Causes of the First Intifada

The First Intifada was a spontaneous Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation between 1987 and 1993. A range of factors have been proposed as contributing to the outbreak of the uprising.

On 9 December 1987, an Israeli truck driver collided with and killed four Palestinians in the Jabalia refugee camp. The incident sparked the largest wave of Palestinian unrest since the Israeli occupation began in 1967: the First Intifada. During the early stages, the Intifada was largely characterised by a non-violent campaign, with actions including labour strikes, tax strikes, boycotts of Israeli goods, boycotts of Israeli institutions, demonstrations, the establishment of underground classrooms and cooperatives, raisings of the banned Palestinian flag, and civil disobedience. The actions were led by the led by a decentralised leadership composed of the grassroots organisations of the PLO, such as labour unions, student councils, and women's committees, who organised themselves into the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), mainly outside of the direct control of the PLO leadership, who were mostly in exile or imprisoned (or had been killed by Israeli forces over the preceding years).

The Israeli government responded to the breakout of the Intifada with a harsh crackdown, however, with Minister of Defence Yitzhak Rabin pledging to suppress it using "force, might, and beatings," including ordering Israeli soldiers to break the bones of Palestinian protestors, imposing widespread lockdowns on Palestinian cities, mass arrests, and demolitions of Palestinian houses. During the later stages of the Intifada, as the Israeli crackdown severely damaged the Palestinian economy and morale, and as the PLO leadership in exile attempted to take on greater day-to-day control over the Intifada, the UNLU began to lose control over the uprising and the uprising grew more violent during its last stages, including Palestinian internal political violence against rumoured collaborators. By the end of the Intifada, over a thousand Palestinians had been killed and over a hundred thousand injured by Israeli forces, with around two hundred Israelis having been killed by Palestinians. The First Intifada would come to an end with several high-profile peace negotiations, including the Madrid Conference of 1991 and the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Ian Lustick identifies four common themes in explanations for the outbreak of the First Intifada: "an explosion caused by pent-up despair and humiliation," the uprising as "a strategic extension of the PLO'S struggle to gain Palestinian national liberation," the uprising "having sprung from and been modeled after grass-roots organizations active in the territories during the preceding decade," and a "reflection of changes in Israeli politics and policies toward the territories."

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "the proximate causes of the First Intifada were intensified Israeli land expropriation and settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the electoral victory of the right-wing Likud party in 1977; increasing Israeli repression in response to heightened Palestinian protests following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982; the emergence of a new cadre of local Palestinian activists who challenged the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a process aided by Israel’s stepped-up attempts to curb political activism and break the PLO’s ties to the occupied territories in the early 1980s; and, in reaction to the invasion of Lebanon, the emergence of a strong peace camp on the Israeli side, which many Palestinians thought provided a basis for change in Israeli policy. With motivation, means, and perceived opportunity in place, only a precipitant was required to start an uprising."

According to Aden Tedla of the Global Nonviolent Action Database, "Palestinian discontent about the quality of their living conditions and their lack of political and economic autonomy began to escalate" through the 1980s, citing factors such as the establishment of hundreds of checkpoints throughout Palestine by the Israeli military, the requirement for Palestinians to carry ID cards to travel between Palestinian communities, heavy taxes imposed by the Israeli Civil Administration on Palestinian imports and exports, the requirement for Palestinians to pay taxes to the Israeli state, lower wages for Palestinians than Israelis, and an increasing shortage of arable land available to Palestinians. Reviewing Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Yaari's 1990 book Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising—Israel's Third Front, Ian Lustick states that "Schiff and Ya'ari's explanation for the intifada emphasizes the cumulative rage of Palestinian refugees, workers, and farmers. In particular, they stress the unbearable conditions in Gaza refugee camps, the frightening new threats to divert some of what remained of the farmers' water resources to Israeli settlers, and, especially, the bitterness of Palestinians employed inside Israel at the routine humiliations inflicted upon them by soldiers, policemen, and border patrolmen."

According to Nadia Naser-Najjab of the University of Exeter and Ghassan Khatib of Birzeit University, the enactment of the Iron Fist policy - "a series of repressive and humiliating crackdowns in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including an upsurge in home demolitions, deportations, arbitrary school closures, and various other forms of collective punishment" - by the Israeli government in the mid-1980s impacted "upon almost every aspect of daily Palestinian life." According to Mouin Rabbani of the Institute for Palestine Studies and Lisa Hajjar of the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Israeli government had made it illegal for Palestinians to "fly the Palestinian flag, read “subversive” literature or hold a press conference without permission. One Israeli military order in the West Bank makes it illegal for Palestinians to pick and sell wild thyme (to protect an Israeli family’s monopoly over the herb’s production)," and "Israel contributed $240 million in aid and investment to the Occupied Territories in 1987 but took back $393 million in taxes. In the 20 years of Israeli rule from 1967-1987, residents paid Israel a net “occupation tax” of $800 million, 2.5 times as much as the entire Israeli government investment in the territories over that period."

