CAIRO (IPS) — Following the February ouster of Egypt’s
longstanding President Hosni Mubarak, calls have been circulating in Egypt and
throughout the region for a “Third Intifada” to begin 15 May.

“Unlike the first two Palestinian uprisings, the
proposed Third Intifada is meant to involve the entire Arab world,”
Egyptian journalist and political analyst Abdelhalim Kandil told IPS.

It began with the appearance of a Facebook page in early
March calling for a “Third Intifada” against the ongoing Israeli
occupation of Palestinian land. The page, reportedly founded by Arab
pro-Palestinian groups, set the launch date for 15 May — the day on which hundreds
of thousands of Palestinians were driven from their homes in 1948 to make way
for the nascent State of Israel.

Palestinian refugee Mohamed Harb holds a key he says belongs to a house his family was forced to flee 63 years ago, as he poses for a photograph at his house in the Balata refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus May 11, 2011. Palestinians will mark “Nakba” (Catastrophe) on May 15 to commemorate the expulsion of some 700, 000 Palestinians from their homes by Israeli forces in the war that led to the founding of Israel in 1948. REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusini

The page attracted some 230,000 members within two weeks,
prompting Israeli officials to lodge a complaint with the popular California-based
social networking website. On 29 March, Facebook removed the page — which had
at that point amassed hundreds of thousands of fans — claiming that its
contents were found to “promote violence.”

The page was almost immediately replaced with several copycat
pages, however, which reiterated calls for “the liberation of Palestine
from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River” and “the return
of Palestinian refugees to their homes in historical Palestine” in
accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 194 of 1948.

An Arabic-language website called the “Third
Palestinian Intifada” (www.3rdintifada.com) appeared soon afterward,
providing a general plan of action. The site calls for peaceful protests on
Friday and Saturday (13 and 14 May) at Israeli embassies and consulates
worldwide, including those in Western capitals, “to express our rage about
the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the expulsion of millions of
Palestinians from their rightful homes.”

On 15 May, dubbed the “Sunday of Liberation,” the site
had initially called for multiple million-person marches to advance on
“historical Palestine” — in reference to Israel — from starting
points in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. This was later scaled down,
however, to the staging of demonstrations outside Israeli embassies in Jordan
and Egypt (the two Arab states that have diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv),
along with simultaneous marches near Israel’s boundaries with Syria, Lebanon
and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

According to Mounib Mohamed, 26-year-old activist from Cairo
and administrator for the website’s Egypt branch, the initial plan was scrapped
“because of the difficulties associated with implementing it, and in order
to avoid friction with local authorities in the countries involved.”

“As for Egypt, we’re calling for million-man gatherings
to be held in cities countrywide on 13 May,” Mohamed explained.
“Participants will then head to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where prominent
political figures are scheduled to speak about the Palestinian cause.”

“From Tahrir, we will march to the Zionist embassy, UN
offices and certain multinational store chains known to have Zionist
sympathies,” Mohamed, who is also the administrator of the Facebook page
“Egyptians for the Intifada,” told IPS. He went on to stress that all
planned activities would be “peaceful in nature” and “carried
out in coordination with Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces,”
which has run the country’s affairs since Mubarak’s ouster.

“Our ultimate objective is the liberation of Palestine
via peaceful, political means in light of Egypt’s post-Mubarak political
circumstances,” Mohamed added.

Several prominent revolutionary youth groups also plan to
take part, including the 6 April youth movement, which played a leading role in
Egypt’s 25 January Revolution.

“The Palestinian situation is a source of pain for the
entire Arab nation across the political spectrum,” 6 April media
spokesperson Injie Hamdi told IPS. “Therefore, in coordination with other
like-minded youth groups, we’re endorsing calls to demonstrate from 13 to 15
May in Tahrir Square and at the Israeli embassy.”

In the three months since Mubarak’s departure, Egypt has
witnessed a spate of marches and protests in front of both Israel’s embassy in
Cairo and its consulate in Alexandria, where demonstrators could be seen
distributing flyers about the planned event.

The “Third Intifada” had initially included plans
for a protest march to Egypt’s Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip, which
has been sealed for the most part since 2007. This plan was abandoned, however,
following a promise by Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces-appointed
foreign minister late last month that the crossing would soon be reopened on a
permanent basis.

Nevertheless, the Arab Doctors Union plans to dispatch a
convoy of Gaza-bound humanitarian aid through the Rafah crossing — scheduled to
set out from Tahrir Square on 15 May. The closure of Rafah, in tandem with
Israel’s five-year-old blockade of the Gaza Strip, has effectively cut the coastal
enclave off from the rest of the world — subjecting its roughly 1.5 million
inhabitants to excessive poverty and privation.

Notably, Palestinian faction Hamas, which governs the strip
and espouses a policy of armed resistance to Israel, has not publicly endorsed
calls for a “Third Intifada.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas, meanwhile, who heads the rival Palestinian faction Fatah and supports a
discredited “peace process” with Israel, has voiced downright
opposition to the idea.

Last week, the two factions agreed in Cairo to form a
national unity government, ending four years of bitter animosity. Just how the
new Palestinian government plans to deal with Israel — whether by resistance or
by negotiations — remains uncertain, however.

According to Kandil, the greatest benefit of Hamas-Fatah
reconciliation is that the two factions “will now be able to coordinate
the kind of peaceful revolutions seen recently in the Arab world.” He
expressed hope that the planned “Third Intifada” would apply the
lessons learned from successful Arab uprisings, especially those seen in
Tunisia and Egypt.

“If the Palestinians stage peaceful protests en masse
and persevere despite Israel’s inevitably violent response — and are supported
by simultaneous demonstrations in Arab and Western capitals — the Israeli
occupation’s days may very well be numbered,” said Kandil.

The first Palestinian Intifada lasted from 1987 until the
signing of the 1993 Oslo peace accords. A second Palestinian uprising erupted
in 2000.