First Intifada

For Sahrawi uprising, see First Sahrawi Intifada.

First Intifada
Part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
IDF roadblock outside Jabalya during the First Intifada, 1988
Date 8 December 1987 – 13 September 1993 Location West Bank Gaza Strip Israel Result Madrid Conference of 1991 and eventually Oslo I Accord: Establishment of the Palestinian Authority The PLO recognizes Israel
Belligerents
Israel Israel Defense Forces Shin Bet Israel Police Civil Guard	Palestinians Hamas PFLP
Commanders and leaders
Yitzhak Shamir	Unified National Leadership of the Uprising
Casualties and losses
160 Israelis killed 100 civilians,  including 47 settlers 60 security-force members	2,162 Palestinians killed 1,087 by Israeli security forces 75 by Israeli civilians approx. 1,000a by other Palestinians
a Accused of being collaborators and/or informants.

The First Intifada or First Palestinian Intifada (also known as simply as "the intifada" or "intifadah") was a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories, which lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference in 1991, though some date its conclusion to 1993, with the signing of the Oslo Accords. The uprising began on December 9, in the Jabalia refugee camp after a series of escalating actions and deaths of Palestinian and Israeli citizens, and tensions reached a boiling point when an Israeli Army truck struck a car killing four Palestinians. Rumors that the crash was a purposefully committed act quickly spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In response to general strike, boycotts of Israeli civil administration institutions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, civil disobedience in the face of army orders, and an economic boycott consisting of refusal to work in Israeli settlements on Israeli products, refusal to pay taxes, refusal to drive Palestinian cars with Israeli licences, graffiti, barricading, and widespread throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails at the Israeli military and its infrastructure within Palestinian territories, Israel deployed 80,000 soldiers to put down the uprising, and adopted a policy of "breaking Palestinians' bones" and using live ammunition against civilians. Over the first two years, according to Save the Children, an estimated 7% of all Palestinians under 18 years of age suffered injuries from shootings, beatings or tear gas. Intra-Palestinian violence was also a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of alleged Israeli collaborators. Israeli Defense Forces killed an estimated 1,087 Palestinians while Palestinians killed 100 Israeli civilians and 60 Israeli security forces personnel and injured more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 1,700 soldiers. Palestinians also killed an estimated 822 other Palestinians as alleged collaborators (1988-April 1994), although fewer than half had any proven contact with the Israeli authorities.

The ensuing Second Intifada took place from September 2000 to 2005.

General causes

Palestinians and their supporters regard the Intifada as a protest against Israeli repression including extrajudicial killings, mass detentions, house demolitions and deportations. After Israel's capture of the West Bank, Jerusalem, Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Jordan and Egypt in the Six-Day War in 1967, frustration grew among Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories. Israel opened its labor market to Palestinians in the newly occupied territories. Palestinians were recruited mainly to do unskilled or semi-skilled labor jobs Israelis did not want. By the time of the Intifada, over 40 percent of the Palestinian work force worked in Israel daily. Additionally, Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land, high birth rates in the Palestinian territories and the limited allocation of land for new building and agriculture created conditions marked by growing population density and rising unemployment, even for those with university degrees. At the time of the Intifada, only one in eight college-educated Palestinians could find degree-related work. Couple this with an expansion of a Palestinian university system catering to people from refugee camps, villages, and small towns generating new Palestinian elite from a lower social strata that was more activist and confrontational with Israel.

The Israeli Labor Party's Yitzhak Rabin, the then Defense Minister, added deportations in August 1985 to Israel's "Iron Fist" policy of cracking down on Palestinian nationalism. This, which led to 50 deportations in the following 4 years, was accompanied by economic integration and increasing Israeli settlements such that the Jewish settler population in the West Bank alone nearly doubled from 35,000 in 1984 to 64,000 in 1988, reaching 130,000 by the mid nineties. Referring to the developments, Israeli minister of Economics and Finance, Gad Ya'acobi, stated that "a creeping process of de facto annexation" contributed to a growing militancy in Palestinian society.

