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The first intifada began with an incident where Palestinian workers were run over at a checkpoint by an Israeli who fled on December 8, 1987. The Palestinian people, who had suffered decades of injustice, rose up and marched in demonstrations and marches that turned into an uprising that lasted for years and included all sects and orientations of the people, and its weapon was The first was stones. The occupier responded by all means, trying to suppress them, to the point of breaking the bones of children and removing the Palestinian leaders.
The uprising continued until 1992, when negotiations began between… Palestine’s libiration organisation And Israel, and ended with a signature Oslo agreement In 1993, the Stone Intifada ended with it.
Signs of the pre-uprising
The Israeli attacks on the Palestinians have not stopped since 1948, and the arbitrary policy, the declaration of the emergency law, and the lifting of settlement plans have increased the anger of the street. Over the course of two decades, from 1967 to 1987, the Palestinians witnessed many racist practices that amounted to deprivation of the necessities of life and the continuation of the policy of land confiscation and arrest. Collective punishment and control of life facilities.
The political and military blockade imposed on the Palestine Liberation Organization, which represents the Palestinians, increased street tension, in addition to the policy of siege and isolation imposed on the Palestinians at home.
This coincided with a decline in Arab interest in the Palestinian issue, especially after the Arab Summit Conference in Jordan in 1987, as the Palestine file was absent from the conference. The Arab position did not differ from the international position, which witnessed stagnation towards the issue.
The street congestion began to appear in the form of individual guerrilla operations that preceded the intifada, in addition to the continuation of clashes, which made the Palestinian street at the crater of a volcano that exploded on December 8, 1987.
The outbreak of the uprising
The intifada began with an event that led to the eruption of a volcano in the street after decades of injustice and suffering. On December 8, 1987, while a group of Palestinian workers were returning from work inside Israel to Gaza, they stopped at the Israeli Erez checkpoint, and their car was run over by an Israeli settler with a truck he was driving, leading to… 4 of them were killed and 7 others were injured, while they fled in front of the Israeli soldiers.
The funerals of the four workers turned into angry marches that spread through the streets of Jabalia and moved to Gaza. Palestinians attacked an Israeli police station near the cemetery with stones, and the soldiers returned fire, causing the death of a Palestinian and the injury of dozens.
Demonstrations, marches, and clashes with the occupation forces renewed and spread Gaza strip And multiple cities from West BankA state of Palestinian mass unity was formed that spread throughout the cities, and confrontations became a daily matter, and by mid-December 1987 the Islamic Resistance Movement announced (agitation) on its own behalf, and issued a statement calling on the Palestinian people to comprehensively confront the occupier, and that was its first statement to the Palestinian people.
Daily demonstrations and confrontations continued, and the Palestinian street began to organize itself through the popular committees that were established in the 1970s and 1980s. The committees were a means of organizing the movement and were able to unify efforts towards boycotting Israeli products and the Israeli Civil Administration.
It also called on Palestinian workers to resign from work in Israel, organize marches and demonstrations, and strengthen national unity, and its work was successful, which prompted Israel to ban all popular committees in 1988 on the pretext that they undermine the Israeli government apparatus.
However, the ban did not prevent the Palestinian committees from continuing their work until most of them collapsed in the 1990s as a result of several factors, the most important of which were the economic factor and the lack of funding.
The first intifada was characterized by massive festivals and major marches in the funeral of martyrs, and the marches took on a challenging nature, especially when they took place in curfew areas, or in rejection of the policies of closing schools and institutes, or in support of prisoners, such as the marches organized by their mothers.
The role of mosques and churches in the uprising also emerged as starting points for many massive marches and demonstrations after prayers, which prompted the occupation to permanently besiege mosques for fear of demonstrations erupting after prayers. Some places of worship were also besieged with military barricades, such as Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Historical and religious events and national occasions turned into occasions for gatherings and national marches, and the hour of students leaving schools was coupled with the start of demonstrations and marches that ended in confrontations with police patrols and Israeli soldiers.
