CIA Chief Resembles Current Situation in The Occupied Palestinian Territories to A Second Intifada

By Staff, Agencies

The director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] expressed his concern last week that the current period of high tension on the ‘Israeli’-occupied Palestinian territories is beginning to resemble the violence of the Second Intifada.

“I was a senior US diplomat 20 years ago during the Second Intifada, and I’m concerned — as are my colleagues in the intelligence community — that a lot of what we’re seeing today has a very unhappy resemblance to some of those realities that we saw then too,” Bill Burns said during a live interview at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service in Washington on Thursday.

The Second Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, started in September 2000, after then Zionist Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a highly provocative visit to the holy al-Aqsa Mosque. The visit sparked protests and riots which the occupation police put down with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Burns made the remarks days after returning from the region, where he met with senior Zionist officials.

But Burns said he did not leave the trip feeling optimistic. “The conversations I’ve had with ‘Israeli’ and Palestinian leaders left me quite concerned about the prospects for even greater fragility and even greater violence.”