According to Kenneth W. Stein of Emory University, "the uprising occurred in an economic setting in which many middle- and lower-class Palestinians found themselves suffering from several years of severe financial hardship. Dramatic price drops, particularly in agriculture and amputated international markets, caused enormous strain on the local economy. Although present in previous years, traditional sources of capital import into Palestine were stringently reduced by changes in regional and international conditions."

According to Leila Farsakh of the University of Massachusetts Boston, the period between 1967 and 1990 "witnessed the West Bank and Gaza’s economic integration into Israel through trade and labour flows. Some 35 to 40 percent of the employed Palestinian labour force worked in Israel during this period, largely contributing to the doubling of Palestinian per capita income but also to the gradual shrinking of major economic sectors (agriculture, industry, and services), which were not able to grow viably and in response to Palestinian rather than Israeli demand and supply. This is when Palestinian economic growth was primarily described as 'stalled,' that is, below capacity, or skewed, meaning that growth was tied to Israeli demand and labour exports rather than to domestic demand and employment." Erika G. Alin wrote that "Israel sought to use the relatively cheap Palestinian work force in labor-intensive sectors of its economy and to transform the territories into a large market for Israeli products, both of which required that it prevent the development of an indigenous industrial and manufacturing base among resident Palestinians. One consequence of Israeli economic policy was a decline in the traditional, predominantly agricultural base of Palestinian society and the emergence, in the early and mid 1970s, of a large migratory workforce, dependent on employment in Israel for its livelihood."

According to Eitan Alimi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "the opening of Israel’s market to Palestinian workers, the fact that many Palestinians became familiar with Israeli democracy and mastered the Hebrew language, yet the fact that the Israeli political system was totally closed to Palestinians’ participation, shaped, to a large extent, the forms and contours of any future self-generated Palestinian resistance." According to Erika G. Alin, "the majority of Palestinian migrant workers commuted daily to Israel, where they encountered new levels of economic prosperity and social and political liberties. At the same time, in relation to their Israeli counterparts, Palestinian workers were paid less, had fewer benefits, and were barred from more skilled and higher paying jobs."

According to Aden Tedla of the Global Nonviolent Action Database, "in 1988, 59 percent of Gaza’s population was under the age of nineteen, and many of these youths had only known life under the Israeli occupation. These frustrated youths wanted to resist Israeli dominance, and many of them felt that older generations had become too accustomed to the occupation." Avraham Sela of The Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace has stated that "the fomenters of the intifada represented a generation that grew up in the shadow of the Israeli occupation, with all its internal contradictions: between an “enlightened occupation” and threatening Jewish settlement."

According to Nadia Naser-Najjab of the University of Exeter and Ghassan Khatib of Birzeit University, in the 1980s, an "emerging generation actively sought to develop new techniques and strategies of resistance through which the occupation could be directly challenged. This caused elements within the PLO to express concern that its revolutionary preeminence was being indirectly challenged." The New York Times quoted Palestinian writer Jamil Hammad in late December 1987 as saying that "My sons are very different from my generation. They did not witness the Arab defeat of 1967, so they don't have any inferiority complexes. But most important, my sons believe that they can, by their actions, change the world. They are full of confidence. They are not smashed and frustrated like my generation." According to Don Peretz of Binghamton University, "by the end of 1987 frustration among Palestinian youth could not be controlled, even by the cooler heads among the older generation, the traditional "notables" or the occupation forces with their threats of increasing use of force."

British journalist Helena Cobban has suggested that the Intifada emerged as part of a third phase of Palestinian nationalist tactics. During the first phase, from 1948 to 1967, nationalist tactics were centred around hopes of a successful intervention by neighbouring Arab states, while during the second phase, from 1967 until 1982, nationalist tactics were centred around Palestine Liberation Organization-led guerilla warfare. According to Cobban, following the failure of those phases, nationalist tactics turned towards "mass civilian organising," with the 1980s in the Palestinian Territories showing "a steady growth in organizing activities in all sectors and at all levels: women’s organizations, labor unions, professional organizations, relief organizations, student movements—you name it."

According to Francesco Saverio Leopardi of the University of Edinburgh, there was "a multiplication of trade unions and popular associations due to the high degree of political competition" between Palestinian factions in the 1980s, with each faction aiming "to achieve the highest number of members possible." According to Ian Lustick, "by proliferating at the grassroots level, these organizations produced enough capable leaders in enough different localities to frustrate the Israeli policy of decapitating Palestinian organizations by regularly imprisoning or deporting leaders who emerged at the national or regional level."

