Causes of the First Intifada

The First Intifada was a major Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation between 1987 and 1993. While the Intifada is widely agreed to have broken out spontaneously, scholars, journalists, and figures involved in Israeli and Palestinian politics during the Intifada, have proposed a wide range of factors as underlying causes of the uprising. These factors include ones that contributed to the initial outbreak of unrest in late 1987, ones that contributed to the development of that unrest into a sustained popular uprising, and ones that contributed to the uprising taking on the particular shape that it took.

Background

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 its 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 Unified National Leadership of the Uprising and its popular committees, representing a decentralised and clandestine coalition of grassroots organisations, including labour unions, student councils, and women's committees. Although it claimed allegiance to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and many of the grassroots organisations were affiliated with PLO factions, the UNLU operated outside of the direct control of the PLO leadership, who were mostly in exile in Tunisia or imprisoned.
The Israeli government responded to the outbreak 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, closing all schools and universities, mass arrests, and demolitions of Palestinian houses. By 1990, as the Israeli crackdown severely damaged the Palestinian economy, institutions, and morale, as the extremist conservative Islamist Hamas emerged, as the PLO leadership in exile attempted to take on greater day-to-day control over the Intifada, and as many of the initial UNLU organisers had been arrested, the UNLU lost its ability to direct the course of the uprising. The uprising subsequently grew more and more disorganised and violent, including Palestinian internal political violence against rumoured collaborators and attacks against Israelis. 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 and around 350 Palestinians killed by other Palestinians.
The First Intifada would come to an end between 1991 and 1993, with a series of intensive peace negotiations starting with the Madrid Conference of 1991. These negotiations marked the first time that the Israeli government agreed to negotiate directly with Palestinian leaders. The negotiations culminated in the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Overview of causes

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." Eitan Alimi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has grouped explanations into four clusters: explanations that focus on inter-state developments, explanations that focus on the socio-economic effects of the Israeli occupation, explanations that focus on the shift in nationalist tactics within the occupied territories, and explanations that focus on the tactics which were used during the Intifada itself. Samih Farsoun and Jean M. Landis of the American University identified three main models of explanations: an "outside agitator" model, favoured by the Israeli government early in the outbreak of the Intifada that claimed that PLO agitators had incited violence, a "volcanic" model, favoured by Western commentators that claimed that the Intifada was an abnormal eruption of mass anger and generalised frustrations, and a "political process" model, which they prefer, claiming that the Intifada was not a mindless eruption but was rather a consciously political response based on deliberate collective action against specific grievances.
Ahsan I. Butt of George Mason University has listed the main causes of the Intifada as: a prolonged economic recession in Palestine, increasing Israeli control over day-to-day life, Israeli policies increasingly placing Palestinian development as subordinate to Israeli economic needs, increased Israeli settlement, and a pervasive sense of humiliation among Palestinians. Aryeh Shalev of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, a former Brigadier General in the IDF, has listed the main causes as: Palestinian nationalism, poor living conditions in Palestinian refugee camps, widespread feelings of humiliation and frustration among Palestinians, rising Islamic fundamentalism, the rise of a new generation of Palestinians, economic recession among Arab states in the mid-1980s, growing sentiment among Palestinians that neither the PLO nor other Arab states could solve the occupation, the growth of popular organising structures in Palestine beginning in the 1970s, and the loss of the IDF's deterrent profile over the course of the 1980s.
Mamdouh Nofal, a co-founder of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and later high-ranking member of the Palestine Authority during the 1990s, claimed that the main causes of the Intifada were: poverty in the occupied territories, a sense of humiliation caused by Israeli occupation policies, a loss of belief in the PLO's guerilla warfare strategy, and a feeling that other Arab states had abandoned Palestinians. Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab claimed that the main causes were: the defeat of the PLO in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, the growth of grassroots Palestinian organisations in the occupied territories, an increasing willigness by Palestinian nationalists to consider other methods than armed struggle, a feeling of abandonment by other Arab states, and the Israeli government moving away from Moshe Dayan's liberal occupation policy.
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, 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."

Increasing frustrations of everyday life in the Palestinian Territories

Israeli civil rights activist Israel Shahak claimed in 1991 that "the chief reason for the outbreak of the intifada" was that "before the Intifada, the daily oppression, humiliations, land confiscations and arbitrariness of the Israeli regime were steadily increasing." 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 checkpoints in 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, 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."

Lack of civil liberties

Some commentators have argued that the wide-ranging restrictions on civil liberties imposed on Palestinians inside the occupied territories by the Israeli authorities contributed to the outbreak of the Intifada, particularly as those restrictions became more intense following the mid-1980s adoption of the "Iron Fist" policy. Nadia Naser-Najjab of the University of Exeter and Ghassan Khatib of Birzeit University have argued that "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 impacted "upon almost every aspect of daily Palestinian life." Michael S. Serrill of Time Magazine noted that there was "a policy of strict, often arbitrary censorship of all newspapers, magazines and books that circulate in the territories... Israeli soldiers and border police can enter Arab homes without a warrant. Palestinians are routinely stopped and required to show identification papers. Arabs can be detained for up to six months without trial. Their houses can be sealed or demolished on suspicion that a member of the family is engaged in 'terrorist' activity. They can be arrested for dozens of offenses that do not exist in Israel, including flying the Palestinian flag, reading 'subversive' literature or holding a press conference without permission. Restrictions on civil liberties grate hard against the Palestinians’ self- esteem."
According to Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, "there was a proliferation of over a thousand laws and regulations... Books by the thousands were banned. The colours of the Palestinian flag were outlawed; even the word 'Palestine' could earn its user a jail sentence... To plant a tree required a permit. To hold meetings also required a permit. Entry and exit required permits. To start a well required a permit, one that was never given." According to Swedish journalist Nathan Shachar, "Gazans with innocent requests or applying for trivial permits often found themselves facing a Shabak operative, whose task it was to find out if the applicant could be coaxed to offer anything in return for the concession." Farsoun and Landis have written that Israeli military orders in the occupied territories "require no public review; nor are they subject to review by governmental or public bodies within Israel," also noting that "Israel has prohibited any meaningful political activity on the part of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Palestinian political parties or organizations have been outlawed, and political demonstrations, or mere collective gatherings of more than ten people, are considered crimes."
File:Rafiach march 1987 ashaf flag.jpg|thumb|left|An Israeli patrol removing the Palestinian flag in Rafah in March 1987. Displaying the flag had been made illegal under the Israeli occupation.