Over the years, the Second Intifada has been consigned to paragraphs within history books and the significance has been forgotten by many. While this may be due to the scarcity of sources that are out there, the history of the Second Intifada cannot be ignored. Like previous conflicts in the past between Palestinians and Israelis, the Second Intifada had a monstrous toll on the way of life for both Palestinians and Israelis. The following thesis will examine the Second Intifada and how it affected the economy, the politics, and the social life of Palestinians living in Ramallah, the de facto capital for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank.

The central question this thesis poses is how and why the modes of Palestinian political activism have changed from the first to the second intifada. The thesis will explore the underlying major political, territorial and social developments that created a new environment for the second uprising that was no longer conducive to the mass protests and acts of civil disobedience, which had dominated the first intifada in the late 1980s. The decline of civil society, the reassertion of Palestinian political factionalism and the unique geographical dislocation of the Palestinian territories, which created new physical obstacles to resistance but also caused division within society, were the key factors in reshaping the context of the second intifada. In addition, rising support for violent resistance among the population was rooted in the sense of hopelessness and frustration that re-emerged over the Oslo period. Much of the population’s frustration was directed at Israel’s colonial regime but in part it was also a response to the rule of the Palestinian Authority, which had failed to fulfil its commitments to its own population in view of its obligations under Oslo toward Israel. In the absence of alternative non-violent outlets within either politics or civil society, what took root instead was individual activism via militant organisations. As such, this thesis offers an account of the development of Palestinian political action (and in particular political violence) that is indebted to an effort to employ historical and contextual analysis in ways that deepen the insights available from explanations of behaviour drawn from political science.

TITLE: Role of massmedia in Israeli-Palestinian question AUTHOR: Dagmar Pexová DEPARTMENT: Faculty of Electronic Culture and Semiotics SUPERVISOR: Mgr. Filip Poštulka ABSTRACT: This work discusses the way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is presented and explained in the mass media. It focuses on the analysis of the media news on the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, mainly during the Second Intifada. For this purpose, reports from newspapers, radio and television are analysed. The political situation and development of the media since the early state of Israel is briefly outlined. The analysis presents the patterns and structures used by the Israeli, Palestinian and international media to report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. KEYWORDS: Israeli-Palestinian conflict, media, Second Intifada, news

During the Second Intifada, Israel shocked the international community by becoming the first country in the world to publically announce an overt policy of targeted-killing. While utilized by Israel in previous conflicts, the Second Intifada was a turning point in Israeli history due to a series of dramatic changes introduced to its targeting policy which would sharply contrast those which were previously utilized. This diploma thesis analyzed thirty-eight cases of Israeli targeting operations conducted both before and during the Second Intifada to determine if the changes made to its policy during the Second Intifada resulted in more or less successful targeting operations compared to those conducted prior to this time period. The results of this study indicated that, following the introduction of the aforementioned policy changes, Israeli targeting operations during the Second Intifada were less successful than those conducted prior to this time period.