First intifada
| date | December 1987 to 1993 |
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| place | West Bank , Gaza Strip , Israel |
| output | Oslo peace process |
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The First Intifada ( Arabic انتفاضة, DMG intifāḍa 'uprising', fromانتفض, DMG intafaḍa 'to rise' or 'shake off', Hebrew אינתיפאדה ʾIntifada ), also known as the "War of the Stones", was an ongoing violent clash between Palestinians and the Israeli army that began in December 1987. From 1991 the intensity of violence decreased significantly; the 1993 Oslo Accords mark the end of the first intifada .
Causes and Triggers
The Intifada was triggered by the collision of an Israeli military truck with two Palestinian taxis on December 8, 1987. Four Palestinians (three of whom were from the Jabaliya refugee camp ) died near the Erez crossing on the northern border of the Gaza Strip . In the Palestinian Territories, an act of retaliation was suspected for an Israeli who had recently been stabbed to death in the Gaza Strip. It was rumored that the driver of the truck was a relative of the murdered man. Hamas , which was founded in Hebron in 1986 , took advantage of the unrest, took the lead and stoked up riots against Israeli soldiers, in which "the anger of the Palestinian youth" was discharged against the occupiers. Mass demonstrations and riots broke out during the burials of the four dead in Gaza. In the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Palestinians took to the streets, children threw stones at Israeli tanks and car tires were set on fire.
The debates about other political causes for this Palestinian popular uprising are varied: During the 1980s, the Palestinian total fertility rates were among the highest in the world. At that time, nearly half of the Palestinians were under 15 and 70 percent under 30. This young generation grew up in a society that refused to accept that the West Bank and Gaza Strip were occupied by Israel after the Six Day War and should only be returned as a result of successfully concluded peace treaties. Nevertheless, access to educational institutions improved - for example, the Islamic University in Gaza was founded in 1978 . Nevertheless, the number of unemployed increased. With the enormous drop in oil prices in 1986, the surrounding Gulf states justified the cut in financial support for the Palestinian territories.
Palestinian actions
The uprising arose for the PLO leadership in Tunis in a completely unplanned and uncontrolled manner. From 1967 onwards, the Palestinians, reluctantly but cooperatively, lived under Israeli military administration. Major resistance campaigns were left to the PLO abroad. Now the cooperation with the Israeli authorities has been discontinued and "made clear for the world".
Peaceful actions
The central people in the planning and financing of the peaceful actions were Faisal Husseini and Sari Nusseibeh (in the background). There were different types of strike:
- Mass dismissals by Palestinian police officers (partly out of fear of reprisals)
- Shops were only opened by the hour.
- Duties and taxes were no longer paid.
- A general strike was called after every death.
- Boycott of Israeli products through reorganization and intensification of their own agriculture.
- Leaflets were illegally printed and distributed.
- Establishment of aid committees to organize actions and help those in need through the situation.
- Raising the banned Palestinian flag in places (power lines) where it was difficult to remove.
- Lettering of walls with slogans and calls.
Violent actions
The waves of peaceful civil disobedience, however, were only part of the intifada, and violent methods quickly became rampant on the Palestinian side. The violent protests reflected the frustration of the extremely young population due to high birth rates and high levels of unemployment. However, since the Intifada was not dominated by parties, but rather a national movement, most of the young people had next to no weapons, which is why there were no major armed attacks on the Israeli soldiers. The number of victims is correspondingly, which at the end of 1990 was 609: 18 (deaths on the Palestinian / Israeli side) and 12,000: 3,391 (injuries). Instead, mainly stones were used that were thrown at Israeli tanks and soldiers as well as civilians / settlers, which earned the Intifada the nickname “War of Stones”. Another feature was Molotov cocktails that were used in combat as they were very easy to assemble, it is believed that around 3600 Molotov cocktails were thrown. Later, however, quite young Islamist parties such as Hamas used the uprising to popularize their own ideology, especially since the uprising created an atmosphere of lawlessness through its inappropriate to resistive attitude towards the Israeli authorities, against which these parties use their own means could. Many see the 1st Intifada as the hour of birth of Hamas, which has now controlled the Gaza Strip since 2006.