This shift towards mass organising saw a significant increase in the number of demonstrations undertaken by Palestinians, with Anne Marie Baylouny of the Naval Postgraduate School stating that "in the period from 1977 to 1982, an average of 500 such protest events took place per year. From 1982 to the start of the uprising, the average increased to between 3,000 and 4,000 annually." According to Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times, "between 1977 and 1984 there were 11 internal Palestinian demonstrations for every externally generated attack. In 1985 the ratio became 16 to 1 and in 1986 it rose to 18 to 1."

According to Francesco Saverio Leopardi of the University of Edinburgh, "while Fatah and Jordan tried to buy the loyalty of the OPT leadership, the leftist factions focused on developing their grassroots presence among the Palestinian masses. This approach helped reshuffle the power balance among the Palestinian factions, limiting Fatah’s supremacy." According to Ian Lustick, "the PLO's rivalry with Jordan, corruption of many of its agents in the territories, factional disputes over political strategy and the disbursement of funds, and increasingly stringent Israeli policies pushed Palestinians toward new forms of mobilization."

According to Nadia Naser-Najjab of the University of Exeter and Ghassan Khatib of Birzeit University, "the PLO had been expelled from Lebanon in 1982. This further restricted its already weak and limited ability to support Palestinians living under occupation. The limitations of external support and the ongoing situation within the Occupied Territories therefore made it clear to Palestinians that they were ultimately responsible for determining their own fate." According to Anne Marie Baylouny of the Naval Postgraduate School, "faith in solution driven by external actors, like the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), based in Tunis, and the Arab countries, had declined" by 1987.

Historian Mustafa Kabha has suggested that "Jordan also played a part in weakening the economy of the territories and increasing its dependence on Israel," pointing towards the Jordanian government's cuts to payments of Palestinian teachers' salaries and of the shutdown of the Jordanian government committee that oversaw donations from richer Arab states to Palestinians. According to of The New York Times, while wealthier Palestinians in Jordan had integrated into Jordanian society, "many Palestinians say they are treated as second class citizens," and the consensus among poorer Palestinian refugees in Jordan was "that all Palestinian refugees must return to their land in Palestine."

According to Don Peretz of Binghamton University, there was a "feeling of abandonment by the outside world" among Palestinians in the late 1980s, "particularly by their Arab brethren, who did little to end the recent 'War of the Camps', in Lebanon where Palestinians, many of them relatives of those in the occupied territories, were besieged for months by the Shi‘ite Amal militia. The Arab League summit in Amman during November 1987 produced little apparent support for the Palestinians. Although the meeting was convened to deal with the Gulf war, Palestinians in the territories perceived the secondary attention it devoted to their problem as a slight, an attempt to avoid confronting the Palestinian issue head on." Nadia Naser-Najjab of the University of Exeter and Ghassan Khatib of Birzeit University have stated that the Iran-Iraq War "pushed the Palestinian issue to the bottom of the list of regional priorities" for Arab states, with the 1987 Arab League Summit focusing on "condemning Iran and reintegrating Egypt into the Arab fold after it had been kicked out of the Arab League for signing a separate peace with Israel. Many Palestinians felt that the international community and key Arab states had abandoned them."

According to Kenneth W. Stein of Emory University, "in the half decade before the uprising, the mosque and Islamic symbols became focuses and platforms for political action," and "philosophies associated with the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt emerged with some degree of prominence in a few urban areas."

According to American-Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud, the grand coalition between Likud and the Israeli Labor Party following the 1984 Israeli legislative election "constituted the worst possible combination from the point of view of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. While Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres served the role of the hardliner and peace 'dove' respectively before the international community, both men and their government presided over a legacy saturated with violence, illegal annexation of Palestinian land and settlement expansion."

According to Mouin Rabbani, "the intelligence services failed to anticipate and prevent it. Then the military high command refused to recognize the scope and character of the mass demonstrations and thereby facilitated their transformation into a coherent popular rebellion. And in the ensuing months and years, the Israeli military, still recovering from defeat in Lebanon, consistently failed to quell the uprising or even regain its deterrent profile vis-a-vis the population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

According to Eitan Alimi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "the Israeli polity post-1967 ran into deep domestic conflict over the territories’ future status that gradually developed into a system-wide crisis, i.e. a sociopolitical division, which undermined the foundations of the regime���s framework and the bases of its authority, and was manifested in the rise of political violence, distrust in the system and unprecedented violation of the rule of law," a domestic conflict that was "collectively perceived by the Palestinians as an opportunity to increase contention."

The increasing rate of Israeli settlement in the Palestinian Territories has been cited as a significant factor contributing to outbreak of the First Intifada, particulary due to fears among the Palestinian population that growing settlement would eventually lead to their expulsion from Palestine.

