Palestinian political violence
As Palestinians have not had a fully recognized state with a regular army, much of Palestinian political violence in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has taken the form of insurgency. Common objectives of political violence by Palestinian groups include self-determination in or sovereignty over the region of Palestine, seeking a one-state solution, or the recognition of a Palestinian state. This includes the objective of ending the Israeli occupation. Goals also include the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and recognition of the Palestinian right of return.
Palestinian groups that have been involved in politically motivated violence include the Palestine Liberation Organization, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Abu Nidal Organization, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. Several of these groups are considered terrorist organizations by the governments of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand and the European Union.
Attacks have taken place both within Israel and Palestine as well as internationally. They have been directed at both military targets and civilians of many countries. Tactics have included hostage taking, plane hijacking, boat hijacking, stone throwing, improvised explosive device, knife attacks, shooting sprees, attacks with vehicles, car bombs and assassinations. In the 1990s, groups seeking to stop Israeli-Palestinian negotiations began adopting suicide bombings, predominantly targeting civilians, which later peaked during the Second Intifada. In recent decades, violence has also included rocket attacks on Israeli urban centers. The October 7 attacks resulted in massacres and hostage-taking.
Suicide bombings constituted 0.5% of Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the first two years of the Second Intifada, though this percentage accounted for half of the Israelis killed in that period. a majority of Palestinians, 59%, believe armed attacks against Israelis inside Israel are an effective measure to end the occupation, with 56% supporting them.
History
Overview and context
In protest against the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which proposed a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, both Muslim and Christian Palestinians began to organize in opposition to Zionism. By the end of Ottoman rule, the Jewish population of Palestine was 56,000 or one-sixth of the total population. Hostility to Jewish immigration led to numerous incidents such as the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, the 1921 Jaffa riots, the 1929 Palestine riots and the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine. The Arab revolt was suppressed by British security forces and led to the deaths of approximately 5,000 Palestinians. After the passing of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 which called for the establishment of independent Arab and Jewish States, the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine broke out. Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence on May 15, 1948, the 1948 Arab–Israeli War began, involving intervention by neighboring Arab states. Casualties included 6,000 Israelis and, according to the 1958 survey by Arif al-Arif, 13,000 Palestinians. Additionally some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled during the Nakba subsequently becoming refugees.In the Six-Day War, a further 280,000–360,000 Palestinians became refugees, the West Bank including Jerusalem was captured and occupied from Jordan and Gaza was occupied from Egypt. These occupied Palestinian territories later began to be settled by Jewish and Israeli settlers, while the Palestinians were placed under Israeli military administration. Historically, Palestinian militancy was fragmented into several groups. The Palestine Liberation Organization led, and eventually united, most factions, while conducting military campaigns, varying from airplane hijackings, militant operations, and civil protest. In 1987, the First Intifada, a revolt of predominantly civil resistance, broke out. It led to the Madrid Conference of 1991, and subsequently to the Oslo I Accord. Oslo I produced an interim understanding allowing the new Palestinian National Authority to exercise limited autonomy in 3%, later 17%, of the West Bank, and parts of the Gaza Strip, which were not used or designated for Israeli settlement. Unsatisfied with concessions, Islamist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad adopted the usage of suicide bombings, predominantly against Israeli civilians. Frustration over the perceived failure of the peace talks to yield a Palestinian state led to the outbreak of the Second Intifada from September 2000 until 2005, coincident with Israel's unilateral disengagement plan. The rise of Hamas, the use of Palestinian rocketry and Israel's control of Gaza's borders, has led to further chronic violence, culminating in a further two conflicts, the Gaza War of 2008–09 and Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012.
Since 1967, some reports estimate that some 40% of the male population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been arrested or detained in Israeli prisons for political or military reasons.
