Contents
Glossary
I. Introduction
II. Phase One
III. Phase Two
3.1 Consolidation of Popular
Palestinian Structures
3.2 Israel's Quest for Control
3.3 Economic Gains and Losses
3.4 Reformulation of International
Diplomatic Stances
IV. Phase Three
IV. Statistical Overview
Uprising Glossary
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Administrative Detention: Detention without trial
or charge, currently imposed for renewable periods of up to one year.
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Arrest Raid: Organised, mass arrests carried out by
Israeli troops by house-to-house searches, often during curfews.
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Autonomy/the autonomy plan: A political scheme which
proposes limited powers of self government for the Palestinians of the
West Bank and Gaza Strip.
-
Barricade: Erected by Palestinian protesters to block
streets and roads to hinder movement of IDF vehicles and personnel in the
occupied territories.
-
Border guards/border police: Paramilitary units of
the Israeli police force.
-
Boycott Campaign: Palestinian campaign to boycott
Israeli products where there is a locally produced alternative.
-
Camp David Accord: Peace treaty signed between Israel
and Egypt in 1977 through which the Sinai was returned to Egypt.
-
Checkpoint: Army roadblocks where cars are stopped
and inspected.
-
Civil Administration: The name given to the Israeli
military government in the early 1980s.
-
Clash: A violent confrontation between the Israeli
military forces and Palestinian civilian demonstrators.
-
Closed Military Zone: An area in which entry is forbidden.
Closed military zones are declared routinely by the IDF, preventing access
to journalists and others.
-
Closure Order: Military order closing a particular
institution for a specific or indefinite period.
-
Collaborators: A term applied to Palestinians who
cooperate with the military authorities, often providing intelligence information
on people within their own community. Many collaborators carry Israeli
supplied guns.
-
Curfew: A period when a community is forced to stay
indoors for a specific period. Curfews normally last for days and
often weeks, with occasional one hour breaks for food provisions.
-
Death Squads: Term given to teams of Israeli soldiers
operating in civilian dress, with the aim of assassinating Palestinians.
-
Declaration of independence: Document issued by the
Palestine National Council on 15 November 1988, declaring the formation
of the independent State of Palestine; thus far recognized by 160 nations.
-
Demolitions and Sealings: The destruction or permanent
closure of a home carried out under ' the British Defence (Emergency) Regulations
promulgated in 1945. The orders for demolitions and sealings -are
"administrative measures" carried out without due judicial process.
-
Deportation/Expulsion: The eviction of Palestinians
from the occupied territories. Deportations are carried out on two
grounds: for alleged security (ie political) reasons and for lack of a
valid residence permit. The deportations on political grounds can
be appealed in the Israeli High Court: to date, no order has ever been
overturned.
-
East Jerusalem: The area of the West Bank which was
annexed by Israel following the 1967 invasion.
International agreement to which Israel is a signatory,
which includes standards for the treatment of civilians under occupation.
Israel refuses to recognise the applicability of the Geneva Convention
to the occupied territories.
-
Fourth Geneva Convention: International agreement
to which Israel is a signatory, which includes standards for the treatment
of civilians under occupation. Israel refuses to recognise the applicability
of the Geneva Convention to the occupied territories.
-
General Strike: A form of non-violent protest in which
all shops and businesses close, workers strike from their jobs in Israel,
and public and private transport stays off the roads.
-
Green Line: The border separating the state of Israel
from the occupied territories (ie the 1949 armistice line).
-
Identity Cards: All Palestinians over the age of sixteen
must carry an ID or face arrest. They are confiscated and withheld
as a means of control.
-
Intifada: Arabic word for the Palestinian uprising,
literally meaning the "rising up and shaking off".
-
Knesset: The Israeli parliament.
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Liberated Zone: Term used to describe areas controlled
by the Palestinians, which the army does not or cannot enter.
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Military Court: Courts used for security cases in
the occupied territories. Rulings are made by military judges.
-
Military Orders: A series of amendments made to the
pre-occupation legal system in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. About 1,200
and 900 amendments respectively have been made by the Israeli authorities.
-
Plastic Bullets: Live bullets with a hard plastic
tip, fired at the same velocity as live ammunition.
-
Popular Committees: The term covers a broad range
of community-based organisations, functions ranging from self-help and
service provision to organised protest. They were declared illegal
by the Israeli military authorities on 17 August 1988.
-
Popular Education: Alternative systems of education,
organised during prolonged school closures.
-
Refugee: Palestinian and descendants who left or fled
from their homes in 1948 and were forbidden from returning. Many
live in UN administered Refugee Camps.
-
Rubber Bullets: Steel marble encased in state of Israel
from the occupied territories rubber, fired at lower velocity than live
ammunition. Can be fatal if fired at close range.
-
Siege: Although allowed to leave their homes, residents
cannot leave their town or village, thus they are prevented from going
to their jobs or tending their crops.
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Settlement: Israeli communities established in the
occupied territories since 1967, inhabited by settlers.
-
Tax Raid: Organised sweep by Israeli officials and
soldiers, during which identity cards, automobiles, personal goods are
often seized in an effort to force payment of taxes.
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Town arrest: Military order restricting an individual
to their home town for security reasons.
-
Tree Uprooting: Trees are uprooted and either confiscated
or destroyed by the army as a punishment after alleged stone throwing.
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UNLU: Unified National leadership of the Uprising
within the occupied territories, comprising the main elements of the PLO.
-
UNRWA: United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, originally established in 1949 to
assist Palestinian refugees.
Introduction
The aim of this essay is to provide an overview of major
trends and characteristics of the Palestinian uprising during its first
two years. Developments have been divided into three arenas - Palestinian,
Israeli and international - and into three phases which have followed more
or less chronologically but with some overlap. The material has thus been
structured into sections which loosely correspond to phases in the uprising.
The table below shows the framework that has been adopted in this report.
In phase one, mass Palestinian protest erupted and spread,
meeting a violent response from the Israeli army, which in turn provoked
intense international condemnation of Israel.
In phase two, the Palestinians worked to consolidate
the community-based "popular" structures which served both to sustain protest
and to create organisational forms independent of the Israeli authorities.
The Israeli authorities responded with an all-out war against these popular
structures in which the level and range of sanctions employed were progressively
escalated. Meanwhile at the international level, many countries reformulated
their diplomatic stance towards the Palestine question, including Jordan,
which "broke ties" with the West Bank, and the US, which opened diplomatic
relations with the PLO. The Palestinian Declaration of Independence played
a central role in this process.
In phase three the violence and sanctions of the previous
phases continued unabated, however new developments were mainly in the
diplomatic arena. Following the Declaration of Independence the PLO launched
a diplomatic initiative for peace through a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Israel responded a few months later with a "peace initiative"
of its own, which explicitly excluded both a Palestinian state and a role
for the PLO, and combined the launch of this plan with a publicity campaign
against the uprising and the killing of collaborators. At the international
level the outcome remains uncertain with much diplomatic manoeuvring around
US and Egyptian proposals, and the prospect of a tripartite US-Egypt-Israel
meeting in the near future.
Material for this essay has been collected from a variety
of sources, including JMCC daily and weekly summaries of the local press
and publications by the Palestine Human Rights Information Center, Al-Haq,
and The Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights. It is not intended to
provide comprehensive documentation of human rights issues, as this is
being done by other groups. The intention is rather to provide a summary
of major elements and trends of the uprising as a contribution to a better
understanding of its nature.
The Structure of the Report
|
Arena
|
Phase 1
|
Phase 2
|
Phase 3
|
| Palestinian |
Mass protest |
Consolidation of Popular Structures |
Diplomatic Intiative |
| Israeli |
Violent Repression |
Israel's Quest for Control |
Israeli "Peace" Intiative |
| International |
Shock and Condemnation |
Reformulation of Diplomatic Stances |
New points and Plans |
Phase one corresponds to the period of the
first few months of the uprising when Palestinians took to the streets
in large numbers, staged prolonged commercial strikes and put forward a
series of political demands.
During this initial stage of the conflict
Israel responded with direct physical violence as well as carrying out
mass arrests, deportations and school closures, all measures which were
to remain a permanent feature of Israel's war against the uprising throughout
the next two years. On the internal front as well as in the international
arena, Israel meanwhile sought to deny that there was anything unusual
about events in the occupied territories and blamed the situation on outside
inciters, including the media.
2.1 Mass Palestinian
Protest
On 9 December 1987 protests erupted in Jabalia
Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip, after the deaths of four Gazans in a collision
involving an Israeli vehicle. During the protests a Palestinian youth was
shot dead by Israeli troops. That evening thousands of Jabalia residents
joined the funeral procession. As protest spread across the occupied territories,
Shifa Hospital in Gaza City began admitting the first casualties of the
uprising, most with live ammunition wounds.
The following day another Palestinian youth
was shot dead during anti-occupation protests, this time in the city of
Nablus. On 11 December, three more Palestinians were killed in the neighbouring
Balata Refugee Camp and a fourth died later in hospital of wounds sustained
that day. As news of the killings reached the main city of Nablus, people
took to the streets in protest, burning tyres, building makeshift barricades
and stoning IDF patrols. By the end of the day Al-Ittihad Hospital, Nablus,
had admitted over 50 people injured by IDF gunfire.
By the morning of 13 December protest had
spread to the streets of East Jerusalem. Two days later demonstrations
following Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa mosque were broken up by Israeli police
using teargas and batons. With young people taking over the main shopping
streets, stoning Israeli troops and attacking Israeli banks, press reports
described the commercial centre of East Jerusalem as looking like "a battlefield".'
As curfews remained in force in the Jabalia
and Balata Refugee Camps, a commercial strike called in response to the
army killings took hold across the occupied territories. On 16 December
the commercial shutdown became an all-out general strike as all traffic
and trade in the occupied territories came to a standstill.
A second general strike paralysed the occupied
territories on 19 December. On this occasion, Israel's Arab population
came out on strike too, calling for an end to the occupation.
By 21 December protest in the West Bank reached
the northernmost town of Jenin where one youth was shot dead and a further
two succumbed to injuries, sustained the previous day. December 21 also
marked the day that two protestors were killed in the West Bank village
of Tubas. Most confrontations had previously been confined to the larger
Palestinian population centres - towns and refugee camps: now even remote
villages were entering the fray.
While with time the form of demonstrations
changed as Israel introduced a series of measures designed to quell all
street protest, daily demonstrations and resulting clashes when the army
intervened, remained a consistent feature of the whole two year period.
The graph below shows the monthly numbers of demonstrations and clashes
as recorded by JMCC from the local press. These numbers provide only an
index of the frequency of clashes: the real number may be substantially
higher as local press is subject to censorship, and many demonstrations
go unreported. The method of counting used is that only one demonstration
or clash can be counted per day per location.
From the beginning, protest was combined with
political demands. The first communiqué of the uprising, signed
by "The National Forces in the Gaza Strip", was distributed on 18 December,
just nine days after the protests had erupted. The leaflet referred to
the escalating street protests as a "popular uprising" and called on Palestinian
communities in the occupied territories to organise themselves behind the
demand for an end to the Israeli occupation and Palestinian self-determination
in an independent state. Similar early communiqués distributed across
the West Bank and Gaza Strip all reiterated these demands as did petitions
and sit-ins from women's groups, merchants' committees and groups of well-known
local Palestinians.
By the early spring, communiqués which
included commentary on current political developments as well as directives
for protest were being issued in the name of the UNLU (see glossary) on
a regular fortnightly basis.
2.2 The Israeli Response:
Denial and Violence
Denial
On 21 December, with 23 Palestinians already
dead, Israeli Prime Minister Shamir was still insisting that there was
"no cause for concern ... There's nothing new in this ... we have overcome
this kind of thing in the past and we will do so now and in the future".
The same day Israeli Defence Minister Rabin, who had just returned to Israel
from an 11-day visit to the US, stressed that he had felt no need to cut
short his trip despite the ongoing protests in the occupied territories.
During the American tour Rabin had declared that the trouble would "all
be over by Christmas" adding that the Israeli security forces would "use
whatever is needed to prevent it".
"You can't imagine what's happening there.
And there are places the journalists don't see. I'm sitting there in front
of a riot. Thousands of people are on the rampage, there's smoke everywhere
you look, and on the radio I hear some little Mickey Mouse announcing the
Strip is quiet. Are they having a joke at our expense? Or are they trying
to calm things down or something like that? On the radio they say the disturbances
are local. Local? I saw how well organised they were…."
Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip, Davar, 22 December
1987.
Israeli President Herzog on a visit to Britain
during the same period stated that there were only "small" incidents in
the Gaza Strip which he attributed to the increased influence of Muslim
fundamentalism, adding that such "incidents" were quite separate from events
in the West Bank which, according to him, were related to the commemoration
of the Balfour Declaration.
"Although the area is not entirely quiet,
the situation is already under control $ 6 announced Chief of Staff
Dan Shomron on the- day that f our Palestinians were shot dead in massive
demonstrations across the Gaza Strip, including two killed in the grounds
of Shifa Hospital. Journalists in the Strip that day, 15 December, reported
main highways littered with burning tyres, stones and makeshift barricades
with the commercial heart, Gaza City, a deserted ghost town.
"Terrorist organisations outside the country
are pressing their agents in the administered territories day by day to
exacerbate the security situation there", asserted Shamir to the Foreign
Affairs and Defence Committee in December, adding that the terrorists were
sending messages all the time through numerous channels". Other top Israeli
numerous channels officials, including IDF Chief of Staff Dan Shomron,
blamed the "violent public disorder" on more locally based agitators. "Under
no circumstances will we allow a small minority of inciters to rule over
the vast majority, which is in general pragmatic and wants to live quietly",
proclaimed the commander of the Israeli army.
As official Israeli concern over how Israel's
image was being projected to the rest of the world grew, the term "outside
agitators" soon came to include the media. In a press conference Coordinator
of Activities in the Territories Shmuel Goren spoke of "a campaign of agitation
[in which] Israeli elements were also participating". When asked to clarify
what he meant by the statement Goren replied, "the news element for example",
going on to explain that "relatively high" casualty rates were not caused
by troops indiscriminately opening fire on unarmed demonstrators as some
media reporindicated, but because "small units of soldiers were getting
into situations in which their lives were in danger and they had to open
f ire".
A few days later Israeli TV broadcast footage
shot by an Israeli crew of an Israeli security agent firing live ammunition
into a crowd of demonstrators, showing clearly that official standing army
orders - first shout a warning, then f ire shots into the air and only
shoot as a last resort - were not being adhered to in the field.
Army Violence
a. Shooting
The Israeli military at first responded to
the uprising by inflicting direct physical punishment on the Palestinian
population. Live ammunition, teargas and rubber bullets were all used to
disperse street demonstrators. Many Palestinians fell victim to the Israeli
armed forces when not directly involved in street confrontations and other
forms of public protest: some casualties were passersby, others were injured
or even killed inside their homes. Later the international press began
to report the assassination of a number of Palestinian activists by undercover
Israeli hit squads.
Death from live ammunition and "rubber" or
"plastic bullets" (see glossary) remained the major cause of Palestinian
deaths over the. two-year period. The graph below shows the monthly number
of deaths caused by the IDF, Israeli settlers and Palestinian collaborators,
using JMCC records from the local press.
Between 9 December 1987 and 30 November 1989
UNRWA reported 4,753 injuries by live ammunition and 1,378 by rubber bullets
in the Gaza Strip, in addition to 17,446 beating and 6,303 teargas-related
injuries.
b. Beating
"The first priority of the security forces
is to prevent violent demonstrations with force, power and
blows ... We will make it clear who is running the territories".
Defence Minister Rabin during a tour of Jalazon Refugee Camp,
Jerusalem Post, 20 January 1988.
Over the two days following this pronouncement
more than - 1 00 Palestinians were hospitalised with injuries inflicted
by clubs and rifle butts, which ranged from skull fractures and broken
bones to severe contusions all over the body. On a single day, 25 January,
200 cases of fractures and other injuries caused by beatings were admitted
to Shifa Hospital, the main hospital in Gaza city.,,
A report submitted by a delegation of US physicians
who were visiting the occupied territories from 4-12 February stated that
delegates had observed a pattern of:
"...dominant side-forearm and hand
shaft fractures ... which suggested deliberate policy
of systematic beating designed to disable but not to kill, to in
the maximum damage while reducing the of death ... indeed
the word "beating" does properly convey the literal pounding
mauling with clubs and other instruments required to produce the injuries
we saw".
The report also noted that both the scale
and severity of such injuries appeared to be even worse in the Gaza Strip
than they were in the West Bank.
However, as Amnesty International noted in
a special report released in August 1988, beatings did not begin with Rabin's
infamous pronouncement. Already on 17 December 1987, Amnesty had sent a
telex to Defence Minister Rabin expressing concern at reports of "Israeli
soldiers severely and often indiscriminately beating demonstrators with
clubs and rifle butts", noting that such activities, even in response to
demonstrators' stone-throwing, went "well beyond what might be considered
reasonable force".
Beating Palestinians
"A detainee sent to Fara'a prison will
be freed in 18 days unless the authorities have enough evidence to charge
him. He may then resume stoning soldiers. But if troops break his hand,
he won't be able to throw stone for a month an half." Jerusalem
Post, 20 January 1988.
"Soldiers told Hadashot that their
commanders had taught them how to use clubs, and they further said they
had received professional training from border guards. One of them said
"We can handle clubs just as well as we handle arms. The Arabs don't understand
anything. [We] have to pummel them with clubs and that will do the trick."
An Israeli journalist, Hadashot, 21 January 1988.
"I only know what orders I gave my soldiers:
I ordered them to beat up demonstrators break their bones, and draw blood."
A Gaza Strip army commander, Ma'ariv, 28 January,
1988.
c. Teargassing
Israeli armed forces used teargas not only
to disperse demonstrators but, according to Amnesty International, also
"in such a way as to constitute a punitive measure, to harass and intimidate
Palestinian residents in the occupied territories" . Reports of cases of
teargas fired into homes, schools, mosques and even hospitals became so
widespread during the first few months of the uprising that, in May 1988
one of the US-based manufacturers, Transtechnology, suspended shipments
to Israel "until such a time as Israel demonstrates that it is prepared
to use the product in a proper and non-lethal manner". 15 Teargas canisters
are marked "For Outdoor Use only"; instructions for use also warn that
canisters should not be fired directly at people. Even when the gas was
used "outdoors" it was often in refugee camps where narrow alleys and enclosed
spaces created high atmospheric concentrations of toxic gas. Saturation
of even larger areas occurred when Israeli helicopters dropped large quantities
of the gas onto built-up areas. Cases of serious injury and even death
were also reported when teargas canisters exploded on impact with the body.
Physicians for Human Rights observed as early
as February 1988 that exposure to high concentrations of teargas fired
in enclosed spaces is potentially lethal "particularly to infants and children,
the elderly and those with respiratory and cardiac disease", adding that
teargas can increase miscarriage incidence. Gazan doctors told the visiting
delegation that they had identified up to 40 cases of second and third
trimester fetal death and stillbirth following exposure to the toxic gas.
d. Mass Arrests
Israel immediately embarked on a policy of
mass arrests: according to Defence Minister Rabin, 1,978 Palestinians were
arrested between 9 December 1987 and 6 January 1988. Palestinian sources
estimated the number detained to be significantly higher. By 28 December,
amidst mounting threats from Israeli officials including Defence Minister
Rabin to deport and detain Palestinians in
order to stop the protests, the Arabic press calculated that the number
of Palestinians in detention had risen to approximately 2,500.
A new detention centre, Dhahariya Prison near
Hebron, was opened and a further two prisons already in use - al-Fara'a
in the West Bank and Ansar 2 in the Gaza Strip - were expanded with tents
to absorb the sudden influx of new detainees. By March 1988 the notorious
Ansar 3 prison camp, with an estimated capacity of 4000, had begun to function.
According to AlHaq, by I May 1988, more than 17,000 Palestinians, including
over 2,000 administrative detainees, had already been imprisoned. 18 By
the end of the second year of the uprising according to military sources
a total of 50,000 Palestinians had been arrested.
e. Deportation
On 3 January 1988, nine Palestinians charged
with "incitement" were served with expulsion orders. Despite international
condemnation of the measure including a UN Security Council resolution
calling on Israel not to carry through the deportations, on 13 January
Israel expelled the f irst four deportees of the uprising to Lebanon. In
carrying out subsequent deportations during the two-year period, Israel
claimed repeatedly to be removing the ringleaders from the arena of the
uprising. A total of 58 Palestinians were deported over the two years of
the uprising.
f. Schools and University Closures
Less than two weeks after the uprising began,
all Palestinian schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were ordered closed
for 3 days, 21 - 24 December.
During the first year of the uprising all
West Bank schools and vocational centres were shut down for nearly eight
months, denying 310,000 Palestinians access to any formal education. At
one stage even all kindergartens were ordered shut. During those periods
when blanket bans the whole of the educational sector were not in force,
Palestinian education was severely disrupted by individual closure orders,
and area-wide shut-downs throughout the uprising. Curfews also brought
classes to a halt; in the Gaza Strip a weekly average of 188 schools were
prevented from normal functioning due to the imposition of curfews between
September and December 1988.
All West Bank schools were again shut down
at the beginning of December 1989 (see JMCC, 1988, "Palestinian Education:
A Threat to Israeli Security?" for further information).
On 23 December 1987, four higher educational
institutions, all located in the Ramallah/Jerusalem area, were issued with
one-month closure orders. Hebron University together with the Islamic University
and the Palestinian Religious Institute in the Gaza
Strip were also ordered closed. By I February
1988 all six Palestinian universities and the 13 colleges run by the Palestinian
Council for Higher Education were shut down, depriving 21,857 students
of all access to further education. 21 All higher education institutions
remained closed throughout the two-year period.
In November 1989, the head of the Israeli
Civil Administration in the West Bank stated that
universities would only be allowed to reopen if demonstrations stopped.
Closures remain in force on grounds that large numbers of people gathered
together would incite unrest; however, small alternative classes have also
been broken up and banned by the Israeli authorities.
2.3 International
Condemnation
Israel's response to the uprising attracted
substantial international criticism.--Qn- 22 December 1987 the UN
Security Council passed Resolution 605 which "strongly deplored" Israeli
policies in the occupied territories violating Palestinian human rights,
"in particular, opening fire of the Israeli army, resulting in the killing
and wounding of defenceless Palestinian civilians". Voting was 14-0 with
only the US abstaining. 23 At the beginning of January the US voted against
Israel in supporting a Security Council resolution which called on Israel
to rescind the first deportation orders issued during the uprising.
American reservations concerning Israeli policies
were voiced in the early stages of the uprising. The US representative
to the UN expressed American government grievances "at the extensive loss
of life and the large number of people who have been wounded in demonstrations",
also noting that Israel's measures to restore security were "unacceptably
harsh". He furthermore refuted Israeli claims as to the cause of the unrest
stating that the demonstrations "were spontaneous expressions of frustrations,
and were not externally sponsored". Later the same week, US State Department
Deputy Spokesperson Phyllis Oakley called on Israel to refrain from using
excessive force against Palestinian demonstrators. 25 By 19 December the
White House official spokesperson had announced that President Reagan was
"upset and worried" .
A Time Magazine poll at the end of January
1988 revealed that 45% of non-Jewish Americans believed the US should cut
aid to Israel because of its actions; a further 56% supported the idea
of a Palestinian homeland in the occupied territories.
In Western Europe the response was also markedly
critical with a number of governments calling for an end to Israeli measures
in the occupied territories. The West German Foreign Ministry criticized
Israeli measures and called on Israel to recognise its responsibilities
as an occupying power in accordance with international law. The same communiqué
stated that the EEC was ready to provide economic and social assistance
in the occupied territories to achieve this goal .
President Herzog came under strong attack
from a number of British MPs during a visit to London in December. In an
interview with the London-based Jewish Chronicle, British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher stated that, in the light of current events
in the occupied territories, the convening of an international peace conference
on the Middle East was necessary. 29 In part as a protest against Israeli
violence, the European Parliament postponed the ratification of trade protocols
with Israel in mid-December 1987.
Damage Limitation
"Every photo or TV film showing a riot
does Israel damage…" Prime Minister Shamir, Israel
in Medialand, 1989.
On a number of occasions during the early
stages of the uprising, television coverage Of Israeli actions in the occupied
territories elicited immediate international outrage most notable of these
occurred in February 1988 when CBS footage of four Israeli soldiers pounding
the arms of two bound youths with rocks was screened around the world.
Israeli embassies abroad were flooded with protest calls from a shocked
international public almost as soon as the broadcast was over.
During the first few weeks of the uprising
journalists had already filed stories of youths tied to army jeeps as a
shield for soldiers attempting to enter Palestinian localities, and of
troops urinating in Gazan water supplies. By January there were increasing
reports of Palestinian fatalities incurred after exposure to concentrated
teargas in confined spaces. Television cameras captured intensive teargas
"bombardment" by IDF helicopters of Palestinian towns and refugee camps.
In February, a report of Palestinians being buried alive by soldiers attracted
further attention.
By March restrictions against the media were
in force with Israeli military personnel from generals to privates authorised
to turn back television crews and other journalists from localities declared
closed military areas. Large areas of the occupied territories were declared
off-limits to all press, and on several occasions media was denied all
access to the occupied territories (see JMCC, "Reporting Harrassment: Israeli
Restrictions of Press Freedom in the West Bank and Gaza Strip", for more
details).
After the first few weeks of the uprising, a
new phase began which lasted until around the end of 1988. During this
phase Palestinians began a process of disengagement from the structures
of occupation. More permanent forms of community Organisation began to
take root. At the same time, Palestinians set out to rescind Israel's de
facto economic annexation of the occupied territories, a result of the
one-sided incorporation of the West Bank and Gaza markets into the Israeli
economy and the employment of Palestinians from the occupied territories
as cheap labourers in Israel. Through a boycott of Israeli produce and
a withdrawal of labour, Palestinians loosened economic links with Israel.
Instead, an increased use of local resources was meant to build up independent
economic structures: cultivation of fallow land; employment in local business,
a rise in local enterprises' production; and, on a more individual level,
home economy, all strengthened the drive towards self-in response Israel
hit back hard with a series of measures designed to reassert authority
and Reinforce Palestinian dependency. In economic sanctions were particular
implemented with increasing severity, both as a means of collective punishment
of individual communities, and as a reaction to Palestinian attempts at
asserting some degree of economic independence. In spite of initial Israeli
resistance, however, Palestinians succeeded in securing a direct export
agreement with the EEC. As the struggle for authority continued on the
ground, several developments in the international arena occurred which
were seen as being a result of the uprising.
3.1 Consolidation
of Popular Structures
The Commercial Strike
Since mid-December 1987 Palestinians in many
areas had shut shop for days and in some cases weeks on end. At first such
closures were carried out as an on-the-spot protest at Israeli army actions,
in particular the killing of Palestinian protestors. Soon, however, complete
commercial shut-downs began throughout the occupied territories. Shutting
shop, a non-violent form of economic protest, had previously elicited punishments
of fines and arrest from the Israeli authorities; during the uprising,
however, the extent of Israeli measimplemented against the striking shopkeepers
became as unprecedented as the scale of the commercial protest.
On 2 January 1988 Israeli troops wielding
crowbars forced open the steel shutters of a number of striking shops in
the city of Nablus and then threaten ed to weld shut shops which still
refused to open. In protest at the Israeli action a two-week commercial
shutdown was declared by all local shop and business owners in Nablus.
As the IDF moved through other West Bank towns forcing shops open, similar
commercial strikes went into force until soon the whole of the Palestinian
commercial sector was -at a voluntary standstill.
In the face of the complete commercial strike
the army stepped up its efforts to force the shops open, A number of shops
were welded shut in Jericho as a warning to other shopkeepers. In Ramallah
troops smashed the locks of shuttered shops, clubbed merchants and then
confiscated their keys in order to prevent the shops being locked shut
against army orders.33 On one occasion an army patrol locked a defiant
merchant inside his shop and then fired a teargas canister into the premises;
the merchant was rescued by passersby who rushed the man to hospital in
convulsions.34 As soldiers breaking shop locks became a common sight in
the streets and markets of the West Bank and Gaza, so too did the teams
of Palestinian locksmiths who moved down the. streets after the army repairing
the damaged locks. 35 After some weeks of army lock breaking, shop-shutters
were simply left unrepaired after the IDF had finished its business. Other
merchants stopped locking up their property altogether, relying on community
trust and solidarity to prevent any pilfering. No cases of looting were
reported.
"In contrast to the IDF spokesperson's
report that it was business as usual in the West Bank, nearly total commercial
strikes were reported to have been in effect in all West Bank cities. In
East Jerusalem the general commercial strike entered its eleventh day…
In Nablus the security forces employed a new method for deterring merchants
[from striking]: metal chains attached to heavy military vehicles were
tied to the locks of a few shops and were used to rip locks and shutters
[off their hinges]." Ha'aretz, 20 January
1988.
With the commercial shutdown showing no signs
of breaking despite the IDF's efforts, it was the shopkeepers themselves
who took the initiative in opening up once more. On 12 January 1988, leaflets
distributed in Nablus and Ramallah explained that Palestinian merchants
had decided to go into business again, but for only three hours each day.
The decision enabled the population to buy basic provisions while at the
same time ensuring the-commercial strike, as a form of anti-occupation
protest, could continue indefinitely. The strike rapidly turz6d into a
battle for authority over when shops were to remain open and when they
were to stay shut.
With Palestinians deciding when to open and
close their own shops, the IDF was forced to change its tactics. From now
on, instead of breaking open shops at any time of day, troops began forcing
shops to close down-in, the morning opening hours set by the UNLU and local
merchants committees, while trying to make shops stay open in the afternoon
strike hours. As more shops continued to be welded shut in various West
Bank localities, Gazan merchants were warned that two shops would be sealed
shut for each day that the commercial strike continued. On Sunday 17 January,
26 shops in Ramallah, including some Christian-owned shops which traditionally
stay closed on Sundays, were damaged by army attempts to break the shutters
open; one merchant required 15 stitches after being beaten for refusing
to obey army orders to open his shop. In some places even pharmacies were
ordered closed despite the fact that such enterprises were exempted from
the strike so that essential medical supplies remained accessible.
This battle for control continued until early
May when an unprecedented military order came. All shops in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip were ordered shut for a three-day period, from 5-8 May.
The order was issued in retaliation for a general strike observed throughout
the occupied territories on 4 May. Immediately after the three-day ban
had been announced by troops patrolling Nablus with loudspeakers, shoppers
were prevented from leaving the market area with their purchases. In Qalqilia
teargas was used to force merchants to comply with the order and shut their
shops. Army patrols in Ramallah forcibly stopped all commercial activity
in the marketplace.
On 14 May the local press reported that, for
the first time since the war against the striking shops began, all shops
remained open in the morning without interference. The IDF had given up
their attempt to control the shopkeepers.
Community Committees
Early uprising communiqués all stressed
the importance of mutual support and solidarity, with increasing emphasis
being placed on the formation and expansion of local emergency committees.
General calls to assist those sectors of the population most in need soon
became specific calls for concrete aid to be organised and coordinated
through "popular" or "uprising" committees.
a. Food supplies
Rural Palestinian communities organised the
collection and transport of food donations to the besieged Gazan refugee
camps and later to West Bank towns and cities under curfew. Farmers in
the Jordan Valley, the most fertile region of the West Bank and a centre
for agricultural production, sent truckloads of local vegetables to the
Gaza Strip.
Wealthier merchants and f actory owners contributed
merchandise from their stores and warehouses. People went from door to
door collecting money from those who could afford to give and then bought
food supplies to be stockpiled and later distributed in times of curfew
and siege.
In Nablus popular committees collected food
donations and stockpiled supplies in expectation that the IDF would soon
begin to apply the curfew weapon in the West Bank, too. When, in late February
1988, Nablus and its environs were put under a 13-day-long curfew, the
foodstuffs were distributed from house-to-house across the flat rooftops
or by foot during Intermittent one-hour liftings.
b. First Aid
Early uprising communiqués also called
upon Palestinian doctors, nurses and health workers to join medical committees
working for the, relief of the sick as well as those injured on the streets.
Through such committees medical personnel coordinated their efforts to
provide free treatment to the population while Palestinian pharmacists
and pharmaceutical companies gave away medicines without charge.
As the number of Palestinian casualties mounted,
an emergency situation was declared with volunteer first aid teams set
up in many districts to treat those injured in clashes with the army. The
move was prompted by both the sheer scale of the casualties and the fact
that IDF raids on hospitals to arrest those wounded in protests were on
the increase.
c. Guarding the Neighbourhood
"Guarding committees" or "nightwatch" committees
as they were also dubbed were set up on a round-the-clock rotation basis
to keep watch for approaching army patrols or settlers.
d. Popular Education
With all West Bank schools being repeatedly
closed by the authorities, education, too, became the province of the popular
committees. Palestinians viewed the closures as a collective punishment
intended to Pressurise the whole population to back down from their protest.