Collaborators
Another gruesome chapter of the Intifada is lynching among the Palestinians. People who worked with the Israeli authorities were henceforth viewed as collaborators and cruelly persecuted. The mayors appointed by Israel and police officers were murdered. Even the suspicion of being an informant was in many cases a death sentence. About 700 people are said to have been killed in this way. Traders who refused to go on strike for economic reasons were forcefully forced to close their shops again. This was largely due to young people ( shabab ) who roamed the streets and monitored compliance with the strikes. The general lawlessness caused by the chaotic situation provoked acts of political violence as well as looting. The internal violence during the Intifada claimed as many deaths as the attacks on Israeli soldiers.
Israeli reactions
First an attempt was made to break the strikes by force. Soldiers forcibly opened the barred shops (Arab shops are still completely closed with metal doors - including the shop windows) by destroying the padlocks in order to remove the image of the deserted shopping streets. Later the Palestinians were allowed to go on strike because they were already self-harm.
The arms and legs of stone throwers were broken by soldiers, a video report of which shocked the whole world. The Israeli Defense Minister Yitzchak Rabin had called on the army to restore order with “power, strength and beatings” and was then nicknamed “Bone Breakers” in the Arab world. A government spokesman had stated that "if the troops break his [a stone thrower's] hand, he will not be able to throw stones for 1½ months."
Nonetheless, Rabin's so-called "breaking the bones" strategy failed in its attempt to break the resistance, but it had serious effects on the civilian population. According to a 1990 report by the aid organization Save the Children, between 23,600 and 29,900 Palestinian children were estimated to require medical care for injuries from cane blows after the first two years of this IDF practice . 30% of these children were younger than ten years old, 20% were younger than five years old. Ehud Barak, then Deputy Chief of Staff, issued a directive to avoid shooting children, but 106 children were shot dead.
In September 1988, the rubber bullets were introduced, which gave the army the possibility of increased use of weapons without necessarily killing. Rabin: "It is our intention to injure as many of them as possible ... Causing injuries is exactly the aim of using the plastic balls."
In the summer of 1988, the authorities burned 8,000 olive and fruit trees and thousands of dunam wheat fields belonging to the Palestinians, and in response the Palestinians set fire to forests.
Unpaid vehicle taxes were collected by changing the color of the number plates . A new car number was only given to those who had paid the outstanding tax liability.
A surcharge on liability insurance was applied to Palestinian vehicles in order to compensate for the damage caused by stones being thrown at Israeli vehicles, because settlers were allowed to claim this without fully comprehensive insurance. This surcharge was called "stone tax" ( daribat al-ḥijāra ) by the Palestinians .
Taxes and water fees were collected through the seizure of property (e.g. in almost every household in Beit Sahur near Bethlehem at the end of 1989 ). Long-term curfews were imposed, some with electricity and water being switched off.
The possibilities of movement and escape in the narrow streets of the cities were restricted by barriers made of concrete-filled barrels.
The army painted over the slogans on the house walls or urged Palestinians to do so. Palestinians were forced to remove the banned PLO flags, even if it was done at risk of death. Some of them were electrocuted when they had to climb power poles.
In addition, the closure of universities and schools, which became breeding grounds for the uprising, was ordered for a long time. At the end of 1991 almost all educational institutions, even kindergartens, were closed for “safety reasons”. The Palestinian youth have been deprived of all educational opportunities for two or three years. This was later heavily criticized as the lack of education fueled the unrest all the more.
The relatives of the dead were forced to conduct the funerals without a fuss during the night so that there would be no new demonstrations.
There were mass arrests and severe penalties for crimes such as “raising the PLO flag”. Prisoners were brutally mistreated (blows to the kidneys, stomach, testicles, ..., inflicting burns, torture with water and sun). Many women have had miscarriages during and after interrogation, especially after the use of tear gas .
The Jewish settlers who had previously been shopping in the Arab cities stayed away from the centers and as a result were often given their own access roads away from them. Settlers who were pelted with stones shot back immediately and, in some cases, carried out acts of revenge against the Arabs with impunity.
