This article is about the 1987–1993 Palestinian uprising against Israel. For the 1999–2004 Sahrawi uprising against Morocco, see First Sahrawi Intifada.
The Intifada began on 9 December 1987[12] in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli truck driver collided with parked civilian vehicles, killing four Palestinian workers, three of whom were from the refugee camp.[13][14] Palestinians charged that the collision was a deliberate response for the killing of an Israeli in Gaza days earlier.[15] Israel denied that the crash, which came at time of heightened tensions, was intentional or coordinated.[14] The Palestinian response was characterized by protests, civil disobedience, and strikes, with excessive violence in response from Israeli security forces.[16][17] There was graffiti, barricading,[18][19] and widespread throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails at the Israeli army and its infrastructure within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These contrasted with civil efforts including general strikes, boycotts of Israeli Civil Administration institutions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, an economic boycott consisting of refusal to work in Israeli settlements on Israeli products, refusal to pay taxes, and refusal to drive Palestinian cars with Israeli licenses.
Israel deployed some 80,000 soldiers in response. Israeli countermeasures, which initially included the use of live rounds frequently in cases of riots, were criticized by Human Rights Watch as disproportionate, in addition to Israel's excessive use of lethal force.[20] In the first 13 months, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed.[21][22] Images of soldiers beating adolescents with clubs then led to the adoption of firing semi-lethal plastic bullets.[21] During the whole six-year intifada, the Israeli army killed at least 1,087 Palestinians, of which 240 were children.[23]
Among Israelis, 100 civilians and 60 Israeli soldiers were killed,[24] often by militants outside the control of the Intifada's UNLU,[25] and more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 1,700 soldiers were injured.[26] Intra-Palestinian violence was also a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of an estimated 822 Palestinians killed as alleged Israeli collaborators (1988–April 1994).[27] At the time Israel reportedly obtained information from some 18,000 Palestinians who had been compromised,[28] although fewer than half had any proven contact with the Israeli authorities.[29] The ensuing Second Intifada took place from September 2000 to 2005.
^Kober, Avi, Israel's Wars of Attrition: Attrition Challenges to Democratic States, p. 165
^King, Mary E. (2007). A quiet revolution: the first Palestinian Intifada and nonviolent resistance. New York: Nation Books. ISBN978-1-56025-802-5. OCLC150378515. The book's foreword, written by President Jimmy Carter: "The Palestinians' nonviolent resistance in the first intifada, documented here, contested military occupation from a store of classic methods used on every continent in today's world, as people fight for human rights and justice with concern for the connection between the ends and means. The joint grassroots Israeli-Palestinian committees were imagining a future that can yet be created. As Palestinian local leaders rebutted the empty premises of violent ideologies, strong efforts should have been made by the international community to fortify their resolve, which could have weakened the extremism that brought violence. How little encouragement was offered to those who were working for abandonment of the mythologies of violence!"
^Ron, Jonathan (April 2006). The Two Intifadas an Analysis of the Strategies and Tactics of Palestinians and the Israelis. The Fletcher School. pp. 22–26.
^Ruth Margolies Beitler, The Path to Mass Rebellion: An Analysis of Two Intifadas, p. 128.
^Lustick, Ian S. (1993). Brynen, Rex; Hiltermann, Joost R.; Hudson, Michael C.; Hunter, F. Robert; Lockman, Zachary; Beinin, Joel; McDowall, David; Nassar, Jamal R.; Heacock, Roger (eds.). "Writing the Intifada: Collective Action in the Occupied Territories". World Politics. 45 (4): 560–594. doi:10.2307/2950709. ISSN0043-8871. JSTOR2950709. S2CID147140028.
^Salem, Walid (2008). "Human Security from Below: Palestinian Citizens Protection Strategies, 1988–2005". In den Boer, Monica; de Wilde, Jaap (eds.). The Viability of Human Security. Amsterdam University Press. pp. 179–201., on p. 190.
^ abAudrey Kurth Cronin 'Endless wars and no surrender,' in Holger Afflerbach, Hew Strachan (eds.) How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender, Oxford University Press 2012 pp. 417–433 p. 426.
^Wendy Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement,Cambridge University Press 2011, p. 114.
^Cite error: The named reference BTF was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^B'Tselem Statistics; Fatalities in the first Intifada.
^'Intifada,' in David Seddon, (ed.)A Political and Economic Dictionary of the Middle East, Taylor & Francis 2004, p. 284.
^Human Rights Watch, Israel, the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority Territories, November, 2001. Vol. 13, No. 4(E), p. 49