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FIRST INTIFADA |
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FIRST INTIFADA |
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Courtesy of Israel's War on Terror |
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Palestinian throwing rock at Israeli policeman |
The intifada uprising that started in 1987 was, from the start, far more violent than commonly reported. Televised images of youths with rocks defined the violence for many, but during the first four years of the uprising, 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 Israeli soldiers and civilians alike: 16 Israeli civilians and 11 soldiers were killed by Palestinians in the territories; more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 1,700 Israeli soldiers were injured.
Throughout the intifada, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) played a lead role in orchestrating the insurrection. The PLO-dominated Unified Leadership of the Intifada (UNLI), for example, frequently issued leaflets dictating which days violence was to be escalated, and who was to be its target. The PLO's leadership of the uprising was challenged by the fundamentalist Islamic organization Hamas, a violently anti-Semitic group that rejects any peace negotiations with Israel.
Despite the widespread violence, Israeli fatalities were low in the early months. But, after Israel's June 1992 elections, a new governing coalition was formed, led by the left-wing Labor party. It began to relax the tight security policies of the previous right-wing Likud-led government. An upsurge in terrorism followed soon thereafter.
Palestinians were stabbed, hacked with axes, shot, clubbed and burned with acid, not by the Israelis but by the PLO and their associated groups of terrorists. The New York Times (October 24, 1989) described the discovery of "a cache of detailed secret documents showing that the PLO hired local killers to assassinate other Palestinians and carry out 'military activity' against Israelis." One document described how the PLO wanted the attacks credited to fictional groups so as not to disturb the US-PLO dialogue.
Yasser Arafat defended the killing of Arabs deemed to be "collaborating with Israel." He delegated the authority to carry out executions to the intifada leadership. After the murders, the local PLO death squad sent the file on the case to the PLO. "We have studied the files of those who were executed, and found that only two of the 118 who were executed were innocent," Arafat said. The innocent victims were declared "martyrs of the Palestinian revolution" by the PLO.
Justifications offered for the killings varied. Sometimes, being employed by the Civil Administration in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was reason enough. In other cases, contact with Jews warranted a death sentence.
Eventually, the reign of terror became so serious that some Palestinians expressed public concern about the disorder. 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 at the hands of other Palestinians.
The intifada appears to have been a significant factor in the decision by many Christian Arabs to leave the Middle East. Besides mob violence, the intifada was characterised by general strikes enforced by activists from the various nationalist and Islamic movements, and closures of educational institutions. Both jobs and schooling were thus severely affected, prompting many Christian Arabs to choose the emigration option. Christians became increasingly uneasy as Islamic extremists came to the fore in Judea and Samaria.
In the first years of the Intifada international television coverage showing Palestinian civilians, many of them women, facing Israeli soldiers in full battle dress naturally aroused world sympathy, including in Israel itself, for the Palestinian cause. Prime Minister Rabin's policy, calling on Israeli soldiers to break the bones of the Palestinian demonstrators, was brutal, crude, ineffective, and finally counter-productive. It was only when he was succeeded at the Defense Ministry by Moshe Arens in 1990 that Israeli tactics became more sophisticated and more effective. By the summer of 1992 the Intifada was over - it had run out of steam and exhausted itself.
The Intifada petered out by 1992, with most of its leadership arrested. Nonetheless, it had a tremendous impact on Israeli public opinion and policy-making through the next decades. While many Israelis were outraged by the Palestinian violence and angered by the danger their family members in the IDF and in the reserves encountered in the territories, the Intifada intensified the Israeli longing for normalcy and an end to the conflict, creating a consensus for the peace negotiations through the 1990s.
For the Palestinians, the Intifada created a new cadre of leadership based in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These youths were supporters of the PLO leadership in Tunis, but did not consider themselves accountable to them. Many of the youths most active in the Intifada, such as Marwan Barghouti, became officials in the Palestinian Authority and are today deeply engaged in directing the ongoing Palestinian violence against Israel.
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