In 1988, Don Peretz of Binghamton University stated that "the population of the occupied territories has been increasing at a rapid rate, faster than anticipated by Palestinian or Israeli demographers, resulting in teeming villages, towns and refugee camps. Stifling pressures of life in this cramped environment have been exacerbated by policies that restrict the expansion of Arab urban areas and have placed some 50 percent of land and most water sources under Israeli control, frequently at the disposal of the new Jewish settlers." According to Mouin Rabbani of the Institute for Palestine Studies and Lisa Hajjar of the University of California, Santa Barbara, by 1988, "There are 2,500 Jewish settlers in Gaza, 0.4 percent of the total Gaza population. These Jewish settlers consume 19 times more water per capita than their Palestinian neighbors. These settlers have on average 2.6 acres each; Gaza Palestinians have .006 acres each."

According to Marc D. Chaney of The New York Times, "at first, Labor Governments attempted to limit the pattern of settlement to one that more heavily reflected security concerns than links to history, appearing to leave room for territorial compromise. After 1977, when the right-wing Likud bloc came to power, encouragement was given to groups that seek to retain all the occupied territories as part of the ancient land of Israel."

According to Nadia Naser-Najjab of the University of Exeter and Ghassan Khatib of Birzeit University, by 1987, "the occupation had been in place for two decades, and there was no solution on the horizon. Israeli politicians refused to acknowledge, much less engage, Palestinian political representatives. Politicians from Israel's more moderate Labor Party, such as Rabin and Shimon Peres, viewed the so-called Jordanian option (where Jordan would accept responsibility over some of the Occupied Territories in lieu of a Palestinian state) as the most realistic option for the resolution of the conflict."

Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times referred to Palestinian journalist Ibrahim Karaeen in December 1987: "When the moderate nationalists of his generation were still ruling the West Bank as mayors or in other leadership positions, Mr. Karaeen said, they were a buffer between Israel and the more extremist and religious fundamentalists among the Palestinians. When a disturbance happened, they would mediate between the Israeli authorities and the youths to calm things down. But now this buffer group has been expelled or dismissed. In the last two weeks when the Israeli Army called in the Palestinian leaders they appointed in place of the moderate nationalists in the West Bank and told them to cool things down, these 'leaders' were not able to exert any influence." According to Marc D. Chaney of The New York Times, "Israelis maintain that Arab moderates who might agree to recognize Israel's right to exist in return for a homeland carved out of the occupied lands have been intimidated by the popularity of the militant positions of the P.L.O. The Israelis would prefer a state federated with Jordan, not an independent one. Moderate Palestinians say Israeli occupation policies have prevented the emergence of popular moderate leaders."

Don Peretz of Binghamton University wrote in 1988 that "discontent with deteriorating economic and social conditions has been politicized in what the Israeli press has characterized as "schools of hatred": the Israeli prisons and detention centers where tens of thousands have been held, for periods ranging from a day to a decade or more. According to historian Mustafa Kabha, "during the period of 1967-1985, Israel had arrested nearly 250 000 people, 40 percent of whom were detained for longer than one night."

According to Francesco Saverio Leopardi of the University of Edinburgh, "the rise of activists arrested, notably since the 1985 launch of the Iron Fist policy, turned the Israeli prisons into veritable political schools where the detainees organized themselves according to their political affiliation. Younger detainees received training from more experienced militants in ideology, resistance activities and structure of the Palestinian national movement. The Israeli prisons thus shaped a new generation of leaders, the generation that constituted the backbone of the Intifada."

Ian Lustick places the First Intifada in the context of the third wave of democratisation, saying that it was "the first of many mass-based, illegal, nonviolent or semiviolent challenges to nondemocratic governing structures to burst upon the world scene at the end of the 1980s. Algeria and Jordan erupted in 1988. Mass mobilizations subsequently appeared in Burma, in the Baltic states, and in most East European countries in 1989, then in China, South Africa, Kenya, and in many of the constituent republics of the former Soviet Union."

According to Erika G. Alin, international criticism of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon led to an assumption among Palestinians that "relative to the international environment of the 1970s and early 1980s, a Palestinian initiative against the Israeli occupation in the late 1980s would be more likely to prompt some form of positive, or at the least not openly hostile, international response."

Israeli general Yitzhak Mordechai, head of the Southern Command when the First Intifada broke out, has cited the 1985 prisoner-exchange Jibril Agreement, the August 1987 murder of the commander of the Israeli military police in the Gaza Strip by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the November 1987 Night of the Gliders surprise attack by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command on an Israeli miliary base, as incidents having contributed to the outbreak of the Intifada. According to Mordechai, "morale among Palestinians rose significantly, as did their readiness to stand up to army soldiers."