So, rather than allow students-, to lose a whole academic year, popular
committees began to run classes in private. homes. Throughout the uprising
UNLU communiqués repeatedly called upon students and teachers not
to give up their basic right to education and to organise structures that
would provide students with access to learning despite the bait on formal
education imposed by Israel. Later, popular education was expanded to include
a campaign to eradicate adult illiteracy and moves to set up a Palestinian
educational curriculum. Study outside the constraints of Israeli rules
and regulations governing formal education provided to develop schooling
in ways not previously possible (for more details see JMCC, 1988, "Palestinian
Education: A Threat to Israel's Security?").
Disengagement
As early as communiqué 6, the UNLU
was calling for Palestinians to move towards comprehensive civil disobedience,
including-. withdrawal of labour from Israel on general strike days and,
where possible, on a more permanent basis; refusing to pay occupation taxes
and fines; boycotting Israeli products and instead encouraging the development
of a local home-grown economy; and boycotting the structures of occupation.
a. Withdrawal of Labour
General strikes, in addition to being a form
of non-violent protest, also inflicted damage on Israeli economy.
"The Israeli construction industry, which
relies on Palestinians for some 40% of its workforce, has been particularly
hard hit by the withdrawal of Palestinian labour, either on strike days
or on a more permanent basis. The Israeli press reported absenteeism levels
of up to 70% during the summer of 1988. At one construction site the company
director estimated that his firm was about 3 months behind schedule on
projects and commented that absenteeism had risen from 45-50% in Feb. 88
to around the 70% mark in the July/August period. The chairman of the Jerusalem
Association of Builders and Contractors confirmed that most local contractors
were 3-4 months behind schedule". The Jerusalem
Post, 7 October 1998.
Economic disruption soon proved to be a highly
effective political weapon. During the first five weeks of the uprising
Palestinian absenteeism in Israeli workplaces 'was approximately 50% resulting
in a slowdown in the construction industry, a breakdown in municipal services,
especially rubbish collection, and a shortage of cheap agriculture labour,
such as pickers, at a crucial seasonal point.
Israel reportedly made emergency plans to
deal with this crisis; plans included recruiting school children, students
and demolished soldiers; recruiting cheap labour from the Far East; bringing
more Lebanese workers from the "security zone and encouraging Jewish labour
to return to the land.
As Palestinian absenteeism became a more and
more permanent feature of Israeli enterprises, the Israeli Building Workers
Union introduced a programme of psychological counselling as part of its
efforts to attract demobilised soldiers to work on building sites. The
counselling was intended both to help soldiers overcome barriers concerning
the low status of such work and to overcome negative feelings at working
alongside the reduced Palestinian workforce so soon after serving in the
army.
The graph above shows the average number of
days worked per Palestinian employee in 1987 and 1988 in Israel, showing
a clear drop in all sectors as a result of strikes.
b. Boycott of Israeli Produce
"In the long run the [self-sufficiency]
movement will succeed - 1.7 million is a vast internal market.
The problem is Israeli opposition in the form of bureaucratic
obstacles and obstructions…" Meron Benvenisti,
director of the West Bank Data Base Project.
In the 20 years prior to the current Palestinian
uprising, the occupied territories had become an important market for Israeli
exports with $850 million worth of Israeli products sold in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip each year. Israel had also derived substantial revenues
from taxes on goods imported into the occupied territories through Israel.
A refusal to purchase Israeli products wherever
a locally produced alternative was available was, like withdrawal of Palestinian
labour from the Israeli market, viewed from the start as a means by which
simultaneously reduce Israeli revenue and support the development of the
local Palestinian economy. First carried out spontaneously by consumers
in the occupied territories, the boycott of Israeli produce was then taken
up as a general policy by the UNLU.
c. A Home-Grown Economy
UNLU communiqués issued in late January
1988 called for promotion of the Palestinian economy especially through
purchase of locally produced goods to go hand in hand with the boycott
of Israeli goods. Shopkeepers, consumers and wholesale buyers were to play
a crucial role in implementing the boycott in its initial stages.
By early March the boycott campaign was turning
into a drive towards self-sufficiency. Not only were factories called upon
to increase output in order to keep up with the new increased local demand
but the whole population was encouraged to concentrate on home economy.
The self-sufficiency movement was also a response
to specific needs in the Palestinian community. With food shortages created
by prolonged curfews, many breadwinners in prison, workers staying away
from jobs in Israel on general strike days and commercial strikes, many
families were experiencing a sharp drop in income. Home economy provided
a means of subsistence through which such hardships could be overcome.
d. The Tax Revolt
Occupation taxes imposed on the Palestinian
business and commercial sector since 1967 had been widely resented. In
particular the imposition of VAT had been met with marked resistance. By
1987, VAT revenue had risen to approximately $50 million per annum. Other
taxes imposed included import/export taxes and income tax. This taxation
did not, however, entitle Palestinians to the same social benefits which
Israeli citizens receive in return for tax payment.
Before the uprising, in response to anxieties
voiced within Israel that the occupation was a fiscal burden on Israeli
citizens, Meron Benvenisti, director of the independent West Bank Data
Base Project, declared: "occupying the territories was not a burden on
the Israeli tax payer, rather the contrary".
Refusal to pay taxes levied by the Israeli
military authorities was initially an act designed to protest specific
Israeli actions. Tax refusal during the uprising, like the battle for control
over the shops, developed into a conflict between Palestinians who refused
to fund the occupation from their own pockets and the Israeli authorities
who insisted that all taxes should be paid. By early spring 1988 what had
begun as an act of protest was acquiring the markings of widespread tax
revolt. Refusal to pay taxes became part of the disengagement process.
For example Communiqué 12, released
in April 1988, saluted the collective stand taken by Ramallah
merchants who resolved at a special meeting not to pay taxes until the
occupation ended; the communiqué upheld their
decision as an example to be emulated by all Palestinian shopkeepers and
business owners. Shopkeeper committees in various towns soon followed suit,
with many merchants handing back VAT and income tax books. At the end of
May, merchants in Qalqilia tore up tax ledgers and threw them into the
streets, vowing not to pay taxes to the Israeli authorities.
By the end of March 1988, Israeli officials
announced that tax collection was down 32% from the previous year. Then
at the beginning of June 1988 senior Civil Administration officials admitted
that tax revenue over the previous six months had dropped considerably.
They also announced that as a result of reduced income caused by falling
tax revenues, 1,000 Palestinian employees were to be laid off.
One West Bank mayor revealed that his municipality
had not received any payments from the municipality's share in the fuel
tax. Other West Bank mayors said that they were barely able to pay employees'
salaries.
e. Resignations
i. Civil Administration Employees
Mass resignations by Palestinian employees
in the Civil Administration began in early March in response to UNLU calls
for Civil Administration employees and members of the police force to resign
from their posts. The first response came on 6 March 1988 when West Bank
civil servants working in the Taxation Department of the Civil Administration
began resigning en masse.