During the 1980s a number of mainstream Israeli politicians referred to policies of transferring the Palestinian population out of the territories leading to Palestinian fears that Israel planned to evict them. Public statements calling for transfer of the Palestinian population were made by Deputy Defense minister Michael Dekel, Cabinet Minister Mordechai Tzipori and government Minister Yosef Shapira among others. Describing the causes of the Intifada, Benny Morris refers to the "all-pervading element of humiliation", caused by the protracted occupation which he says was "always a brutal and mortifying experience for the occupied" and was "founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation, and manipulation"

Background

While the immediate cause for the First Intifada is generally dated to a truck incident involving several Palestinian fatalities at the Erez Crossing in December 1987, Masim Qumsiyeh argues, against Donald Neff, that it began with multiple youth demonstrations earlier in the preceding month. Some sources consider that the perceived IDF failure in late November 1987 to stop a Palestinian guerrilla operation, the Night of the Gliders, in which six Israeli soldiers were killed, helped catalyze local Palestinians to rebel.

Mass demonstrations had occurred a year earlier when, after two Gaza students at Birzeit University had been shot by Israeli soldiers on campus on December 4, 1986, the Israelis responded with harsh punitive measures, involving summary arrest, detention and systematic beatings of handcuffed Palestinian youths, ex-prisoners and activists, some 250 of whom were detained in four cells inside a converted army camp, known popularly as Ansar 11, outside Gaza city. A policy of deportation was introduced to intimidate activists in January 1987. Violence simmered as a schoolboy from Khan Yunis was shot dead by Israelis soldiers pursuing him in jeep. Over the summer the IDF's Lieutenant Ron Tal, who was responsible for guarding detainees at Ansar 11, was shot dead at point-blank range while stuck in a Gaza traffic jam. A curfew forbidding Gaza residents from leaving their homes was imposed for three days, during the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha. In two incidents on October 1 and 6, 1987, respectively, the IDF ambushed and killed seven Gaza men, reportedly affiliated with Islamic Jihad, who had escaped from prison in May. Some days later, a 17 year old schoolgirl, Intisar al-'Attar, was shot in the back while in her schoolyard in Deir al-Balah by a settler in the Gaza Strip. The Arab summit in Amman in November 1987 focused on the Iran–Iraq War, and the Palestinian issue was shunted to the sidelines for the first time in years.

Leadership and aims

The Intifada was not initiated by any single individual or organization. Local leadership came from groups and organizations affiliated with the PLO that operated within the Occupied Territories; Fatah, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front and the Palestine Communist Party. The PLO's rivals in this activity were the Islamic organizations, Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as local leadership in cities such as Beit Sahour and Bethlehem. However, the uprising was predominantly led by community councils led by Hanan Ashrawi, Faisal Husseini and Haidar Abdel-Shafi, that promoted independent networks for education (underground schools as the regular schools were closed by the military in reprisal for the uprising), medical care, and food aid. The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) gained credibility where the Palestinian society complied with the issued communiques. There was a collective commitment to abstain from lethal violence, a notable departure from past practice, which, according to Shalev arose from a calculation that recourse to arms would lead to an Israeli bloodbath and undermine the support they had in Israeli liberal quarters. Pearlman attributes the non-violent character of the uprising to the movement's internal organization and its capillary outreach to neighbourhood committees that ensured that lethal revenge would not be the response even in the face of Israeli state repression. Hamas and Islamic Jihad cooperated with the leadership at the outset, and throughout the first year of the uprising conducted no armed attacks, except for the stabbing of a soldier in October 1988, and the detonation of two roadside bombs, which had no impact.

Leaflets publicizing the uprising's aims demanded the complete withdrawal of Israel from the territories it had occupied in 1967: the lifting of curfews and checkpoints; it appealed to Palestinians to join in civic resistance and did not ask them to employ arms, since military resistance would have only invited devastating retaliation from Israel; it also called for the establishment of the Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. abandoning the standard rhetorical calls, still current at the time, for the liberation of all of Palestine.

The Intifada

Israel's drive into the occupied territories had occasioned spontaneous acts of resistance, but, the administration, pursuing an "iron fist" policy of deportations, demolition of homes, collective punishment, curfews and the suppression of political institutions, was confident that Palestinian resistance was exhausted. The assessment that the unrest would collapse proved to be mistaken.

On 8 December 1987, an Israeli army tank transporter crashed into a row of cars containing Palestinians returning from working in Israel, at the Erez checkpoint. Four Palestinians, three of them residents of the Jabalya refugee camp, the largest of the eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, were killed and seven others seriously injured. The incident was witnessed by hundreds of Palestinian labourers returning home from work. The funerals, attended by 10,000 people from the camp that evening, quickly led to a large demonstration. Rumours swept the camp that the incident was an act of intentional retaliation for the stabbing to death of an Israeli businessman, killed while shopping in Gaza two days earlier. Following the throwing of a petrol bomb at a passing patrol car in the Gaza Strip on the following day, Israeli forces, firing with live ammunition and tear gas canisters into angry crowds, shot one young Palestinian dead and wounded 16 others.

