The immediate catalyst for the violence was the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations on July 25, 2000, and the "widespread appreciation in the international community of Palestinian responsibility for the impasse". In this view, Palestinian violence was planned by the PA leadership, and was aimed at "provoking and incurring Palestinian casualties as a means of regaining the diplomatic initiative".

パレスチナ解放機構は、同じレポートによれば、インティファーダを計画したことを否定し、"Camp David represented nothing less than an attempt by Israel to extend the force it exercises on the ground to negotiations."と主張した。

The report also stated:

From the perspective of the PLO, Israel responded to the disturbances with excessive and illegal use of deadly force against demonstrators; behavior which, in the PLO's view, reflected Israel's contempt for the lives and safety of Palestinians. For Palestinians, the widely seen images of Muhammad al-Durrah in Gaza on September 30, shot as he huddled behind his father, reinforced that perception.

The Mitchell report concluded:

The Sharon visit did not cause the "Al-Aqsa Intifada". But it was poorly timed and the provocative effect should have been foreseen; indeed it was foreseen by those who urged that the visit be prohibited.

and also:

We have no basis on which to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the PA to initiate a campaign of violence at the first opportunity; or to conclude that there was a deliberate plan by the [Government of Israel] to respond with lethal force.

Views on the Second Intifada
Palestinians have claimed that Sharon's visit was the beginning of the Second Intifada, while others have claimed that Yasser Arafat had pre-planned the uprising.

Some, like Bill Clinton, say that tensions were high due to failed negotiations at the Camp David Summit in July 2000. They note that there were Israeli casualties as early as 27 September; this is the Israeli "conventional wisdom", according to Jeremy Pressman, and the view expressed by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Most mainstream media outlets have taken the view that the Sharon visit was the spark that triggered the rioting at the start of the Second Intifada. In the first five days of rioting and clashes after the visit, Israeli police and security forces killed 47 Palestinians and wounded 1885, while Palestinians killed 5 Israelis.

Palestinians view the Second Intifada as part of their ongoing struggle for national liberation and an end to Israeli occupation, whereas many Israelis consider it to be a wave of Palestinian terrorism instigated and pre-planned by then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Some have claimed that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority (PA) had pre-planned the Intifada. They often quote a speech made in December 2000 by Imad Falouji, the PA Communications Minister at the time, where he explains that the Intifada had been planned since Arafat's return from the Camp David Summit in July, far in advance of Sharon's visit. He stated that the Intifada "was carefully planned since the return of (Palestinian President) Yasser Arafat from Camp David negotiations rejecting the U.S. conditions". David Samuels quotes Mamduh Nofal, former military commander of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who supplies more evidence of pre-28 September military preparations. Nofal recounts that Arafat "told us, Now we are going to the fight, so we must be ready". Barak as early as May had drawn up contingency plans to halt any intifada in its tracks by the extensive use of IDF snipers, a tactic that resulted in the high number of casualties among Palestinians during the first days of rioting.

Support for the idea that Arafat planned the Intifadah comes from Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar, who said in September 2010 that when Arafat realized that the Camp David Summit in July 2000 would not result in the meeting of all of his demands, he ordered Hamas as well as Fatah and the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, to launch "military operations" against Israel. al-Zahar is corroborated by Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of the Hamas founder and leader, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, who claims that the Second Intifada was a political maneuver premeditated by Arafat. Yousef claims that "Arafat had grown extraordinarily wealthy as the international symbol of victimhood. He wasn't about to surrender that status and take on the responsibility of actually building a functioning society."

Arafat's widow Suha Arafat reportedly said on Dubai television in December 2012 that her husband had planned the uprising.

"Immediately after the failure of the Camp David [negotiations], I met him in Paris upon his return.... Camp David had failed, and he said to me, 'You should remain in Paris.' I asked him why, and he said, 'Because I am going to start an intifada. They want me to betray the Palestinian cause. They want me to give up on our principles, and I will not do so,'" the research institute [MEMRI] translated Suha as saying.

Israel's unilateral pullout from Lebanon in the summer of 2000 was, according to Philip Mattar, interpreted by the Arabs as an Israeli defeat and had a profound influence on tactics adopted in the Al Aqsa Intifada. PLO official Farouk Kaddoumi told reporters: "We are optimistic. Hezbollah's resistance can be used as an example for other Arabs seeking to regain their rights." Many Palestinian officials have gone on record as saying that the intifada had been planned long in advance to put pressure on Israel. It is disputed however whether Arafat himself gave direct orders for the outbreak, though he did not intervene to put a brake on it A personal advisor to Arafat, Manduh Nufal, claimed in early 2001 that the Palestinian Authority had played a crucial role in the outbreak of the Intifada. Israeli's military response demolished a large part of the infrastructure built by the PA during the years following the Oslo Accords in preparation for a Palestinian state. This infrastructure included the legitimate arming of Palestinian forces for the first time: some 90 paramilitary camps had been set up to train Palestinian youths in armed conflict. Some 40,000 armed and trained Palestinians existed in the occupied territories.

