On Thursday, September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon visited the Haram al-Sharif compound, site of the al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem. It was an incendiary political act in the wake of the failed Camp David summit. Sharon, the former general and defense minister who spearheaded the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and championed settlement-building in the West Bank and Gaza, was now the chair of the Likud Party and leader of the opposition. He would be the number-one beneficiary of a renewal of hostilities.
On Friday, September 29, protests began in Jerusalem which soon spread to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Over the course of that day and the days that followed, tens of Palestinian demonstrators were killed or injured by Israeli security forces. The demonstrations intensified, eventually being labeled as the Second Intifada.
On September 30, 2000, the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab citizens in Israel called on a general strike in solidarity with the families of those whose lives were taken in Jerusalem by Israeli security forces the previous day. The strike, however, was only the beginning to wider protests held throughout the north of Israel, to protest the excessive use of violence by Israeli security forces against civilians in Palestine.
On October 1, 2000, Palestinians from a number of cities throughout the North of Israel took to the streets, but were met with violent resistance and live ammunition by Israeli police forces. Clashes soon erupted between the citizens and the police, and over the next few days, 12 Palestinian citizens of Israel and 1 Palestinian from Gaza lost their lives to bullets fired by Israeli police attempting to squash the protests. The series of clashes and killings became widely known as the “October 2000 events” or “Black October,” which only reinforced the status of the Arab minority as second class citizens in their own country.