Palestinians and Israelis agree on one thing at least: that the ongoing intifada in the occupied territories is unlikely to wind down soon. Indeed, Mr Faisal Husseini, the Palestinian minister responsible for the Jerusalem issue, agrees with the assessment of the Israeli army command that this rising could carry on well into next year.
Speaking on the morning after the latest cabinet meeting in Gaza which he had attended, Mr Husseini told The Irish Times: "As long as there is no change on the ground, the intifada will go on. It will go on as long as the Israelis consider 242 a resolution to be negotiated instead of a resolution to be implemented." This resolution calls upon Israel to withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967.
"We must return to the intifada of 1987-93, the `intifada of the stones'," Mr Husseini (60), a leading figure during that insurrection and a veteran member of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's Fateh movement, said. "At that time we froze Israel's atomic bombs, phantoms, tanks, heavy machine-guns and automatic weapons. The Israelis were forced to deal with us with the lowest technology and the biggest number of soldiers. Sometimes they even resorted to throwing stones at us from helicopters. If we use stones, they will respond with rubber bullets and live ammunition. If we use rifles, they will respond with machine-guns, if we use machineguns they will use rockets. I am against using guns even though my training was in the military. Even if others use weapons, I will not."
He cited the example of ongoing clashes between Palestinian stone-throwers and the Israeli army at the settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip. "From the Military point of view we are losing but we are winning from the political point of view."
The opposite was true at Joseph's tomb, a Jewish religious site in the Palestinian town of Nablus, evacuated by the Israeli army and then wrecked by demonstrators. "The only thing that saved us was our allies in Tiberias (Israeli extremists) attacked a mosque there," cancelling out the outrage at Joseph's tomb. Tiberias, once an Arab town, has been entirely Jewish since 1948.
Mr Husseini described the Palestinian strategy as one of "aggressive non-violence". Asked why the Palestinians did not adopt the traditional non-violent strategies of Mahatma Gandhi, he replied: "To do this we are in need of three things: Gandhi, the Indian people and the British . . . Whenever we have staged non-violent demonstrations, the Israelis immediately started shooting. They will not give us the opportunity to protest peacefully. They respond with violence, particularly if there are only Palestinians taking part, but also if foreigners and Israelis participate," he stated. He gave the example of an Italian woman who lost an eye during an attempt to make a human chain around the Old City of Jerusalem.
The Palestinians, he said, must make a clear distinction between mass demonstrations and action by armed elements. Arms should be strictly "forbidden" at popular protests.
He agreed that there was a major difference between the situation on the ground during the first intifada and the current uprising. At that time the Israeli army held every street in every Palestinian town and village, so it was easy for Palestinian protesters to engage Israeli soldiers.
Today the majority of Palestinians live in enclaves under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Israeli troops confine Palestinians to these enclaves so confrontations take place on the edges. This means the Israelis are in a much stronger position than they were during the first intifada.