon's storming of the Temple Mount.

The report says that after that massacre, neither side showed restraint, which caused the violence to escalate.

So the report that you yourself are citing as an authority turns out to agree almost 100% with what I've been telling you all along.

> Oslo did not promise a Palestinian state or rapid final withdrawal.

Actually, Oslo II lays out a very specific timeline for Israeli withdrawal, to be completed within 18 months (by mid-1996!).

More generally, the Oslo Accords were sold as a rapid path to a two-state solution. If the Accords weren't about a two-state solution, then the Palestinians were completely swindled by the Israelis.