December 6, 1987 – The Palestinian Uprising of 1987 – 1993: An Israeli citizen is murdered in Gaza; two days later , two Palestinians are killed

On December 6, 1987, an Israeli citizen was murdered in Gaza.  Two days later, four Palestinian residents of
the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza
were killed in a road accident by a truck belonging to the Israeli Army.  Many residents of the Jabaliya camp took to
the streets in protest, believing that the four Palestinians were killed
deliberately in reprisal for the Gaza
murder.  Israeli security forces moved in
to disperse the crowd, but in the process, opened fire and killed a
protester.  Demonstrations then broke out
in other refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, triggering a full-blown uprising.

Map showing location of Gaza and the West Bank.

The 1987 Palestinian uprising is more commonly known as the
First Intifada, where the word “intifada” is Arabic that means “to shake off”,
and has come to denote an uprising or rebellion.  The 1987 Intifada initially took the form of
spontaneous, disorganized street rallies and demonstrations consisting of tens
of thousands of Palestinians who incited anarchy and clashed with Israeli
security forces.  Youths and minors often
formed the front lines, leading Israeli authorities to accuse the Palestinians
of using the children as “human shields”. 
The protesters lobbied stones and Molotov cocktails (home-made
incendiary bombs) at the police, burned tires, and set up road blocks and
barricades.  Militancy increased when the
protesters began using firearms and grenades as weapons.  Other Palestinians supported the intifada
through non-violent means, such as not paying taxes, boycotting Israeli
products, and undertaking other forms of civil disobedience.

The depth and speed of the intifada surprised Israeli
authorities, who believed that the actions were being planned and carried out
by the PLO.  In fact, each local protest
action was organized by community leaders in response to and in support of
other uprisings that were already taking place, creating a snowball effect.  Eventually, however, the intifada came under
the centralized command of the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising
(UNLU), an alliance of PLO factions in the occupied territories, which began to
carry out more organized militant actions. 
Two other Palestinian armed groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, also rose
to prominence during the intifada and emerged as the political and military
rivals to the PLO.

(Taken from Palestinian Uprising of 1987 – 1993 – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 2)

Background As a
consequence of the 1947-48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and the 1948
Arab-Israeli War, some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs lost their homes and became
refugees.  Most of them eventually
settled in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.  The Palestinian Jews emerged victorious, in
the process establishing the state of Israel.  Then with the Israeli Army’s victory in the
Six-Day War in 1967 (separate article), the Israelis gained control of Gaza, the West Bank, and East
Jerusalem.  Israel imposed militarized authority over the
“occupied territories” (as the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East
Jerusalem were called collectively) as a means to deter
opposition.  Check points and road blocks
were raised, searches and arrests conducted, and civilian movement curtailed
and monitored.  Perceived enemies were
eliminated, imprisoned, or deported. 
Furthermore, the Israeli government encouraged its citizens to migrate
to the occupied territories, where Israeli housing settlements soon began to
emerge.

The Palestinians greatly resented the presence of the
Israelis, whom they regarded as a foreign force occupying Palestinian
land.  Furthermore, as the Israeli
authority became established and greater numbers of Israeli settlements were
being built, the Palestinians believed that their lands eventually would be
integrated into Israel.  The Israeli occupation was also perceived as
a serious blow to the Palestinian people’s aspirations for establishing a
Palestinian state.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization, or PLO, a political
and armed movement, was formed in 1964 and was headed by Chairman Yasser Arafat
to lead the Palestinians’ struggle for independence.  However, the PLO experienced many setbacks,
not only in the hands of Israel
but also by the Arab countries to which the Palestinians had turned for
support.  In 1970, the PLO was expelled
from Jordan and thereafter
moved to Lebanon
where, in 1982, it also was forced to leave. 
Subsequently, the PLO moved its headquarters to Tunisia, whose
distant location prevented the Palestinian leadership from exercising direct
control and influence over the affairs of Palestinians in the occupied
territories.  The PLO itself was wracked
by internal dissent among some factions that opposed Arafat, who had cast aside
his hard-line stance against Israel
and adopted a more conciliatory approach.

Furthermore, later developments in the Middle
East boded ill for the Palestinians.  Egypt,
the militarily strongest Arab country and a main supporter of the PLO, had
signed a peace treaty with Israel
in 1979 and ceased its claim to the Gaza Strip. 
Jordan had not only
expelled the PLO but had relinquished its claim to the West
Bank and consequently stripped the Palestinian residents there of
Jordanian citizenship.  Syria, another major backer of the PLO, had a
falling out with Arafat during the 1982 Lebanon War and began to support a
rival PLO faction that ultimately forced Arafat and his Fatah faction to leave Lebanon a
second time.  For so long, the Arab
countries’ regional security concerns centered on the Palestinians’ struggle
for statehood.  In the 1980s, however,
much of the concentration was on the Iran-Iraq War, relegating the Palestinian
issue to a lesser focus.  Palestinians
believed that many Arab countries, because of the Arab military defeats to the
Israelis, generally had abandoned active support for the Palestinians’
nationalist aspirations.

The Palestinians’ frustrations were compounded by dire
economic circumstances in the West Bank and Gaza. 
Nearly half of all Palestinians were poor and lived in refugee camps in
cramped, squalid, and poorly serviced conditions.  Unemployment was high and so was the
Palestinians’ birth rate, leading to more people competing for limited
opportunities and resources.

Ever since the Israelis took over the occupied territories,
tensions between Israelis and Palestinians persisted, which often erupted in
violence.  Then during the second half of
1987, these tensions rose dramatically, ultimately leading to a major
Palestinian uprising that was triggered by the following events.