The strike and civil disobedience emerged as a form of uprising, often mourning the souls of the martyrs. Statements specified the date and details of the strike, and different types of strikes were practiced, including the general strike for a day or multiple days, and the partial strike, in which work takes place for several hours and then the shops close and stop. Institutions, and strikes specific to specific areas, so they strike one area and open another to make life easier, in addition to workers’ strikes, transportation strikes, school and university strikes, and others.
Israel tried in every way to force the Palestinians to end the strike, and the attempts often ended in clashes and arrests. On the night of September 22, 1991, the occupation adopted a new method to end the strike in the city of Nablus. His soldiers broke the locks on the store doors, then tied the doors to military vehicles and took them off, in an attempt to force the Palestinians to end the strike and return to opening the stores.
The media is a means of uprising
The Palestinians have harnessed the media in all its forms to their advantage, including:
– Written press: It is a press that emerged from specific organizations, ridiculed and expressed their ideas, and during the uprising it focused on the issue of resistance, educating the people, and revealing the face of the occupation, including: Al-Hadaf magazine, Palestine Al-Thawra magazine, Palestine Al-Muslimah magazine, Al-Tali’ah Al-Islami magazine, and Forward magazine. In addition to dozens of newspapers, periodicals, and magazines that had an impact and role in the resistance.
– Data and publications: During the intifada, the Palestinians used statements and publications. The methods of distributing them varied, and the sequence of their issuance. The methods of distributing them and their quantities differed according to the entity issuing them, and according to the ability to overcome the control of the occupation, and they were distinguished by their comprehensiveness to different areas of life.
– Bulletins and Circulars: Organizations and political forces used it to express themselves and provided a deeper analysis and more detailed information than what was written in the publications.
– Wall slogansThe uprising was accompanied by wall slogans, and it was considered a means of expression and challenge. The walls were filled with patriotic messages and expressions full of challenge and resistance.
– Marches and chants: Despite the great diversity of the parties participating in the uprising, most of the chants carried a unified national spirit aiming for unity of ranks and liberation, so the chants in the marches were a manifestation of national unity.
– Pictures and postersPictures and posters were used to publish pictures of martyrs and prisoners. Pictures of the flag and the map of Palestine were also distributed. The posters were a form of resistance and challenge.
– Hymns and songs: Popular songs formed a type of resistance, and played an important role in popular mobilization. They were enthusiastic in pace, in a popular heritage spirit, and artistic groups emerged that presented artistic singing performances specific to the uprising.
Uprising weapons
The Palestinians used small stones as a weapon to attack Israeli soldiers, and the intifada was known as the Intifada of the Stone Children, because stones were the most famous, widespread and available weapon among the Palestinians, and the method of collecting stones in every neighborhood, street and alley for young men and children to throw them at the occupation soldiers became famous.
The slingshot, or what is called the “naqifa,” was considered the second weapon of the resistance, and it caused injuries to the occupation soldiers, especially when the young men were aiming it accurately.
The Palestinians also made “Molotov cocktails”, which were Molotov cocktails with which they threw the occupation army’s cars and settlers’ cars. They relied on the arson policy that they began 6 months after the Intifada. The resistance fighters burned forests and woods, and destroyed enemy agricultural and industrial facilities. The fires crossed the areas of the most dangerous line and reached hills. Aviv, Ashdod, and other cities.
The young men also used burning tires to block the roads and set up barriers, and they invented the idea of the trap, which is a hole dug in the street and covered in a way that is not visible. Barricades are placed on the edges of the street next to the trap, so the patrol is forced to pass through the area of the trap by force, and as soon as it falls into the hole or stumbles in it, the young men attack the patrol. With stones and Molotov cocktails.
The occupation responded with rubber bullets, live bullets, and gas and sound bombs, and the soldiers also followed the policy launched by the Minister of Defense at the time. Yitzhak RabinIt is a “bone-breaking” policy, as soldiers would catch children who threw stones at them and break their bones by hitting them with clubs, sticks, and stones.