On 13 March 1988, 25 Palestinians working
in the Gaza branch of the Civil Administration Tax Department left their
jobs. Then in response to a special UNLU leaflet distributed in the Gaza
Strip on 21 March, more employees resigned) including Absentee Property
officials.
On 2 June all Palestiniemployees in the Ramallah
Vehicle Licensing Department handed in their resignations while in Bethlehem
22 income tax officials walked out.
When all Palestinian employees in the Ramallah
section of the Vehicle Licensing Department submitted their collective
resignation, each resignee was immediately summoned to local military headquarters
where Israeli officials, after bribery and threats had failed, forced them
to board a military bus which transported them to their former work-place.
When they refused to begin work in the of f ices, they were beaten by the
soldiers who had taken them there. During the next few weeks the resignees
were taken to the building each morning and ordered to start work. They
were only allowed to leave for home long after working hours were usually
over. Three of those who resigned were arrested on charges of inciting
the other employees to resign. The head of the licensing department was
threatened with deportation if he and his co-workers did not return to
work.
ii. Police
The local press reported that hundreds of
police handed in their resignations one day after communiqué 10
- with its call for resignations - was released. 52 The entire Palestinian
police force resigned in Hebron and Jericho following a meeting convened
by 14 Palestinian police officers where the decision to leave was taken.
Within a matter of weeks local civil courts were paralysed due to the lack
of police available to enforce court orders. 53 By 13 March around 300
Palestinian police had resigned including about half of the Gazan force
(total 300).54 By the summer of 1989 Israeli sources reported that only
20 of the 430 Palestinian police formerly stationed in the Gaza Strip had
not resigned.
The Israeli authorities claimed that the resignation
of police would result in a crime wave sweeping the West Bank and Gaza.
A special UNLU communiqué distributed 20 March in the name of the
"Coordinating Committee for the National and Popular Committees of the
Uprising in Occupied Palestine" noted that in fact it was Israeli troops
who were endangering people's lives and property and called on popular
committees to organise "guardian committees" to protect the community,
"justice committees" to arbitrate local disputes and even "traffic committees"
to ensure safe driving.
In February 1989 the Israeli chief of police
in the Gaza Strip reported that crime in the Gaza Strip had decreased by
25% since December 1987, the month that the uprising began. 56 The Israeli
Minister of Police announced the closure of several police stations in
the Gaza Strip due to a manpower shortage.
iii. Appointed Mayors/Municipal Councils
In democratic elections in 1976 Palestinians
the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) turned to office largely pro-PLO
mayors. The elected mayors were subsequently dismissed and replaced by
Israeli-appointed alternatives.
During the uprising popular antagonism to
the appointees was reinforced by repeated UNLU calls for the officials
to step down. The year 1988 saw a steady stream of resignations of appointed
mayors and municipal councils.
As calls for resignations continued, popular
demonstrations against those who continued to remain in office added to
the momentum.
On 12 April almost half the appointed councilors
in Rafah resigned while later the same week Hafez Tuqan, the appointed
mayor of Nablus, along with two council members, also resigned.
iv. Informers
The Israeli authorities had long cultivated
a network of informers as part of the system of control exerted over the
Palestinian population. Coerced through a combination of threats and bribes,
individuals, or sometimes whole families, became part of the intelligence
network operated by the Israeli security services. In return for supplying
information on local political activists, informers would receive certain
favours from the Israeli authorities.
The Wastonaries
"Wasta means in the local dialect, brokerage,
a broker and also a pimp… Most of them began as collaborators with security
forces and afterwards when their relations with the Israeli administration
became institutionalized, they displayed themselves as having connections
and influence inside the local Israeli administration… Therefore, incases
where an Arab inhabitant has submitted a certain request to the Israeli
administration for example for a permit to build a house, and his request
was denied… he still had the possibility to turn to the people with connections,
to that wastonary who walks so freely in the corridors of the administration
building". David Grossman, "The Wastonaries",
in Koteret Rashit, 29 April 1987.
Such people also became part of a system of
patronage whereby Palestinians in need of an official document from the
Civil Administration - a license for trade or construction, for
example - were often forced to go through the informers who also acted
as middlemen wielding influence with the Israeli-run department concerned
in return for a fee. Palestinians were thus often obliged to pay twice
for the privilege of obtaining a travel permit: once to the middleman and
then a second time to the Civil Administration itself. During the uprising
public hostility towards informers/collaborators became increasingly overt.
At first informers were asked to sever their links with the Israeli authorities
and given ample opportunity to repent; numerous. cases of collaborators
turning in their weapons were reported.
Later, intimidation became more common those
who had been given ample opportunity to repent were issued with final warnings.
Some were subsequently killed.
3.2 Israel's Ouest
for Control
Enforcement of a wide range of new sanctions
occurred at a time when the Palestinian struggle for survival in the face
of the initial Israeli crackdown was being transformed into a more permanent
form of revolt against Israeli rule. The drive for disengagement was gradually
building momentum as the former dependency on the Israeli labour market
and Israeli-manufactured products, on the Civil Administration and on Israeli-authorised
education was being supplanted by Palestinian initiative and self-sufficiency
ethos.
The uprising began to constitute a serious
threat not just to Israeli control of the streets but to the previous monopoly
on authority in every aspect of Palestinian life under occupation. By mid-March
respected Israeli commentators like Zelev Schiff started to refer to the
uprising as "economic warfare" and "a war of attrition".
Israeli counter-measures included: curfews,
tax collection campaigns, financial restrictions, restrictions on movement
and sanctions against Palestinian agriculture. These economic sanctions,
which were less conspicuous as compared to violent army reactions, were,
in the long term, very damaging to Palestinian economy. By contrast, as
they attracted less media attention, economic sanctions did not inflict
major damages on Israel's image abroad as shootings and beatings
had done before.
Curfews
Curfews were used as an instrument of control
and punishment and continued throughout the two-year period. Frequently
curfews were imposed as a way to contain mass demonstrations; curfew confined
residents to their homes, took the demonstrators off the streets and prevented
the spread of public protest to other areas. At the same time curfew also
constituted a form of mass punishment since it imprisoned whole communities
and kept them in enforced isolation from the outside world sometimes for
weeks on end. Palestinians in Jalazon Refugee Camp near Ramallah spent
100 of the first 150 days of the uprising under round-the-clock curfew;
the city of Nablus was under curfew for 36% of the same period (65 of 365
days).
Families sitting on the roofs of their houses.
were ordered indoors; anyone found in the streets risked being beaten,
shot or arrested.
"The aim was to show the residents who
is the real boss in the Strip and to prove to them that we can employ measures
they haven't dreamt of".
IDF officer comment on instructions to cut
off electricity, interfere with telephone lines and interrupt water supplies
to Gazan refugee camps, Hadashot, 19 January 1988.
