Intifada

   Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which began in December 1987 in strong and occasionally violent opposition to continued Israeli occupation of those territories. The Palestinian uprising became a test of wills and policy between Palestinians in the territories occupied by Israel in the Six-Day War (1967) and Israel. Israel sought to end the uprising and restore law and order in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinians saw the uprising as a means to end Israeli occupation and to promote an independent Palestinian state. Palestinians sought to accelerate the political process and, in particular, to gain a representative role for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in negotiations with Israel and the United States.

   Confrontation and violence marked the evolution of the intifada, with a growing toll of casualties on both sides. For the Palestinians, the intifada seemed to provide a catharsis but also a high cost in casualties, imprisonment, loss of education and employment, and growing divisions within the Palestinian population. For Israel, the intifada posed a major challenge on a number of counts, including damage to its international image, divisions within the body politic on how to respond, the monetary costs of increased military reserve duty, and the costs of other disruptions of the economy.

   The intifada began with a series of incidents (the stabbing to death of an Israeli by a Palestinian in Gaza City, a traffic accident in which four Palestinians were killed, and subsequent riots in the Jabaliya refugee camp) in early December 1987. Over the ensuing period, the violence seemed to grow and to gain increasing international attention for the status of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin argued that this was not classical terrorism but civilian violence carried out by a considerable portion of the Palestinian population by means available to every individual, such as stones, Molotov cocktails, barricades, and burning tires. The difficulty for Israel was to devise a means to defuse the violence. For both sides, the intifada became a test of political wills portending continuing confrontations over time.

   By the time of the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference (October 1991) and the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles (September 1993), the intifada had petered out, though periodic clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israel Defense Forces soldiers and settlers continued to occur. Moreover, such Muslim extremist groups as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which grew to prominence during the intifada, continued to wage a terrorist war of attrition against Israel.

   See also Suicide Bombings.