On 29 September 2001 Marwan Barghouti, the leader of the Fatah Tanzim in an interview to Al-Hayat, described his role in the lead up to the intifada.

I knew that the end of September was the last period (of time) before the explosion, but when Sharon reached the al-Aqsa Mosque, this was the most appropriate moment for the outbreak of the intifada.... The night prior to Sharon's visit, I participated in a panel on a local television station and I seized the opportunity to call on the public to go to the al-Aqsa Mosque in the morning, for it was not possible that Sharon would reach al-Haram al-Sharif just so, and walk away peacefully. I finished and went to al-Aqsa in the morning.... We tried to create clashes without success because of the differences of opinion that emerged with others in the al-Aqsa compound at the time.... After Sharon left, I remained for two hours in the presence of other people, we discussed the manner of response and how it was possible to react in all the cities (bilad) and not just in Jerusalem. We contacted all (the Palestinian) factions.

Barghouti also went on record as stating that the example of Hezbollah and Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon was a factor which contributed to the Intifada.

According to Nathan Thrall, from Elliott Abrams's inside accounts of negotiations between 2001 and 2005, it would appear to be an inescapable conclusion that violence played an effective role in shaking Israeli complacency and furthering Palestinian goals: the U.S. endorsed the idea of a Palestinian State, Ariel Sharon became the first Israeli Prime Minister to affirm the same idea, and even spoke of Israel's "occupation", and the bloodshed was such that Sharon also decided to withdraw from Gaza, an area he long imagined Israel keeping. However, Zakaria Zubeidi, former leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, considers the Intifada to be a total failure that achieved nothing for the Palestinians.

Casualties

The casualty data for the Second Intifada has been reported by a variety of sources and though there is general agreement regarding the overall number of dead, the statistical picture is blurred by disparities in how different types of casualties are counted and categorized.

The sources do not vary widely over the data on Israeli casualties. B'Tselem reports that 1,053 Israelis were killed by Palestinian attacks through 30 April 2008.  Israeli journalist Ze'ev Schiff reported similar numbers citing the Shin Bet as his source in an August 2004 Haaretz article where he noted:

The number of Israeli fatalities in the current conflict with the Palestinians exceeded 1,000 last week. Only two of the country's wars – the War of Independence and the Yom Kippur War – have claimed more Israeli lives than this intifada, which began on September 29, 2000. In the Six-Day War, 803 Israelis lost their lives, while the War of Attrition claimed 738 Israeli lives along the borders with Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.

There is little dispute as to the total number of Palestinians killed by Israelis. B'Tselem reports that through 30 April 2008, there were 4,745 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces, and 44 Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians. B'Tselem also reports 577 Palestinians killed by Palestinians through 30 April 2008.

Between September 2000 and January 2005, 69 percent of Israeli fatalities were male, while over 95 percent of the Palestinian fatalities were male. "Remember These Children" reports that as of 1 February 2008, 119 Israeli children, age 17 and under, had been killed by Palestinians. Over the same time period, 982 Palestinian children, age 17 and under, were killed by Israelis.

Combatant versus noncombatant deaths

Regarding the numbers of Israeli civilian versus combatant deaths, B'Tselem reports that through 30 April 2008 there were 719 Israeli civilians killed and 334 Israeli security force personnel killed.

B'Tselem reports that through 30 April 2008, out of 4,745 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces, there were 1,671 "Palestinians who took part in the hostilities and were killed by Israeli security forces", or 35.2%. According to their statistics, 2,204 of those killed by Israeli security forces "did not take part in the hostilities", or 46.4%. There were 870 (18.5%) who B'Tselem defines as "Palestinians who were killed by Israeli security forces and it is not known if they were taking part in the hostilities".

The B'Tselem casualties breakdown's reliability was questioned and its methodology has been heavily criticized by a variety of institutions and several groups and researchers, most notably Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs's senior researcher, retired IDF lieutenant colonel Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi, who claimed that B'Tselem repeatedly classifies terror operatives and armed combatants as "uninvolved civilians", but also criticized the Israeli government for not collecting and publishing casualty data. Caroline B. Glick, deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post and former advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu, pointed to several instances where, she claimed, B'Tselem had misrepresented Palestinian rioters or terrorists as innocent victims, or where B'Tselem failed to report when an Arab allegedly changed his testimony about an attack by settlers. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), which said that B'Tselem repeatedly classified Arab combatants and terrorists as civilian casualties.

The Israeli International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (IPICT), on the other hand, in a "Statistical Report Summary" for 27 September 2000, through 1 January 2005, indicates that 56% (1,542) of the 2,773 Palestinians killed by Israelis were combatants. According to their data, an additional 406 Palestinians were killed by actions of their own side. 22% (215) of the 988 Israelis killed by Palestinians were combatants. An additional 22 Israelis were killed by actions of their own side.

IPICT counts "probable combatants" in its total of combatants. From their full report in September 2002:

A 'probable combatant' is someone killed at a location and at a time during which an armed confrontation was going on, who appears most likely – but not certain – to have been an active participant in the fighting. For example, in many cases where an incident has resulted in a large number of Palestinian casualties, the only information available is that an individual was killed when Israeli soldiers returned fire in response to shots fired from a particular location. While it is possible that the person killed had not been active in the fighting and just happened to be in the vicinity of people who were, it is reasonable to assume that the number of such coincidental deaths is not particularly high. Where the accounts of an incident appear to support such a coincidence, the individual casualty has been given the benefit of the doubt, and assigned a non-combatant status.

In the same 2002 IPICT full report there is a pie chart (Graph 2.9) that lists the IPICT combatant breakdown for Palestinian deaths through September 2002. Here follow the statistics in that pie chart used to come up with the total combatant percentage through September 2002:

On 24 August 2004, Haaretz reporter Ze'ev Schiff published casualty figures based on Shin Bet data. The Haaretz article reported: "There is a discrepancy of two or three casualties with the figures tabulated by the Israel Defense Forces."

Here is a summary of the figures presented in the article:
 Over 1,000 Israelis were killed by Palestinian attacks in the al-Aqsa Intifada.
 Palestinians sources claim 2,736 Palestinians killed in the Intifada.
 The Shin Bet has the names of 2,124 Palestinian dead.
 Out of the figure of 2,124 dead, Shin Bet assigned them to these organizations:
 466 Hamas members
 408 Fatah's Tanzim and al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades
 205 Palestinian Islamic Jihad
 334 of "Palestinian security forces – for example, Force 17, the Palestinian police, General Intelligence, and the counter security apparatus"

The article does not say whether those killed were combatants or not. Here is a quote:

The Palestinian security forces – for example, Force 17, the Palestinian police, General Intelligence, and the counter security apparatus – have lost 334 of its members during the current conflict, the Shin Bet figures show.

As a response to IDF statistics about Palestinian casualties in the West Bank, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem reported that two-thirds of the Palestinians killed in 2004 did not participate in the fighting.

Prior to 2003, B'Tselem's methodology differentiated between civilians and members of Palestinian military groups, rather than between combatants and non-combatants, leading to criticism from some pro-Israel sources. B'Tselem no longer uses the term "civilian" and instead describes those killed as "participating" or "not participating in fighting at the time of death".

Others argue that Palestinian National Authority has, throughout the Intifada, placed unarmed men, women, children and the elderly in the line of fire, and that announcing the time and place of anti-occupation demonstrations via television, radio, sermons, and calls from mosque loudspeaker systems is done for this purpose.

In 2009, historian Benny Morris stated in his retrospective book One State, Two States that about one third of the Palestinian deaths up to 2004 had been civilians.

Palestinians killed by Palestinians
B'Tselem reports that through 30 April 2008, there were 577 Palestinians killed by Palestinians. Of those, 120 were "Palestinians killed by Palestinians for suspected collaboration with Israel". B'Tselem maintains a list of deaths of Palestinians killed by Palestinians with details about the circumstances of the deaths. Some of the many causes of death are crossfire, factional fighting, kidnappings, collaboration, etc.

Concerning the killing of Palestinians by other Palestinians, a January 2003 The Humanist magazine article reports:

Internal Palestinian violence has been called an Intra'fada during this Intifada and the previous one.

余波
2006年1月25日、パレスチナの立法評議会のが行われ、ハマースが74議席を勝ち取り、ファタハは45議席、その他の政党と無所属は13議席に終わった。ハマースはアメリカと欧州連合により正式にテロ組織として扱われているので、ハマースがパレスチナ自治政府で政権を握った場合は、テロ組織への支援を禁止する法令により自治政府への国際的な基金が危険にさらされる可能性がある。