On December 9, several popular and professional Palestinian leaders held a press conference in West Jerusalem with the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights in response to the deterioration of the situation. While they convened, reports came in that demonstrations at the Jabalya camp were underway and that a 17 year youth, had been shot to death after throwing a petrol bomb at Israeli soldiers. She would later become known as the first martyr of the intifada. Protests rapidly spread into the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Youths took control of neighbourhoods, closed off camps with barricades of garbage, stone and burning tires, meeting soldiers who endeavoured to break through with petrol bombs. Palestinian shopkeepers closed their businesses, and labourers refused to turn up to their work in Israel. Israel defined these activities as 'riots', and justified the repression as necessary to restore 'law and order'. Within days the occupied territories were engulfed in a wave of demonstrations, commercial strikes on an unprecedented scale. Specific elements of the occupation were targeted for attack, military vehicles, Israeli buses and Israeli banks. None of the dozen Israeli settlements were attacked and there were no Israeli fatalities from stone-throwing at cars at this early period of the outbreak. Equally unprecedented was the extent of mass participation in these disturbances: tens of thousands of ordinary civilians, including women and children. The Israeli security forces used the full panoply of crowd control measures to try and quell the disturbances: cudgels, nightsticks, tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, and live ammunition. But the disturbances only gathered momentum.

Soon there was widespread rock-throwing, road-blocking and tire burnings throughout the territories. By 12 December, six Palestinians had died and 30 had been injured in the violence. The next day, rioters threw a gasoline bomb at the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem though no one was hurt. The Israeli response to the Palestinian uprising was deadly. Since 60% of stone-throwers were children under between the ages of 6 and 14, Yitzhak Rabin adopted a fallback policy of 'might, power and beatings'. The IDF killed many Palestinians at the beginning of the Intifida, the majority killed during demonstrations and riots. Palestinian protests were unpredictable and often violent and IDF troops were untrained in controlling them.^{[citation needed]} Israel used mass arrests of Palestinians, engaged in collective punishments like closing down West Bank universities for most years of the uprising, and West Bank schools for a total of 12 months. Round-the-clock curfews were imposed over 1600 times in just the first year. Communities were cut off from supplies of water, electricity and fuel. At any one time, 25,000 Palestinians would be confined to their homes. Trees were uprooted on Palestinians farms, and agricultural produce blocked from being sold. In the first year over a 1,000 Palestinians had their homes either demolished or blocked up. Settlers also engaged in private attacks on Palestinians. Palestinian refusals to pay taxes were met with confiscations of property and licenses, new car taxes, and heavy fines for any family whose members had been identified as stone-throwers.

Casualties

During the six-year intifada, the Israeli army killed more than 1,000 Palestinians and arrested more than 120,000. In the first five weeks alone, 35 Palestinians were killed and some 1,200 wounded, a casualty rate that only energized the uprising by drawing more Palestinians into participating.

By 1990 Ktzi'ot Prison in the Negev held approximately one out of every 50 West Bank and Gazan males older than 16 years.Gerald Kaufman remarked: "[F]riends of Israel as well as foes have been shocked and saddened by that country's response to the disturbances." In an article in the London Review of Books, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt asserted that IDF soldiers were given truncheons and encouraged to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that, "23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada", one third of whom were children under the age of ten years old.

Israel adopted a policy of arresting key representatives of Palestinian institutions. After lawyers in Gaza went on strike to protest their inability to visit their detained clients, Israel detained the deputy head of its association without trial for 6 months. Dr. Zakariya al-Agha, the head of the Gaza Medical Association, was likewise arrested and held for a similar period of detention, as were several women active in Women's Work Committees. During Ramadan, many camps in Gaza were placed under curfew for weeks, impeding residents from buying food, and Al-Shati, Jabalya and Burayj were subjected to saturation bombing by tear gas. During the first year of the Intifada, the total number of casualties in the camps from such bombing totalled 16.

Intra-communal violence

Between 1989 and 1992, intra-Palestinian violence claimed the lives of nearly 1,000. By June 1990, according to Benny Morris, "[T]he Intifada seemed to have lost direction. A symptom of the PLO's frustration was the great increase in the killing of suspected collaborators; in 1991 the Israelis killed more Palestinians - about 100 - about 150."

Other notable events

On 16 April 1988, a leader of the PLO, Khalil al-Wazir, nom de guerre Abu Jihad or 'Father of the Struggle', was assassinated in Tunis by an Israeli commando squad. Israel claimed he was the 'remote-control "main organizer" of the revolt', and perhaps believing that his death would break the back of the intifada. During the mass demonstrations and mourning in Gaza that followed, two of the main mosques of Gaza were attacked by the IDF, worshippers were beaten and tear-gassed. and about 16 Palestinians were killed. In June of that year, the Arab League agreed to support the intifada financially at the 1988 Arab League summit. The Arab League reaffirmed its financial support in the 1989 summit.

In 1989, local committees in Beit Sahour initiated a nonviolence movement to withhold taxes, taking up the slogan "No Taxation Without Representation". Israeli defense minister Yitzhak Rabin's response was: "We will teach them there is a price for refusing the laws of Israel." When time in prison did not stop the activists, Israel crushed the boycott by imposing heavy fines and seizing and disposing of equipment, furnishings, and goods from local stores, factories and homes.

On 8 October 1990, Israeli police shot to death 22 Palestinians demonstrating near the Al-Aqsa mosque. This led the Palestinians to adopt more lethal tactcis, with 3 Israeli civilians and one IDF soldier stabbed in Jerusalem and Gaza two weeks later. Incidents of stabbing persisted. The Israeli state apparatus carried out contradictory and conflicting policies that were seen to have injured Israel's own interests, such as the closing of educational establishments (putting more youths onto the streets) and issuing the Shin Bet list of collaborators. Suicide bombings by Palestinian militants started on 16 April 1993 with the Mehola Junction bombing, carried at the end of the Intifada.

United Nations

The large number of Palestinian casualties provoked international condemnation. In subsequent resolutions, including 607 and 608, the Security Council demanded Israel cease deportations of Palestinians. In November 1988, Israel was condemned by a large majority of the UN General Assembly for its actions against the intifada. The resolution was repeated in the following years.

The Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices

In its annual report of 26 August 1988, the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices reported about the intifada in detail. Following next reports, the General Assembly reacted on 8 December 1989 with an unusually strong condemnation of Israel in Resolution 44/48. Israel was condemned for a long list of bad behaviours, which were inter alinea called "war crimes and an affront to humanity". The long list of charges included inter alia annexation, deportation, expulsion, destruction, collective punishment, administrative detention, torture, illegal exploitation, curtailing of free press, killing and wounding of defenceless demonstrators, breaking of bones and limbs of thousands of civilians, use of toxic gas and arming of Israeli settlers with the purpose to perpetrate and commit acts of violence against Palestinians and other Arabs, causing deaths and injuries. Israel also obstructed UN investigations. All resolutions were opposed by Israel and the United States only. For large parts of Resolution 44/48 Israel was even the only voter against it.

Failing Security Council

On 17 February 1989, the UN Security Council unanimously but for US condemned Israel for disregarding Security Council resolutions, as well as for not complying with the fourth Geneva Convention. The United States, put a veto on a draft resolution which would have strongly deplored it. On 9 June, the US again put a veto on a resolution. On 7 November, the US vetoed a third draft resolution, condemning alleged Israeli violations of human rights

On 14 October 1990, Israel openly declared that it would not abide Security Council Resolution 672 and refused to receive a delegation of the Secretary-General, which would investigate Israeli violence. The following Resolution 673 made little impression and Israel kept on obstructing UN investigations.

Outcomes

The intifada was neither a military nor a guerrilla conflict. The PLO - which had limited control of the situation - never expected the uprising to make any direct gains against the Israeli state, as it was a grassroots, mass movement and not their venture. However, the Intifada did produce a number of results that Palestinians considered positive:

• By engaging the Israelis directly, rather than relying on the authority or the assistance of neighboring Arab states, Palestinians were able to demonstrate their identity as a separate nation worthy of self-determination.
• It broke the image of Jerusalem as a united, Israeli city.
• It caused Jordan to sever its residual administrative and financial ties to the West Bank in the face of sweeping popular support for the PLO.
• The failure of the "Iron Fist" policy, Israel's deteriorating international image and Jordan cutting legal and administrative ties to the West Bank and the U.S.'s recognition of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people forced Rabin to seek an end the violence though negotiation and dialogue with the PLO.
• The Intifada resulted in international attention to the Palestinians' cause.
• The Palestinians showed for the first time that there were two sides to the Israel-Palestine issue.
• Many American media outlets openly criticized Israel in a way that they had not before.
• The success of the Intifada gave Arafat and his followers the confidence they needed to moderate their political programme: At the meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers in mid-November 1988, Arafat won a majority for the historic decision to recognise Israel's legitimacy; to accept all the relevant UN resolutions going back to 29 November 1947; and to adopt the principle of a two-state solution.
• Criticism of Israel came from the United Nations, the European Community and the United States as well as the Arab states - which during the 1980s were concentrated on the Iran–Iraq War.^{[citation needed]}
• The European Community (later European Union) became an important economic contributor towards the nascent Palestinian Authority.^{[citation needed]}
• The Intifada empowered Palestinians to enter negotiations which lead to the Madrid Conference and the Oslo Accords.
• The uprising can be linked to the Madrid Conference, and thereby to the return of the Palestinian Liberation Organization from their Tunisian exile.^{[citation needed]}
• The Intifada exposed many problems with the IDF's conduct in the operative and tactical fields, and also the general problem of Israel's prolonged control of the West Bank and Gaza strip. These problems were noticed, and widely criticized, in international forums.^{[citation needed]}

However, the impact on the services sector, including the important Israeli tourist industry, was notably negative.

Timeline

See also

• Second Intifada
• Sumud
• 1990 Temple Mount riots
• List of modern conflicts in the Middle East

References

• ^Note A The word intifada (انتفاضة) is an Arabic word meaning "uprising". Its strict Arabic transliteration is intifāḍah.

Bibliography

• Ackerman, Peter; DuVall, Jack (2000). A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict. New York: Palgrave. ISBN 0-312-24050-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=OVtKS9DCN0kC. 
• Alimi, Eitan Y. (2006). Israeli Politics and the First Palestinian Intifada (2007 hardback ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-38560-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=FRSVtzxH_10C. 
• Aronson, Geoffrey (1990). Israel, Palestinians, and the Intifada: Creating Facts on the West Bank. London: Kegan Paul International. ISBN 978-0-7103-0336-3. 
• Finkelstein, Norman (1996). The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years. Minnesota: University Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-2858-2. 
• Hiltermann, Joost R. (1991). Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women's Movements in the Occupied Territories (1993 reprint ed.). Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-07869-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=m2fdWT3CuyQC. 
• King, Mary Elizabeth (2007). A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance. New York: Nation Books. ISBN 978-1-56025-802-5. 
• Lockman, Zachary; Beinin, Joel, eds (1989). Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. ISBN 978-0-89608-363-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=KYPVNdzXUJkC. 
• McDowall, David (1989). Palestine and Israel: The Uprising and Beyond. California: University Press. ISBN 978-0-520-06902-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=YWorYnKGZ5YC. 
• Morris, Benny (1999). Righteous Victims: a History of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881-1999. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-679-74475-7. 
• Nassar, Jamal Raji; Heacock, Roger, eds (1990). Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads. New York: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-93411-X. http://books.google.com/books?id=_P5W5ErBQRYC. 
• Peretz, Don (1990). Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-0860-9. 
• Rigby, Andrew (1991). Living the Intifada. London: Zed Books. ISBN 978-1-85649-040-5. , out-of-print, now downloadable at http://civilresistance.info/rigby1991
• Roberts, Adam; Garton Ash, Timothy, eds (2009). Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present. Oxford: University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-955201-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=BxOQKrCe7UUC. 
• Shay, Shaul (2005). The Axis of Evil: Iran, Hizballah, and the Palestinian Terror. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7658-0255-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=4kGIpMI5HC0C. 
• Schiff, Ze'ev; Ya'ari, Ehud (1989). Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising: Israel's Third Front. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-67530-1. 
• Shalev, Aryeh (1991). The Intifada: Causes and Effects. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Post & Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-8303-3. 
• Shlaim, Avi (2000). The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-028870-4. 

External links

• Jewish Virtual Library
• The Intifada in Palestine:Introduction (www.intifada.com)
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 605
• Palestinian Arab "collaborators" (Guardian, UK)
• The Future of a Rebellion - Palestine An anaysis of the 1980s intifada revolt of Palestinian youth. on libcom.org
• U.S. Involvement with Palestine's Rebellions from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives
• Israel's Post-Soviet Expansion from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives