| First Intifada | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israeli-Palestinian conflict | |||||||
 Media coverage of the first Intifada (1987-1993) often focused on young Palestinians throwing stones at tanks and Israeli soldiers. |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 Israel |
 Palestinian Liberation Organization Hamas PFLP |
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| Commanders | |||||||
| Yitzhak Shamir |
Unified National Leadership of the Uprising[1] |
||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 164 Israelis total:
- 53 Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians inside Israel [2] |
2162 Palestinians total:
- 1,087 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces [2] |
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|
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The First Intifada (1987–1993) (also "intifada") was a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in the Palestinian Territories.[5] The uprising began in the Jabalia refugee camp and quickly spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.[6]
Palestinian actions primarily included civil disobedience and resistance movement. In addition to general strikes, boycotts on Israeli products, refusal to pay taxes, graffiti, and barricades, Palestinian demonstrations that included stone-throwing by youths against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) defined the violence for many. The violence was directed at both Israeli soldiers and civilians.[7]
Intra-Palestinian violence was also a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of alleged Israeli collaborators. Over the course of the first intifada, an estimated 1,100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and 164 Israelis were killed by Palestinians. In addition, an estimated 1,000 Palestinians were killed by Palestinians as alleged collaborators, although fewer than half had any proven contact with the Israeli authorities.[3][4]
Contents |
After Israel's capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Jordan and Egypt in the wake of the Six-Day War in 1967, a sense of frustration among Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied territories had developed. The "Iron Fist" policy launched by Israel in 1985 along with economic integration and an increase in settler activity was in what the then Israeli minister of Economics and Finance, Gad Ya'acobi, noted "a creeping process of de facto annexation" contributed to a growing militancy of Palestinian society.[8] According to Donald Neff, "The immediate cause" of the First Intifada came on 8 December 1987, "when an Israeli army tank transporter ran into a group of Palestinians from Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza Strip, killing four and injuring seven. A Jewish salesman had been stabbed to death in Gaza two days earlier and there were suspicions among the Arabs that the traffic collision had not been an accident."[9]
The First Intifada came at a time when Palestinians were protesting acts taken by Israel that they perceived as brutal and of political stalemate with parties involved in the Arab–Israeli conflict. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had not brought about any solutions to alleviate Palestinian suffering and in 1982, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the organization had been forced to relocate their offices to Tunis.
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.[10][11] Israeli military occupation of Southern Lebanon and the continued Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip contributed to growing discontent with the status quo.
Palestinians and their supporters assert that the Intifada was a protest against Israeli repression which included extrajudicial killings, mass detentions, house demolitions, deportations, and so on.[12] While relatively few houses were demolished in the years before the Intifada, house demolitions "appeared to have deterrent value" to Israel. After the start of the Intifada, and after the PLO began compensating affected families, demolitions "were transformed into a stimulus to further escalation of resistance."[13] In addition to the political and national sentiment, further causes to the Intifada can be seen in the Egyptian withdrawal from their claims to the Gaza Strip as well as the Jordanian monarchy growing weary of supporting its claims to the West Bank.
High birth rates and the limited allocation of land for new building and agriculture contributed to the increasing density of population in the Palestinian territories and a rise in unemployment. While income from manual labor in Israel was beneficial to the Palestinian economy, jobs were growing scarcer, even for those with university degrees. At the time of the Intifada, only one in eight college-educated Palestinians could find degree-related work.[14]
One incident that was often mentioned as a motivation is the perceived IDF failure in the "Night of the Gliders", or the "Kibia action", in which a Palestinian guerrilla infiltrated an IDF army camp from Lebanon and managed to kill six soldiers.[15][16][17]
The Intifada was not initiated by any single individual or organization, but the PLO soon established itself at the forefront enhancing their presence in the territories. Local leadership came from groups and organizations loyal to the PLO that operated within the Occupied Territories; Fatah, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front and the Palestine Communist Party.[18] 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 as reprisals for the uprising), medical care, and food aid.[19] The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) gained credibility where the Palestinian society complied with the issued communiques.[18]
After a December 8 traffic incident at the Erez Crossing that killed four Palestinian refugees, rumor quickly spread that the wreck was a deliberate act of vengeance in response to the fatal stabbing of an Israeli several days earlier in the Gaza market.[20] That evening, an uprising began in Jabalia where hundreds of Palestinians burned tires and attacked the IDF troops stationed there. The uprising spread to other Palestinian refugee camps and eventually to several major cities. On December 22, the United Nations Security Council condemned Israel in Resolution 605 for violating the Geneva Conventions due to the number of Palestinian deaths in these first few weeks of the Intifada.[21] In subsequent resolutions, including 607 and 608, the Security Council demanded Israel cease deportations of Palestinians.