The occupation also used all methods to stop the intifada. It imposed a curfew in some villages and cities, closed schools and universities, pursued activists and leaders of the demonstrations, and launched massive random arrest campaigns that affected large numbers of Palestinian youth, as the number of prisoners exceeded 100,000 Palestinians between 1987 and 1994. The occupation opened For this reason, new detention centers were established, such as the Negev Desert Prison and Ofer Prison, and these detention centers lacked the most basic human rights.
In its arrests, the occupation targeted members of the Hamas movement, especially with the increasing incidents of killing of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian agents. Among the detainees was Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of the movement, who was arrested on May 18, 1989.
Banish meadow flowers
In an attempt to release Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the special unit of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades kidnapped the Israeli officer Nissim Toledano on December 13, 1992, and issued a statement, a copy of which was handed over to the Red Cross, requesting the release of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin within a maximum period of 10 hours, and threatened to execute the officer. Captured.
The Israeli Prime Minister at that time, Yitzhak Rabin, rejected the prisoner exchange, and responded with widespread arrests. When the deadline expired, the special unit killed the soldier, and his body was found on a road. The Israeli government responded in a retaliatory manner, as the Israeli Ministerial Council met and decided to arrest 418 Palestinian activists from the two Hamas movements. AndIslamic jihad He deported them to the Lebanese border area of Marj al-Zuhur, in an attempt to eliminate the resistance and the uprising, and to get rid of the operations that targeted his soldiers.
However, the deportees were able to organize themselves, set up their tents, established the return camp, elected bodies and committees to manage the affairs of the camp, organized marches to the Palestinian borders, and drew the attention of the international press to their cause, so the camp turned into a destination for all media professionals and journalists sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, until negotiations began between the organization The liberation of Palestine and Israel, and one of its conditions was the return of the deportees, so the deportees began to return a year after their deportation.
The end of the uprising
Negotiations took place between the Arabs, the Palestinians, and Israel under American auspices at the end of 1992. The foreign ministers of the Arab countries participated in the negotiations and went through several rounds, without achieving anything.
At the beginning of 1993, contacts began between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization under the auspices of Norway, which later led to the signing of the Oslo Agreement, which was known as the “Palestinian-Israeli Oslo Declaration of Principles.”
The agreement was signed on September 13, 1993 at the White House in Washington, DC, by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman of the PLO, Yasser Arafat. The signing was witnessed by Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev and United States Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and US President Bill Clinton was an observer.
This agreement was considered the end of the first intifada according to its terms, as direct public negotiations began at this stage for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip alongside an Israeli state.
The importance of the uprising
The importance of the uprising lies in several things, the most notable of which are:
- The people rose up from within without an external driver. The uprising was a popular response to years of injustice and suffering.
- All segments of society, from all affiliations and parties, and all ages participated in the uprising. It was a revolution of an entire people without being specific to a specific party.
- The First Intifada is the first mass organizational action in which all people of all sects and ages participate since the beginning of the Israeli occupation.
- The uprising developed resistance mechanisms, types, and methods, from stones to barricades to Molotov cocktails, and then weapons.
- The Intifada was able to draw the world’s attention to the Palestinian issue again, and return it to the Arab and international arena.
Results
It was reported from the Foundation for the Care of Martyrs’ Families that the number of martyrs who fell in the intifada reached 1,550 Palestinians, and the number of detainees reached 100,000 Palestinians.
Data issued by the Palestinian Wounded Foundation showed that more than 70,000 Palestinians were injured in the intifada, 40% of whom were permanently disabled.
A report was issued by the “Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem)” 10 years after the intifada, in which it stated the following:
- 1,346 Palestinians, including 276 children, were martyred at the hands of Israeli security forces, 162 Palestinians were martyred at the hands of special forces, in addition to 133 Palestinians martyred at the hands of settlers, and 481 Palestinians were deported outside the occupied territories.
- Thousands of Palestinians were tortured during their arrest, and 18,000 administrative detention orders were issued against them.
- 447 buildings were demolished, and 294 Palestinian homes were completely closed. 81 Palestinian homes were demolished during searches for wanted persons, and 1,800 Palestinian homes were demolished under the pretext of not having a building permit.
In contrast, 256 Israeli settlers and 127 Israeli soldiers were killed.
