1987 - Palestine’s First Intifada

AMMAN: Intifada, an Arabic word that means “shaking off,” was introduced to the English lexicon by many of us Palestinian journalists working with the foreign media in the Middle East. What was being shaken off was the status quo of living under occupation. 

Before the Intifada began, I was way too young to agree to the job offer that had been made to me. With my Bachelor of Arts degree in business from the US, the American-Palestinian owner of Al-Fajr, Paul Ajlouny, thought I could do a good job of bringing some business sense to the running the Jerusalem-based family newspaper. I did not and I hated the job. 

But while I was busy making ends meet, an English-language sister publication, Al-Fajr English, was being launched by Ajlouny’s relative, Hanna Siniora. At the age of just 25, and still a bachelor, I enjoyed proofreading and was mesmerized seeing Al-Fajr go to press each week. Eventually, I would write my first article and was fascinated to see my byline in print. 

The big story at the time was the assassination attempts by Jewish militants targeting nationalist Palestinian mayors. The return of one of them, Mayor Bassam Shakaa, after months of medical treatment in Europe, and the huge public welcome he received in the city of Nablus, adorned our front page. 

Shakaa, Hebron’s Mayor Fahd Qawasmeh and Ramallah’s Karim Khalaf (who was badly injured when he tried to start his booby-trapped car), were supporters of the Palestine Liberation Organization.  

By the time I left the business job to become a full-time journalist, Israel had invaded Lebanon, and the PLO’s heroic 82-day steadfastness in Beirut, followed by its departure to Tunis, was our main story. 

It was in this nationalist atmosphere that my cousin, Mubarak Awad, had also returned from the US and started the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence. Along with my brother Jonathan, co-founder of the independent Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, they educated people in the occupied territories about how nonviolent resistance works. 

While such talk of nonviolence was new to many, it was well-received by some key leaders. I remember joining Awad and Jonathan in meetings with a student leader at Birzeit University named Marwan Barghouti, as well as many meetings with other Palestinian notables such as Faisal Husseini, Sari Nusseibeh and Hanan Ashrawi. 

Awad’s message was quickly being absorbed and he was getting calls from people from different parts of Palestine suffering from problems with settlers and the Israeli military. Nonviolent protests were taking place a couple of times a week, often with important results. 

But although Awad’s work had not yet become mainstream, it was not long before the Israelis realized what was happening and started tracking him. They arrested him despite the fact that he had a US passport, and despite the many protests held in Jerusalem on his behalf. 

The man who became known as the “Palestinian Gandhi” lost his case in Israel’s High Court and was deported, even though he was born in Jerusalem, on orders from right-wing Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. But the literature he distributed, and his ideas about nonviolence and boycotts, lingered. 

Palestinian anger erupted on Dec. 9, 1987, in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, the day after an Israeli military truck collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinians. While many saw in the clashes with Israelis a public expression of anger about this incident, it was really the fact that settlers were continuing to build without any deterrence that led Palestinian youths to fight with the only weapon freely available to them, stones, which are abundant in Palestinian towns and villages. 

While the images of the Intifada were those of young Palestinians, often dressed in black-and-white keffiyehs, pelting settlers and soldiers with stones, it was the nonviolent actions throughout Palestine that fascinated me. 

Perhaps the most visible of these actions was the decision by the people of Beit Sahour to adopt the slogan of American revolutionaries: no taxation without representation. Palestinians living in the town decided to stop paying taxes as long as they had no political power. This drove the Israeli military crazy, and it laid siege to Beit Sahour. 

One iconic sign of the nonviolent resistance was the decision not to follow Israel when it changed its clocks in April to mark the start of summertime. I remember covering stories about Israeli soldiers outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem who would stop young Palestinians and check their watches. If the time had not been changed, the soldiers would use their batons to smash the watches while they were still on the youths’ wrists. 

The Intifada finally ended when US Secretary of State James Baker asked the Palestinians to attend the Madrid peace conference in 1991. The Israelis were represented there by Shamir, who had deported Awad. The Israeli delegation’s spokesperson was Benjamin Netanyahu, now prime minister. The Palestinian delegation’s spokeswoman was Hanan Ashrawi. 

Nothing happened as a result of that conference, but a secret agreement worked out in Oslo led to an initial breakthrough that resulted in the creation of the Palestinian Authority and the return of the PLO to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. 

But that achievement, and the hopes of the peace for which so many had suffered, were wiped out on Nov. 4, 1995, when an extremist Jewish settler assassinated Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, paving the way for Netanyahu’s first term as premier. 

As the tragic events in Gaza and the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023, have demonstrated, things have gone only backward for Palestinian rights and aspirations ever since. 

• Daoud Kuttab is a columnist for Arab News, specializing in Middle Eastern, and more specifically, Palestinian affairs. He is the author of the book “State of Palestine NOW: Practical and logical arguments for the best way to bring peace to the Middle East.”