In the wake of the horrific murders of five family members in Itamar, commented on this morning by Rick Richman, it is especially unnerving to discover this piece in YNet about a Facebook page calling for Palestinians to launch a third intifada — a page that has gathered more than 140,000 “likes” in a week.

But YNet tells us more than that. There’s an interview there with a senior Palestinian Authority official who reveals a great deal more than he probably intended. When asked about the prospects of such an uprising, he replied that the “situation in the West Bank is different than that in Egypt; if there isn’t a political order to begin an intifada, there won’t be an intifada.” He adds that “[t]here is no organization from high ranks, which is why we are not worried about” another intifada. “We have control over these demonstrations,” he concludes.

Oh, really? I have no doubt that he’s right, that the Palestinian street is and has always been controlled by the upper echelons of Fatah and the Authority. Yet this happens to totally contradict what Palestinian leaders have always claimed. The second intifada, which launched a terror war against Israeli civilians back in 2000, of which the recent Itamar attack is a shocking, sobering reminder, was spun by the PA as a genuine grassroots affair over which they had no control. Israel never believed it, and after the IDF’s military incursions of 2002 placed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian documents into Israeli hands, the actual command structure of the intifada was revealed: terrorism was PA policy, and that intifada was directed from above.

Nice to hear the Palestinians finally admit it as well.