Palestinians assert that the IDF was given truncheons and encouraged to break the bones of Palestinian protesters.[22] This aggressive stance was expressed by Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin during his tour of the Jalazon Refugee Camp in January 1988, when he stated "The first priority of the security forces is to prevent violent demonstrations with force, power and blows ... We will make it clear who is running the territories".[6] The 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.[22]
On April 19, 1988, a leader of the PLO, Abu Jihad, was assassinated in Tunis. During the resurgence of rioting that followed, about 16 Palestinians were killed. In November of the same year and October of the next, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolutions condemning Israel[23] 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.[24]
In 1989, local committees in Beit Sahour initiated a nonviolence movement to withhold taxes,[25] taking up the slogan "No Taxation Without Representation,"[26] . The Israeli defense minister Yitzhak Rabin response was: "We will teach them there is a price for refusing the laws of Israel."[27] When time in prison did not stop the activists, Israel crushed the boycott by imposing heavy fines while seizing and disposing the equipment, furnishings, and goods from local stores, factories, and homes.[23]
The Israeli state apparatus carried out contradictory and conflicting policies that injured Israel's own interests such as the closing of education establishments (putting more youths onto the streets) and issuing the Shin Bet list of collaborators.[28] Suicide bombings by Palestinian militants started in April 16, 1993 with the Mehola Junction bombing, carried at the end of the Intifada.[29]
In 1990, 21 Israeli soldiers confessed to frequent repeated brutal assaults against Palestinians. Yishai-Karin reported that Israeli soldiers were exposed to violence against Palestinians during the first weeks of training. The soldiers also expressed feelings of joy when they were given power to instill fear and use physical violence on the Palestinians. One soldier recalls shooting an unarmed Palestinian for no reason, "We were in a weapons carrier when this guy, around 25, passed by in the street and, just like that, for no reason - he didn't throw a stone did nothing - bang, a bullet in the stomach, he shot him in the stomach and the guy is dying on the pavement and we keep going, apathetic. No one gave him a second look,' he said.[30]
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."[3][31] Attempts at the peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were made at the Madrid Conference of 1991.
The intifada was not a military endeavor in either a conventional or guerrilla sense. 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 the Palestinians considered positive:
Significantly, numerous American media outlets openly criticized Israel in a way that they had not previously.[35] particularly in the United Nations, but also for the European Community and the United States as well as the Arab states - which during the 1980s were concentrated on the Iran–Iraq War. The European Community (later European Union) became an important economic contributor towards the nascent Palestinian Authority.
| The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (September 2009) |
| First Intifada | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Arab–Israeli conflict | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| Template:Country data Israel | Palestinian dissidents PLO Hamas PFLP | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Template:Country data Israel Yitzhak Shamir | Unified National Leadership of the Uprising[1] | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 164 Israelis total:
- 53 Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians inside Israel [2]
| 2,162 Palestinians total:
- 1,087 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces [2]
| ||||||
| *Were killed under the accusation of being collaborators and informants of Israel. | |||||||
| |||||
The First Intifada (1987–1993) (also "intifada") was a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in the Palestinian Territories.[5] The uprising began in the Jabalia refugee camp and quickly spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.[6]
Palestinian actions primarily included nonviolent civil disobedience and resistance movement in addition to violent actions. In addition to general strikes, boycotts on Israeli products, refusal to pay taxes, graffiti, and barricades, Palestinian demonstrations that included stone-throwing by youths against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) defined the violence for many.[7] The violence was directed at both Israeli soldiers and civilians.
Intra-Palestinian violence was also a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of alleged Israeli collaborators. Over the course of the first intifada, an estimated 1,100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and 164 Israelis were killed by Palestinians. In addition, an estimated 1,000 Palestinians were killed by Palestinians as alleged collaborators, although fewer than half had any proven contact with the Israeli authorities.[3][4]
Contents |
After Israel's capture of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Jordan and Egypt in the wake of the Six-Day War in 1967, a sense of frustration among Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied territories had developed. The "Iron Fist" policy launched by Israel in 1985 along with economic integration and an increase in settler activity was in what the then Israeli minister of Economics and Finance, Gad Ya'acobi, noted "a creeping process of de facto annexation" contributed to a growing militancy of Palestinian society.[8] According to Donald Neff, "The immediate cause" of the First Intifada came on 8 December 1987, "when an Israeli army tank transporter ran into a group of Palestinians from Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza Strip, killing four and injuring seven. An Israeli salesman had been stabbed to death in Gaza two days earlier and there were suspicions among the Palestinian Arabs that the traffic collision had not been an accident."[9]
The First Intifada came at a time when Palestinians were protesting acts taken by Israel that they perceived as brutal and of political stalemate with parties involved in the Arab–Israeli conflict. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had not brought about any solutions to alleviate Palestinian suffering and in 1982, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the organization had been forced to relocate their offices to Tunis.
