[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.

[richardfeynman]

Nice try, but you are rewriting your own claim.

You opened with: the Second Intifada was sparked by Israeli massacres. Now your alleged massacre is Sept 29, the first day of the clashes after Sharon’s visit. That is not a prior massacre that precipitated anything, it is the opening confrontation itself, and you are laundering it with a loaded word.

On Oslo, you did not even mention it until your massacre story fell apart. And your Oslo summary is wrong on the text. Oslo II explicitly defers permanent-status issues (Jerusalem, settlements, borders, refugees, etc.) and excludes them from PA jurisdiction. The 18-month line is about phased interim jurisdiction, not a guaranteed state or full withdrawal. This was also obvious to everyone alive at the time and was widely reported. It's only now that people like you are attempting to rewrite history. https://www.peaceagreements.org/agreements/410/

Read the Mitchell Report you keep invoking.

- It describes Sept 29 as large demonstrations where Palestinians threw stones and Israeli police used rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition, killing 4 and injuring about 200. Calling that a massacre is absurd. It was an armed clash, premeditated and planned by the palestinians, so not only was there no massacre, but the Palestinians themselves say armed clash was premeditated and Sharon's visit was just a pretext.

- The Sharon visit did not cause the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

Source: https://www.palquest.org/en/historictext/13561/mitchell-repo...

Also, Sharon visiting a holy site under police protection is not violence. Mitchell even says holy places must be accessible to all believers. The choice to turn that into an uprising was a choice.