First Intifada
The first intifada began in December 1987 in a Gaza refugee camp and ran for six years. The trigger was a road accident in which an Israeli lorry killed four Palestinians at the Erez crossing, and the rumour that it was deliberate. What it expressed was twenty years of occupation. The West Bank and Gaza had been held since 1967 under military law, with land expropriated for settlements, permits required for movement, work, building and planting, and a population of about 1.7 million governed by orders rather than legislation, half of whom had been born under it. The word means shaking off. The method was mass and largely unarmed: general strikes, tax refusal, boycotts of Israeli goods, alternative schools when the schools were closed, and above all stone-throwing by teenagers against soldiers, which produced the photographs that changed how the conflict was seen abroad. It was organised locally by neighbourhood committees rather than by the PLO in Tunis, which was taken by surprise and spent months catching up; Hamas was founded in Gaza in its first weeks. Israel's response — the policy summarised as force, might and beatings, mass arrests, deportations, house demolitions and school closures — was carried on television and divided Israeli opinion. Around 1,200 Palestinians and 180 Israelis were killed, and Palestinians also killed several hundred of their own as collaborators. It produced the PLO's recognition of Israel in 1988 and, eventually, the Oslo talks. The intifada also changed the Palestinian movement's centre of gravity. Authority shifted from an exiled leadership to people who lived under the occupation, and the Islamist organisation founded during it has been the main rival to the PLO ever since.
- Year: 1987 CE
- Category: Political