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.[10][11] Israeli military occupation of Southern Lebanon and the continued Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip contributed to growing discontent with the status quo.
Palestinians and their supporters assert that the Intifada was a protest against Israeli repression which included extrajudicial killings, mass detentions, house demolitions, deportations, and so on.[12] While relatively few houses were demolished in the years before the Intifada, house demolitions "appeared to have deterrent value" to Israel. After the start of the Intifada, and after the PLO began compensating affected families, demolitions "were transformed into a stimulus to further escalation of resistance."[13] In addition to the political and national sentiment, further causes to the Intifada can be seen in the Egyptian withdrawal from their claims to the Gaza Strip as well as the Jordanian monarchy growing weary of supporting its claims to the West Bank.
High birth rates and the limited allocation of land for new building and agriculture contributed to the increasing density of population in the Palestinian territories and a rise in unemployment. While income from manual labor in Israel was beneficial to the Palestinian economy, jobs were growing scarcer, even for those with university degrees. At the time of the Intifada, only one in eight college-educated Palestinians could find degree-related work.[14]
One incident that was often mentioned as a motivation is the perceived IDF failure in the "Night of the Gliders", or the "Kibia action", in which a Palestinian guerrilla infiltrated an IDF army camp from Lebanon and managed to kill six soldiers.[15][16][17]
The Intifada was not initiated by any single individual or organization, but the PLO soon established itself at the forefront enhancing their presence in the territories. Local leadership came from groups and organizations loyal to the PLO that operated within the Occupied Territories; Fatah, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front and the Palestine Communist Party.[18] 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 as reprisals for the uprising), medical care, and food aid.[19] The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) gained credibility where the Palestinian society complied with the issued communiques.[18]
On December 6, 1987, an Israeli businessman was stabbed to death while shopping in the Gaza Strip. Two days later, four Palestinians were killed in a traffic accident at the Erez Crossing involving an Israeli truck driver. Rumors spread that the truck driver was a relative of dead businessman and was seeking revenge. Violence protests spread through the Gaza Strip and West Bank, demonstrators burned tires, threw stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers and civilians.[20] Mass rioting "broke out" after a 17 year old Palestinian was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier after throwing a Molotov cocktail at an army patrol.
Over the next week, rock-throwing, blocked roads and tire burnings were reported throughout the territories. By December 12, six Palestinians had died and 30 had been injured in the violence. The following day, rioters threw a gasoline bomb at the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem. No one was hurt in the bombing.
Rumors circulated that Palestinian youths wounded by Israeli soldiers were being taken to an army hospital near Tel Aviv and "finished off." Another rumor, claimed Israeli troops poisoned a water reservoir in Khan Yunis. A UN official said these stories were untrue. Only the most seriously injured Palestinians were taken out of the Gaza Strip for treatment, and, in some cases, this probably saved their lives. The water was also tested and found to be uncontaminated.
More than 3,600 Molotov cocktail attacks, 100 hand grenade attacks and 600 assaults with guns or explosives were reported by the Israel Defense Forces. The violence was directed at soldiers and civilians alike.
Demonstrations eventually evolved from random riots to more organized attacksinstigated by the Palestinian leadership. By 1988, the Islamist Palestinian movements, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, emerged. The organizations were responsible for hundreds of violent acts, including kidnapping soldiers and attacking Israeli civilians.
The Israeli response to the Palestinian uprising was challenging. The IDF killed large numbers of Palestinians in the initial stage of the Intifida, the majority killed during demonstrations and riots. The unpredictable nature of Palestinian riots and lack of IDF training in controlling them resulted in many Palestinian deaths. Israel also resorted to mass arrests of Palestinians. Palestinian leaders closed down elementary schools and paid women and children to confront Israeli soldiers on the border.[21]
The large number of Palestinian casualties provoked international condemnation. The Palestinian leadership's ability to bring the media to the conflict help draw world-wide attention to the Palestinian plight, and created a "growing anti-Israel" movement around the world.[22] In subsequent resolutions, including 607 and 608, the Security Council demanded Israel cease deportations of Palestinians.
Several dozen Israeli soldiers confessed to "frequent repeated brutal assaults against Palestinians. Yishai-Karin, quoting an Israeli said: "We were in a weapons carrier when this guy, around 25, passed by in the street and, just like that, for no reason - he didn't throw a stone did nothing - bang, a bullet in the stomach, he shot him in the stomach and the guy is dying on the pavement and we keep going, apathetic. No one gave him a second look,' he said."[23]
More than 1,000 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army in the 1st intifada. Over 120,000 Palestinians were arrested in the 6 year conflict.[24]
Brutalization of the Palestinians and mass arrests fomented a climate of violence and outrage among the general Palestinian population. Palestinian claim the IDF was given truncheons and encouraged to break the bones of Palestinian protesters.[25] 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.[25]
Between 1987-1992, more than 1,100 Palestinian were killed by other Palestinians. During the first 18 months of the conflict, Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel were frequently targeted. By 1990, the pace of Palestinian intra-violence grew exponentially. The Shin Bet recruited hundreds of Palestinians at this point, many of whom had close ties to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The lawlessness of the West Bank and Gaza Strip promoted a climate of fear and violence for ordinary Palestinians.