The house demolition penalty was applied excessively. By the end of 1991 more than 300 homes had been destroyed or sealed and 2,000 people made homeless.
Chronology of events
- December 1987: outbreak of the Intifada
- January 1988: first leaflet called Hamas
- November 1988: the PLO adopts the Palestinian Declaration of Independence and recognizes Israel's right to exist
- July 1990: Bomb attack on Tel Aviv beach
- August 1990: Invasion of Iraq in Kuwait - guest workers return home.
- October 1990: 17 demonstrators are shot dead on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem
- September 1991: 340,000 of 400,000 Palestinian refugees are displaced from Kuwait
- October 1991: Madrid Conference
- June 1992: Election of Yitzchak Rabin as Prime Minister
- December 13, 1992: Hamas kidnapped the Israeli border police officer Nissim Toledano
- December 14th, 1,600 Palestinians are arrested in Gaza
- December 17, 1992: 415 Islamists are deported to southern Lebanon
- March 1993: the West Bank and Gaza Strip sealed off
- May 1993: the 1.200. Palestinian has been dying since the beginning
- August 1993: End of secret negotiations with the PLO
- September 13, 1993: Signing of the Oslo Treaty in Washington
- February 25, 1994: Massacre in the Abraham Mosque in Hebron by Baruch Goldstein : 29 dead
- July 1994: Arafat returns to Palestine
Effects
The uprising cost Israel $ 120 million a month in security spending and $ 38 million in indirect economic damage. The Israeli countermeasures and the Gulf Crisis of 1990–1991 dampened the uprising. After the Second Gulf War , however, Israel was forced to enter into negotiations with the PLO , first in secret, then officially. The First Intifada ultimately brought autonomy. New parties and organizations emerged from the resistance committees. a. also Hamas . The Palestinian territories were increasingly cordoned off from Israel, which contributed to a sharp decline in the number of Palestinian workers in Israel. After 115,600 Palestinians were working in Israel in 1992, the number had halved by 1996.
See also
Web links
- The First Intifada and the Oslo Peace Agreement ( Federal Agency for Civic Education )
- The first Intifada ( EIPA )
- First Intifada 1987: So much hatred (photo gallery at Spiegel Geschichte )
Footnotes
- ^ Imad Mustafa: Political Islam. Between the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Hezbollah . Promedia. Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-85371-360-0 , p. 62 f.
- ↑ Mosab Hassan Yousef, Ron Brackin: Son of Hamas - My Life as a Terrorist . 1st edition. SCM Hässler Verlag, 2010, p. 37.
- ^ Entire Gaza Strip put under Curfew , New York Times, March 15, 1988
- ↑ http://www.mideastweb.org/Middle-East-Encyclopedia/intifada.htm
- ^ A b David McDowall: The Palestinians . P. 102.
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20090114092936/http://www.hanini.org/Thebonebreakers.html ( Memento of February 4, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ The Guardian, Jan. 19, 1988
- ^ The Observer, Jan. 24, 1988
- ↑ Foreign Policy Research Institute: Archive link ( Memento from September 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ The data comes from the Swedish branch of the "Save the Children" organization, The Status of Palestinian Children During the Uprising in the Occupied Territories , selected, summarized material, Jerusalem, January 1990, in Journal of Palestine Studies 19, no. 4 ( Summer 1990): pp. 136–46, see also: Walt Mearsheimer: The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.
- ↑ John J. Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt: The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2007, p. 100.
- ↑ Middle East International No. 335, October 7, 1988.
- ^ A b c d David McDowall: The Palestinians . P. 101.
- ^ Glenn E. Robinson: Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution . 1997, ISBN 978-0-253-21082-1 , p. 84
- ↑ Don't expect a happy ending from Israel's West Bank operation , Amos Harel in Ha-Aretz on June 22, 2014.
- ↑ Israel and Palestine (Paris) No. 144, September 1988
- ↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1361060.stm
- ↑ Wolffsohn, Bokovoy: Israel . 5th edition. P. 438 f.
- ↑ Farsakh: Palestinian Labor Migration to Israel, p 72