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The First Intifada, or Palestinian uprising refers to a series of violent incidents between Palestinians and Israelis between 1987 and approximately 1990. It is also referred to as the "war of the stones." The Second Intifada, also known as the al-Aqsa Intifada, is considered to have been between 2000 and early 2005. The First Intifada is sometimes referred to simply as the Intifada. Template:Campaignbox Arab-Israeli conflict

General causes

As with all incidents within the Arab-Israeli conflict in general and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the context and causes for this event are heavily disputed.

Most accounts point to a growing sense of frustration among Palestinians, particularly on the West Bank, but also in Gaza, at the lack of progress in finding a durable resolution for their humanitarian and nationalistic claims after the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the Six-Day War in 1967. The Palestine Liberation Organization had failed to make any significant headway against Israel since the 1960s, and had in 1982 been forced to establish its offices in Tunis. Although all Arab states with the exception of Egypt maintained an official state of war with Israel, rhetoric was toned down in the mid-1980s, and Palestinians found advocacy on their behalf weakened. Israeli military occupation of Southern Lebanon - rife with alleged war crimes - and the continued Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza fed a growing discontent with the status quo.

Muslim clerics used their pulpits to speak against the Israeli government, and when an Israeli was stabbed to death on December 6, 1986 while shopping in Gaza, tensions grew. On December 8th, when four Palestinian refugees from the Jabalya camp were killed in a traffic accident in Gaza the following day, rioting broke out in Jabalya. An 18-year old Palestinian was killed by Israeli soldiers during these riots after throwing a single stone, sparking further riots.

Palestinians and their supporters assert that the Intifada was a protest of Israel's brutal repression which included extra-judicial killings, mass detentions, house demolitions, indiscriminate torture, deportations, and so on. 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 Jordanian claims to the West Bank.

Rapid rates of birth (common in poor areas) and the limited allocation of land to new building or agriculture amidst increasing Zionist settlement under the Israeli rule contributed to the increasing density of population in the Palestinian territories. Unemployment was growing, and while income from service labor in Israel allowed Palestinians to provide university education for their children, few jobs were available for the graduates afterwards.

Others point out that Palestinians felt abandoned by their Arab allies and the PLO had failed to successfully challenge Israel and establish a Palestinian state in its stead as promised. However, it did manage to block the Israeli attempts to call for a puppet election inside the territories (beginning with 1974), and as it seemed to many of them, they would spend the rest of their lives as second class citizens, without full political rights.

Considering all of the above and the mass scale of the uprising, it is of little doubt that it was not initiated by any single person or organization. However, the PLO was very quick to take matters into its hands, sponsoring provocateurs and enhancing their presence in the territories (called the "tandhim", or "organization"). The PLO was not uncontested, however, competing in its activities for the first time with radical Islamic organizations - Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And most importantly, the uprising was predominantly led not by any of these groups, but by community councils consisting of ordinary Palestinians creating autonomous structures and networks in the midst of Israeli occupation. These councils, though they mainly engaged in armed resistance, also focused on creating independent, often-underground infrastructure, such as autonomous schools, medical care, food aid and other basic institutions.

Prior events

The uprising of the Palestinians in the First Intifada is generally understood to have been a spontaneous phenomenon. The PLO later claimed that it had organized it, but most historians view this as an attempt to create an appearance of having more control. On October 1, 1986 Israeli military ambushed and killed seven men from Gaza believed to be members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Several days later an Israeli settler shot a Palestinian schoolgirl in the back. On December 4, 1986 Shlomo Sakal, an Israeli plastics salesman, was stabbed to death in Gaza. On December 8, there was a traffic accident in which an Israel Defense Force truck crashed into a van, killing 4 Palestinians from Jabalya. (The dates here do not correspond with those above).

Under these already heated circumstances, many rumors began to spread. The mere presence of stories, reinforced by the real incidents above, caused anger and street fights against Israeli policemen and soldiers.

The uprising

On December 8, an uprising began in Jabalya where hundreds burned tires and attacked the Israel Defense Forces stationed there. The uprising spread to other Palestinian refugee camps and eventually to Jerusalem, the eastern part of which was and is occupied by Israel. On December 22, the United Nations Security Council condemned Israel for violating Geneva Conventions due to the number of Palestinian deaths in these first few weeks of the Intifada.

