Intifada

Intifada (alternatively Intifadah, from Arabic "shaking off"). The popular name for two campaigns of escalation and violence between the Palestinians and Israelis. The two intifadas' main point of similarity is the use of terror by the Palestinans and losses of lives and property on the Palestinian side as results of Israeli Army actions.

First intifada

The first intifada was from 1987 to 1991.

The intifada was a partially spontaneous phenomenon; after it began, the PLO attempted to claim that it had organized it, but historians views this as an after-the-fact attempt to assert more control than it really had. Unfortunately, the proximal causes of the first intifada were rampant false rumors of Jewish attempts to exterminate Palestinians. In the Gaza Strip, stories were told that said Israeli hospitals were murdering Palestinians; other stories stated that "the Jews" had poisoned the water so as to kill all the Palestinians in the Gaza strip, and that a recent truck accident (in which several Palestinians were killed by a rushing Israeli driver) was really a deliberate attack. A UN investigation found that none of these charges had any basis in fact, but the mere presence of these stories caused wild panic and street fights against Israeli policemen and soldiers.

The general cause of the intifada was the many years of military occupation that the Palestinians suffered under the Israelis. They felt abandoned by their Arab allies, the PLO had failed to destroy the State of Israel as promised. However it did manage to block the Israeli attempts to call for an election inside the territories (beginning with 1974), and as it seemed to many of them, they would spend the rest of their lives as second class citizens, without full political rights.

In addition to the political and national sentiment, further causes to the Intifada can be seen in the Egyptian withdrawal from their claims to the Gaza Strip (as well as the Jordanian monarchy growing weary of supporting Jordanian claims to the West Bank), the increasing density of population (caused by both the traditional Arab rapid rates of birth and the limited allocation of land to new building or agriculture under the Israeli rule) and the growing unemployment (in particular, the income from jobs in Israel allowed Palestinians to provide university education for their children - but there were few available jobs for the graduates afterwards).

Finally, as many Arabs claimed, the Intifada was a protest of what they called Israel's brutal repression which as they maintain included extra-judicial killings, mass detentions, house demolitions, indiscriminate torture, deportations, and so on. While there is very little doubt that some of these did take place over the years (as is inevitable in any military rule), the period preceeding the Intifada was a generally calm one (for example, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, leader of the Hamas was arrested by Israel for preaching for violence but released when he promised to refrain from it).

Considering all of the above and the mass scale of the uprising, it is of little doubt that it was not initiated by any single man or organization. However, the PLO was very quick to take matters into its hands, sponsoring riot provocateurs and enhancing their presence in the territories (called the "tandhim", or "organization") that was to guarantee the continuation of riots. The PLO was not uncontested, however, competing in its activities for the first time with radical Islamic organizations - Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which also had a share in inducing further violence.

Much of the intifada was low-tech; dozens of Palestinian teenagers would ambush small patrols of Israeli soliders, showering them with large rocks, attempting to kill with brute force and vastly superior numbers. However, this tactic soon gave way to using thousands of Molotov cocktail attacks, over 100 hand grenade attacks and more than 500 attacks with guns or explosives.

In 1988, middle-class Christian merchants initiated a nonviolent movement (or as some analists hold it, were forced by the PLO) to withhold taxes - the legality of which under international law is disputed - collected and used by Israel to pay for the administration of territories. When time in prison didn't stop the activists, Israel crushed the boycott by imposing heavy fines while seizing and disposing of the equipment, furnishings, and goods from local stores, factories, and even homes.

The focus of the intifada changed as it went on, and it turned into internecine warfare. Palestinians attacked each other almost as often as they attacked Israelis; by the end of the infifada over 1/3 of all Palestinian casualties were caused by fellow Palestinians. Almost 200 Palestinians were murdered by other Palestinians in 1992, double the number killed in clashes with the Israeli army.

al-Aqsa intifada

The second intifada started in mid 2000 after then Israeli opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, visited the Temple Mount in 2000, sparking Palestinian riots. This marked the beginning of the second (or al-Aqsa) intifada. Palestinians initially claimed that this intifada was spontaneous; Israelis charged that the Palestinian leadership planned an uprising in order to use violence to get Israel to make more concessions. A few months later a number of Palestinian officials admitted that the new intifada indeed was a pre-planned event not caused by Sharon.

Whoever thinks that the Intifada broke out because of the despised Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque, is wrong, even if this visit was the straw that broke the back of the Palestinian people. This Intifada was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat’s return from the Camp David negotiations, where he turned the table upside down on President Clinton. (Palestinian Communications Minister Imad al-Faluji, March 3, 2001, Al-Safir)

In October, 2000 Palestinians destroyed a Jewish shrine in Nablus, Joseph's Tomb. They also stoned worshipers at the Western Wall and attacked another Jewish shrine, Rachel's Tomb.

The Israelis killed during al-Aqsa intifada are detailed in terrorism against Israel.

Further information from pro-Israel source: [1] and [2]

Pro-Palestinian information at [3] or [4]