British Mandate for Palestine (1917–1947)
Following the Balfour Declaration in November 1917 which encouraged Jewish migrants to settle in Palestine, violence against the Jews increased in the region. At this time Arabs were the majority, both geographically and demographically compared to the Jewish population. The majority of Arab Palestinians were distributed throughout the highlands of Judea, Samaria and Galilee whereas the Jewish population was scattered in small towns and rural communities. Arabs hostile to the Jewish population adopted a "war of attrition" tactic which was advantageous to the more numerous Arab community.Many of the deaths were inflicted during short time spans and in a few locations. On a day in April 1920, about 216 Jews were wounded or killed in Jerusalem. By May 1921, around 40 Jews were killed or wounded per day. In August 1929 that number had risen to 80 per day. During the 1929 riots, one percent of the Jewish population of Jerusalem were wounded or killed, in Safed 2 percent, and in Hebron 12 percent. During the 1920–1929 attacks on Jews were organized by local groups and encouraged by local religious leaders. As the Jewish community did not count on the British authorities to protect them, they formed the Haganah which were predominantly defensive in the 1920s. During the Arab Revolt in the 1936–1939 period, violence was coordinated and organized by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and was directed against both Jews and the British. Due to the rising level of Arab violence, the Haganah started to pursue an offensive strategy.
Independence of Israel to establishment of PLO (1949–1964)
Throughout the period 1949–56 the Egyptian government opposed the movement of refugees from the Gaza strip into Israel, but following the IDF's Gaza Raid on February 28, 1955, the Egyptian authorities facilitated militant infiltration but still continued to oppose civilian infiltration.Around 400 Palestinian insurgents were killed by Israeli Security Forces each year in 1951, 1952 and 1953; a similar number and probably far more were killed in 1950. In 1949, 1,000 or more Palestinians were killed. At least 100 Palestinians were killed during 1954–1956. In total upward of 2,700 and possibly as many as 5,000 were killed by the IDF, police, and civilians along Israel's borders between 1949 and 1956. Most of the people in question were refugees attempting to return to their homes, take back possessions that had been left behind during the war and to gather crops from their former fields and orchards inside the new Israeli state. Meron Benivasti states that the fact that the "infiltrators" were for the most part former inhabitants of the land returning for personal, economic and sentimental reasons was suppressed in Israel as it was feared that this may lead to an understanding of their motives and to the justification of their actions.
After Israel's Operation Black Arrow in 1955, in response to massacres in the city of Rehovot, the Palestinian fedayeen were incorporated into an Egyptian unit. John Bagot Glubb, a British general who commanded the Arab Legion, claimed in his 1957 autobiography A Soldier with the Arabs that he convinced the Legion to arm and train the fedayeen for free. Between 1951 and 1956, 400 Israelis were killed and 900 wounded by fedayeen attacks.
The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in 1964. At its first convention in Cairo, hundreds of Palestinians met to "call for the right of self-determination and the upholding of the rights of the Palestinian nation". To achieve these goals, a Palestinian army of liberation was thought to be essential; thus, the Palestinian Liberation Army was established with the support of the Arab states. Fatah, a Palestinian group founded in the late 1950s to organize the armed resistance against Israel, and headed by Yasser Arafat, soon rose to prominence within the PLO. The PLO charter called for "an end to the State of Israel, a return of Palestinians to their homeland, and the establishment of a single democratic state throughout Palestine".
Six-Day War and aftermath
Due to Israel's defeat of Arab armies in the Six-Day War, the Palestinian leadership came to the conclusion that the Arab world was unable to challenge Israel militarily in open warfare. Simultaneously, the Palestinians drew lessons from movements and uprisings in Latin America, North Africa and Southeast Asia which led them to move away from guerilla warfare in rural areas and towards terrorist attacks in urban environments with an international reach. This led to a series of aircraft hijackings, bombings and kidnappings which culminated in the killings of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. The military superiority of Israel led Palestinian fighters to employ guerrilla tactics from bases in Jordan and Lebanon.File:George Habash.jpg|thumb|George Habash, founder of the PFLP, masterminded the hijackings of four Western airliners to Jordan, which led to the Black September conflict.
In the wake of the Six-Day War, confrontations between Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan and government forces became a major problem within the kingdom. By early 1970, at least seven Palestinian guerrilla organizations were active in Jordan, one of the most important being the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine led by George Habash. Based in the Jordanian refugee camps, the fedayeen developed a virtual state within a state, receiving funds and arms from both the Arab states and Eastern Europe and openly flouting the law of the country. The guerrillas initially focused on attacking Israel, but by late 1968, the main fedayeen activities in Jordan appeared to shift to attempts to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy.