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First Intifada
The First Intifada (Arabic: الانتفاضة الأولى, romanized: al-Intifāḍa al-’Ūlā, lit. 'The First Uprising'), also known as the First Palestinian Intifada, was a sustained uprising involving violent and non-violent protests, acts of civil disobedience, riots, and terrorist attacks carried out by Palestinian civilians and militants in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. It was motivated by collective Palestinian frustration over Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as it approached a twenty-year mark, having begun in the wake of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. The uprising lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference of 1991, though some date its conclusion to 1993, the year the Oslo Accords were signed.
The Intifada began on 9 December 1987 in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli truck driver collided with parked civilian vehicles, killing four Palestinian workers, three of whom were from the refugee camp. Palestinians charged that the collision was a deliberate response for the killing of an Israeli in Gaza days earlier. Israel denied that the crash, which came at time of heightened tensions, was intentional or coordinated. The Palestinian response was characterized by protests, civil disobedience, and strikes, with excessive violence in response from Israeli security forces. There was graffiti, barricading, and widespread throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails at the Israeli army and its infrastructure within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These contrasted with civil efforts including general strikes, boycotts of Israeli Civil Administration institutions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, an economic boycott consisting of refusal to work in Israeli settlements on Israeli products, refusal to pay taxes, and refusal to drive Palestinian cars with Israeli licenses.
Israel deployed some 80,000 soldiers in response. Israeli countermeasures, which initially included the use of live rounds frequently in cases of riots, were criticized by Human Rights Watch as disproportionate, in addition to Israel's excessive use of lethal force. In the first 13 months, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed. Images of soldiers beating adolescents with clubs then led to the adoption of firing semi-lethal plastic bullets. During the whole six-year intifada, the Israeli army killed at least 1,087 Palestinians, of which 240 were children.
Among Israelis, 100 civilians and 60 Israeli soldiers were killed, often by militants outside the control of the Intifada's UNLU, and more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 1,700 soldiers were injured. Intra-Palestinian violence was also a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of an estimated 822 Palestinians killed as alleged Israeli collaborators (1988–April 1994). At the time Israel reportedly obtained information from some 18,000 Palestinians who had been compromised, although fewer than half had any proven contact with the Israeli authorities. Years later, the Second Intifada took place from September 2000 to 2005.
According to Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian American clinical psychologist, the Intifada was a protest against Israeli repression including "beatings, shootings, killings, house demolitions, uprooting of trees, deportations, extended imprisonments, and detentions without trial". In the years prior to the Intifada, Awad had been "among the keenest advocates for nonviolent struggle", founding the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence. 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, who 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 workforce worked in Israel daily. Additionally, Israeli expropriation of Palestinian land, high birthrates in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 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. This was coupled with an expansion of a Palestinian university system catering to people from refugee camps, villages, and small towns, generating a new Palestinian elite from a lower social strata that was more activistic and confrontational with Israel. According to Israeli historian and diplomat Shlomo Ben-Ami in his book Scars of War, Wounds of Peace, the Intifada was also a rebellion against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Ben-Ami describes the PLO as uncompromising and reliant on international terrorism, which he says exacerbated Palestinian grievances.
The Israeli Labor Party's Yitzhak Rabin, 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 four 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."
While the catalyst for the First Intifada is generally dated to a truck incident involving several Palestinian fatalities at the Erez Crossing in December 1987, Mazin 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.
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First Intifada
The First Intifada (Arabic: الانتفاضة الأولى, romanized: al-Intifāḍa al-’Ūlā, lit. 'The First Uprising'), also known as the First Palestinian Intifada, was a sustained uprising involving violent and non-violent protests, acts of civil disobedience, riots, and terrorist attacks carried out by Palestinian civilians and militants in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. It was motivated by collective Palestinian frustration over Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as it approached a twenty-year mark, having begun in the wake of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. The uprising lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference of 1991, though some date its conclusion to 1993, the year the Oslo Accords were signed.
The Intifada began on 9 December 1987 in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli truck driver collided with parked civilian vehicles, killing four Palestinian workers, three of whom were from the refugee camp. Palestinians charged that the collision was a deliberate response for the killing of an Israeli in Gaza days earlier. Israel denied that the crash, which came at time of heightened tensions, was intentional or coordinated. The Palestinian response was characterized by protests, civil disobedience, and strikes, with excessive violence in response from Israeli security forces. There was graffiti, barricading, and widespread throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails at the Israeli army and its infrastructure within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These contrasted with civil efforts including general strikes, boycotts of Israeli Civil Administration institutions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, an economic boycott consisting of refusal to work in Israeli settlements on Israeli products, refusal to pay taxes, and refusal to drive Palestinian cars with Israeli licenses.
Israel deployed some 80,000 soldiers in response. Israeli countermeasures, which initially included the use of live rounds frequently in cases of riots, were criticized by Human Rights Watch as disproportionate, in addition to Israel's excessive use of lethal force. In the first 13 months, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed. Images of soldiers beating adolescents with clubs then led to the adoption of firing semi-lethal plastic bullets. During the whole six-year intifada, the Israeli army killed at least 1,087 Palestinians, of which 240 were children.
Among Israelis, 100 civilians and 60 Israeli soldiers were killed, often by militants outside the control of the Intifada's UNLU, and more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 1,700 soldiers were injured. Intra-Palestinian violence was also a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of an estimated 822 Palestinians killed as alleged Israeli collaborators (1988–April 1994). At the time Israel reportedly obtained information from some 18,000 Palestinians who had been compromised, although fewer than half had any proven contact with the Israeli authorities. Years later, the Second Intifada took place from September 2000 to 2005.
According to Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian American clinical psychologist, the Intifada was a protest against Israeli repression including "beatings, shootings, killings, house demolitions, uprooting of trees, deportations, extended imprisonments, and detentions without trial". In the years prior to the Intifada, Awad had been "among the keenest advocates for nonviolent struggle", founding the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence. 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, who 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 workforce worked in Israel daily. Additionally, Israeli expropriation of Palestinian land, high birthrates in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 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. This was coupled with an expansion of a Palestinian university system catering to people from refugee camps, villages, and small towns, generating a new Palestinian elite from a lower social strata that was more activistic and confrontational with Israel. According to Israeli historian and diplomat Shlomo Ben-Ami in his book Scars of War, Wounds of Peace, the Intifada was also a rebellion against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Ben-Ami describes the PLO as uncompromising and reliant on international terrorism, which he says exacerbated Palestinian grievances.
The Israeli Labor Party's Yitzhak Rabin, 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 four 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."
While the catalyst for the First Intifada is generally dated to a truck incident involving several Palestinian fatalities at the Erez Crossing in December 1987, Mazin 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.