WE HAVE been here many times before.

As violence escalates in the Israel-Palestine conflict, instantly, the talk is of a third Palestinian intifada or uprising.

I know something about what such an uprising would mean, having extensively covered the two previous intifadas that erupted in 1987 and in 2000.

In Arabic, intifada literally means "shaking off " and in its Palestinian political context refers to the ridding of Israel's oppression and occupation that has caused such hardship and suffering for countless Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza over decades.

While such oppression has always been the root motivator behind previous upsurges in Palestinian resistance, each intifada has had its own spark and subsequent dynamics in terms of how they have played out politically and militarily.

In 1987 that spark was the killing of four Palestinians in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza.

In 2000 it was the provocative visit by then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon to what Jews call Temple Mount and Arabs call Haram al-Sharif, the site of al-Aqsa mosque third holiest site in Islam, that gave rise to what became known as the al-Aqsa intifada.

Today, once again, all the volatile ingredients have been brewing that incrementally might push Palestinians into another all-out uprising. Decades of oppression aside, the Palestinian people lately have borne the brunt of Israel's massive seven-week long military onslaught in Gaza earlier in the summer.

But far and away it is the age-old issue of land and the status of Jerusalem and its holy sites that more than anything right now could tip things over into another full scale face-off.

Palestinian anger has been mounting over a recent slew of plans Israel has advanced for about 4,000 housing units on West Bank land annexed to Jerusalem.

Only this week the Israeli government approved the construction of 78 new homes in two settlements on West Bank land annexed to this long fought over city, authorising 50 new housing units in Har Homa and 28 in Ramot.

"These decisions are a continuation of the Israeli government's policy to cause more tension, push towards further escalation and waste any chance to create an atmosphere for calm," was how Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, summed up the feeling of many Palestinians to Israel's latest announcement.

That Israel's settlement activities are viewed by the likes of the EU, US and most other countries as illegal, matters not it seems to an Israeli government that flagrantly ignores international law.

US State Department officials time and again stress Washington's "clear and consistent opposition to construction activity in East Jerusalem," but as Israel's closest ally, Washington does little to stop it in reality.

Over the years while visiting East Jerusalem, I have listened to Palestinians there talk of their increasing concern at Israeli encroachment and land grabbing in that part of the city and its surrounding areas.

They speak of feeling "politically suffocated" and living in what amounts to an "apartheid state" with growing restrictions on their movement and access to municipal facilities.

For its own part, Israel, citing Biblical links to Jerusalem, says Jews have a right to live anywhere in the city and regards Jerusalem, including parts of the city that it captured in 1967, as its "indivisible" capital.

Israel, of course, also argues such restrictive and controlling measure on Palestinians are necessary to combat the kind of attacks that on Tuesday saw two Palestinians kill four rabbis and a policeman at a Jerusalem synagogue, the worst attack in the city since 2008.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu inevitably pointed to Hamas as responsible for the attack, reports surfaced simultaneously that the secular nationalist group the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) had carried it out.

Mr Netanyahu's remarks did little to dispel the rising claims that attacks like this and escalating tensions over Jerusalem's holy sites like the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif are a result of this struggle starting to morph into a religious war more than a struggle over land.

Israel's ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman even went as far as to accuse Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas of deliberately trying to turn the conflict into one between Muslims and Jews.

With the rise of the jihadist Islamic State (IS) in various enclaves in Iraq and Syria right now, certainly the prevailing atmosphere across much of the Middle East has the potential to shove the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the direction of a more overtly religious conflict.

This would of course please some Islamist and Jewish extremists as well as those Israelis determined to portray every challenge to their country as being motivated exclusively by anti-semitism or terrorism.

Right now it is crucial events unfolding in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not dangerously presented as a purely faith-driven confrontation. Israeli leaders are fond of claiming Palestinian intifadas are staged and manipulated for specific political ends.

Ironically, it is these same Israeli leaders who are currently doing the manipulating through unsubstantiated claims of an inexorable drift towards a religiously motivated conflict.

As Palestinian author Ramzy Baroud points out: "Only the Palestinian people can tell us when they are ready for an intifada, because, essentially it belongs to them, and them alone."

Should another intifada happen it will, as ever, be driven not by faith but by their desire to right wrongs over land, occupation and nationhood.