Sharon Visits Mosque: Al-Aqsa Intifada Ignites

Ariel Sharon walked onto the most contested piece of real estate on earth accompanied by a thousand riot police, and the Middle East erupted. On September 28, 2000, the Israeli opposition leader visited the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem's Old City, sacred to both Jews and Muslims. The visit, which Palestinians viewed as a deliberate provocation, triggered the Second Intifada, a five-year spiral of violence that killed over 4,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis. The timing was combustible. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat had just left the Camp David Summit in July 2000 without reaching a final peace agreement. Both sides blamed each other for the failure. Frustration among Palestinians over continued settlement expansion, the stalled peace process, and deteriorating economic conditions in the occupied territories had been building for months. Sharon, a controversial figure who had been forced to resign as defense minister after a 1983 inquiry found him personally responsible for failing to prevent the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon, was running for prime minister. His decision to visit the Temple Mount, which Muslims call the Haram al-Sharif and consider the third holiest site in Islam, was widely seen as a calculated political move to demonstrate Israeli sovereignty over the contested site. The day after the visit, large-scale clashes erupted at the compound. Israeli security forces fired rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition at Palestinian demonstrators, killing several and wounding hundreds. The violence spread rapidly across the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and within Israel itself. What began as stone-throwing protests escalated within weeks into armed confrontations, suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians, and massive Israeli military operations in Palestinian cities. The Second Intifada destroyed what remained of the Oslo peace process. Israel reoccupied West Bank cities, began construction of the separation barrier, and expanded settlements. Sharon won the prime ministership in a landslide in February 2001. The violence of 2000-2005 hardened positions on both sides and created the political conditions that have prevented a negotiated resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever since.