Palestinians were stabbed, hacked with axes, shot, clubbed and burned with acid. The justifications offered for the killings varied. Women deemed to have behaved "immorally" were also among the victims.
Hundreds of Palestinians were killed by death squads, often in open areas to send a message to Palestinians who thought about joining the Shin Bet. Palestinians accused of informing for Israel had no right to defend themselves publicly, and many were lynched for refusing to join protests or resistance movements.[26][unreliable source?]
The PLO defended the killing of Arabs accused of collaboration with Israel. Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization at the time, personally delegated the authority to carry out executions of Palestinians.
Eventually, the PLO began to call for an end to the violence, but murders by its members and rivals continued. From 1989-1992, this intrafada claimed the lives of nearly 1,000 Palestinians.[27] Some historians have drawn parallels to the intra-Palestinian violence with the War of the Camps during the 1982 Lebanon War, and the 1930s Arab revolt.
According to the Jewish Virtual Library,[28]
By the end of the first intifada, which began in December 1987, the number of Palestinians murdered by their fellow Palestinians exceeded the number of Palestinians who died in clashes with Israeli soldiers. Yasser Arafat's PLO officially executed 118 Palestinians who were thought to be collaborating with Israel. By the end of the first intifada, nearly 1,000 Palestinians had died by the hand of their own people.
On April 19, 1988, a leader of the PLO, Abu Jihad, was assassinated in Tunis. During the resurgence of rioting that followed, about 16 Palestinians were killed. In November of the same year and October of the next, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolutions condemning Israel.[29] 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.[30]
In 1989, local committees in Beit Sahour initiated a nonviolence movement to withhold taxes,[31] taking up the slogan "No Taxation Without Representation".[32] Israeli defense minister Yitzhak Rabin's response was: "We will teach them there is a price for refusing the laws of Israel."[33] When time in prison did not stop the activists, Israel crushed the boycott by imposing heavy fines while seizing and disposing of equipment, furnishings, and goods from local stores, factories and homes.[29]
The Israeli state apparatus carried out contradictory and conflicting policies that 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.[34] Suicide bombings by Palestinian militants started in April 16, 1993 with the Mehola Junction bombing, carried at the end of the Intifada.[35]
The intifada was not a military endeavor in either a conventional or guerrilla sense. 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 the Palestinians considered positive:
Significantly, numerous American media outlets openly criticized Israel in a way that they had not previously.[39] particularly in the United Nations, but also for the European Community and the United States as well as the Arab states - which during the 1980s were concentrated on the Iran–Iraq War. The European Community (later European Union) became an important economic contributor towards the nascent Palestinian Authority.
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."[3][41] Attempts at the peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were made at the Madrid Conference of 1991.
The intifada paved the way for the declaration of principals, intended to create an independent Palestinian state.
   | First_Intifada_Tables - B'Tselem - Statistics - Fatalities in the first Intifada |
| | Palestinian Arab "collaborators" - Informer in pay of Israel unbowed by brother's bloody fate | World news | The Guardian |
| | United Nations Security Council Resolution 605 - Security Council Resolutions 1987 |
| | The Intifada in Palestine:Introduction - The Intifada in Palestine: Introduction. |
| | The Future of a Rebellion - Palestine - The Future of a Rebellion - Palestine | libcom.org |
| | Al-Aqsa Intifada - Al-Aqsa Intifada - Wael Imad el Nasheat |
| | WRMEA - December Middle East History: The Intifada Erupts, Forcing Israel to Recognize Palestinians |
| | Israel shaken by troops' tales of brutality against Palestinians | World news | The Observer - Israel shaken by troops' tales of brutality against Palestinians | World news | The Observer |
| | THE USE OF PALESTINIAN CHILDREN IN THE AL-AQSA INTIFADA - "The Use of Palestinian Children in the Al-Aqsa Intifada" by Justus Reid Weiner |
| | Collaborators, One Year Al-Aqsa Intifada - Collaborators , One Year Al-Aqsa Intifada , Fact Sheets And Figures |
| | The First Intifada, from ''Is the US an Ally of Israel?'' - Countdown & Redirect |
| | Myths & Facts - The Palestinian Uprisings - Myths & Facts - The Palestinian Uprisings |
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