A Second Intifada erupted in September 2000, a few months before I was born. But unlike the first uprising, this one ultimately took an armed approach. The Second Intifada was sparked when Ariel Sharon, who would soon become Israel’s prime minister, stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem with a thousand heavily armed police officers. Al-Aqsa is the third-holiest site in Islam, and Sharon’s deliberately provocative move was meant to cement Israeli claims over all of Jerusalem at a moment when negotiations had been proposed to make part of Jerusalem the Palestinian
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