Much of the Palestinian violence was low-tech; dozens of Palestinian teenagers would confront patrols of Israeli soldiers, showering them with rocks. However, at times this tactic gave way to Molotov cocktail attacks, over 100 hand grenade attacks and more than 500 attacks with guns or explosives. Many Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed this way. The IDF, in contrast, possessed the latest weaponry and defense technologies.

Additionally, an estimated 1,000 alleged informers were killed by Arab civilian militias, though Palestinian Arab human rights groups contend many were not "collaborators" but victims of revenge murders.

In 1988, the Palestinians initiated a nonviolent movement to withhold taxes - the legality of which under international law is disputed - collected and used by Israel to pay for the occupation of territories. When time in prison didn't stop the activists, Israel crushed the boycott by imposing heavy fines while seizing and disposing of the equipment, furnishings, and goods from local stores, factories, and even homes.

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.

As the Intifada progressed, Israel introduced various riot control methods that had the effect of reducing the number of Palestinian fatalities. Another contributor to the high initial casualties was Yitzhak Rabin's aggressive stance towards the Palestinians (notably including an exhortation to the IDF to "break the bones" of the demonstrators). His successor Moshe Arens subsequently proved to have a better understanding of pacification, which perhaps reflects in the lower casualty rates for the following years.

Benny Morris describes the situation by June 1990: "By then the 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 fewer Palestinians - about 100 - than the Palestinians did themselves - about 150."</ref>

Attempts at the peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were made at the Madrid Conference of 1991.

Outcome

By the time the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, 1,162 Palestinians (241 of them children, some of whom took an active role in the violence) and 160 Israelis (5 of them children) had died ; in the first thirteen months of the intifada, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis had been killed. This initially high fatality rate on the Palestinian side was due largely to the Israel Defense Force's inexperience in pacification and crowd control. Often when facing demonstrators IDF soldiers had no riot control munitions, and would shoot unarmed demonstrators with live fire. The Palestinian fatalities include many killed by their own side as collaborators.

The Intifada was never a military endeavour 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:

1. By engaging the Israelis directly, rather than relying on the authority or the assistance of neighbouring Arab states, the Palestinians were able to globally cement their identity as a separate nation worthy of self-determination. The era marked the end of the Israelis referring to Palestinians as "South Syrians" and largely ended Israeli discussion of a "Jordanian solution".
2. The harsh Israeli countermeasures (particularly during the earlier years of the Intifada) resulted in international attention returning to the plight of the Palestinians, as prisoners in their own land. The fact that 159 Palestinian children below the age of 16 (many of them gunned down while tossing stones at IDF soldiers) were killed was especially alarming for international observers. Significantly, numerous American media outlets openly criticized Israel in a way that they had not previously and have not since. The conflict succeeded in putting the Palestinian question back on the international agenda, particularly in the UN, but also for Europe and the United States as well as the Arab states. Europe became an important economic contributor towards the nascent Palestinian Authority, and American aid and support of Israel became - at least in appearance - more conditional than it was previously.
3. The intifada also dealt a heavy economic blow to Israel. The Bank of Israel estimated it cost the country $650 million in lost exports, largely through successful Palestinian boycotts and the creation of local microindustries. The impact on the services sector, including the important Israeli tourist industry, was notably bad.
4. The uprising can be linked to the Madrid Conference of 1991, and thereby to the return of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation from their Tunisian exile. Although the negotiations failed to fulfill their potential, it is notable that prior to the first Intifada, it was doubtful whether there would ever be a Palestinian state. After the Oslo accords, an independent Palestine of some sort, at some time in the future seemed relatively certain.

Ultimately, Israel was successful in containing the uprising. The Palestinians' force was inferior in relation to the well equipped and trained Israel Defense Forces. However, the Intifada pinpointed numerous problems with the IDF's conduct in the operative and tactical fields, as well as the general problem of Israel's prolonged control of the West Bank and Gaza strip. These problems were noticed and widely criticized, both in international forums (in particular, when humanitarian questions were at stake), but also in Israeli public opinion, in which the Intifada had caused a split.

Template:Timeline of Intifadas

References

1. ^ Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999, Knopf, 1999. p.612
2. First_Intifada_Tables (B'Tselem)

External links

• The Intifada in Palestine:Introduction (www.intifada.com)
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 605
• Palestinian Arab "collaborators" (Guardian, UK)
• The Future of a Rebellion - PalestineAn anaysis of the 1980s intifada revolt of Palestinian youth. on libcom.org

• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Riots in Israel and Palestine