Curfews also provided the army with an easier
environment in which to carry out search and arrest operations as well
as enabling Civil Administration officials to collect taxes and impose
fines with impunity. Physical assaults on house-bound residents and vandalism
of private property by troops were common during curfew. Press restrictions,
with journalists only allowed into curfewed areas if at all - under strict
army, escort, meant that such measures could be implemented without cameras
present to record the proceedings.
In addition, curfews effectively paralysed
the local economy, depriving the population of the means of earning their
livelihood. Often a curfew on one location had widespread implications
for a large area; a curfew on Nablus, for example, brought the entire northern
West Bank economy to a halt since all the villages in that area rely on
Nablus' central market.
On a number of occasions press sources estimated
that more than one million Palestinians were confined to their homes in
mass curfews imposed on the whole of the Gaza Strip, most major West Bank
towns, cities and refugee camps as well as on many rural villages. Such
blanket curfews were imposed on the occasion of the Israeli elections and
the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in November 1988; the first
and second anniversaries of the uprising, and Independence Day again in
1989.
The graph below shows monthly records of daily
curfews imposed as recorded by JMCC from newspaper reports, showing that
a consistently high rate of curfews has been sustained since February 1988.
The Tax Collection Campaign
As the tax boycott began to strengthen, Israel
launched a concerted campaign to collect all taxes, including raids on
shops, arrest of shopkeepers, confiscation of property, a new "clearance"
policy and imposition of curfews. Much as this campaign was designed to
reassert Israeli control, it also effectively drained the Palestinian economy.
Israeli tax officials backed by soldiers embarked
on a widespread campaign of daily raids on shops and businesses. During
such raids the Israeli officials would confiscate ID cards and business
papers and order owners to report to the local taxation department. There
merchants were f aced with the choice of either paying the sums demanded,
having merchandise confiscated or serving a prison sentence.
For example, on 6 July 1988, as part of a
mass tax collection campaign conducted throughout the West Bank, 250 Palestinians
from the Ramallah/al-Bireh area were arrested while a total of 150 cars
were seized and impounded. In addition, numerous shops in the area were
raided with Israeli officials confiscating televisions, fridges and other
household appliance.
"Usually when tax officials raid the shops
of merchants or workshops, the confiscated accounts are examined
differently from a normal audit. The merchant is ordered to pay
an incredible amount of money, including fines, and the amount
will be linked to the cost of living index. The sum might be four
times the original tax and, with inflation, it might exceed 15-20
times the original sum."
Accountant Odeh Jibril from Ramallah . Imposing
curfews in order to facilitate tax collection also became common with soldiers
and tax officials raiding homes to impound property or rounding up residents
in local schools or central squares and then demanding proofs of tax payment.
Roadblocks were frequently set up at the entrance
to Palestinian towns and villages. Each passing vehicle was stopped while
tax officials checked through lists of those who had not paid their taxes
in that particular area. The car and the drivers
license were then confiscated from the tax offender until the required
sum was paid.
On 5 July over 300 cars were seized in Ramallah
and impounded at local military headquarters, returnable on payment of
taxes. 62 Another sanction was asset freezing: in June 1988, the Jerusalem
municipality asked Israeli banks to freeze the assets of 16 out of the
35 Palestinian-run hotels in East Jerusalem on grounds that municipal taxes
had not been paid. Even when some of the hoteliers protested that were
in the process of negotiating tax cuts due to falling revenues caused by
the slump in the tourist industry, they were ordered to pay.
Another sanction was the new "clearance" permit:
clearance documents proving that all taxes had been paid had to be obtained
before Palestinians in need of banking facilities had the
Civil Administration issued any travel or export permit, drivers license
or vehicle registration, a renewed ID card or a birth certificate.
In Gaza additional pressure was applied to
obtain taxes by the forced replacement of ID cards. New cards were issued
only to those residents who had obtained clearance documents from the Israeli
Tax Department, proving that they had paid all Israeli and local taxes,
utility bills, traffic tickets and were not wanted by "police or security
forces investigators" . Any Gazan who failed to obtain clearance was prohibited
from leaving the Strip. As many Gazans work in Israel, this sanction threatened
Gazans with complete loss of livelihood.
In a similar way in July 1988, and in January
1989 in the West Bank, all cars were ordered to have new license plates,
again only obtainable after full tax clearance. This made any cars with
the old plates readily identifiable. In addition a "special" car tax had
to be paid, ranging from NIS 100-500 (US$70500) depending on the car model,
before the new obligatory license plates could be acquired. "I was forced
to pay 2,800 shekels in taxes owing on a factory that closed down two years
ago. I need the car. I had no choice", protested one Gazan car driver.
Financial Restrictions
On 14 February 1988 Shmuel Goren, Coordinator
for Affairs in the Territories, announced that new measures were being
taken to block the transfer of "PLO funds" into the West Bank and Gaza.
Halfway through March the limit on the maximum amount of cash which Palestinians
were allowed to bring with them across the Jordan bridges was reduced from
JD 2000 to JD 400.
Since no Arab bank had been allowed to operate
in the occupied territories until 1987 and then only in a very limited
fashion, taken to depositing savings in Jordanian banks across the river.
The banking system in the occupied territories relies on a network of money
changers who keep their accounts in Amman.
The result of the restrictions on cash inflow
was that overnight Palestinian charitable and educational institutions
as well as businesses found themselves unable to pay employees' salaries
and many faced financial insolvency.
Palestinian families dependent on remittances
from relatives working abroad also faced financial hardship. The freezing
of cash inflow from Jordan meant that private individuals could not cash
pay cheques.
In August 1988 the receipt of money from abroad
through branches of the Cairo-Amman Bank was reduced to JD 400. In October
the limit on the amount of money that could be transferred was reduced
to JD 200 (approx US$ 470) per person per month.
Movement Restrictions
In the Gaza Strip a nighttime curfew lasting
from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. was enforced on 14 March 1988. At the same time
Palestinians from Gaza were forbidden from travelling to the West Bank
without a special permit issued by the military authorities while West
Bankers were not allowed to enter the Strip.
Telecommunications
On 15 March 1988 all international telephone
links to Palestinian localities in the occupied territories were cut; only
international telecommunications with Israeli settlements continued to
function. Israel claimed that the measure was intended to prevent contacts
with the PLO abroad. In practice media and human rights information, commerce
and trade, contact with family members living abroad were all seriously
affected. International telecommunications remained completely blocked
for more than a year until 9 April 1989.
Beit Sahour Palestinians Resist Taxation
"We will not finance the bullets to kill
our children, the growing number of prisons, the expenses of the occupying
army, the luxuries and weapons provided to collaborators".
Statemenissued by Beit Sahour residents during
the six-week tax siege, September/October 1989.
At 5p.m. on 7 July 1988 Israeli tax collectors
together with IDF troops raided the homes of 50 Beit Sahour merchants and
confiscated their ID cards stating that the cards would be returned only
on payment of outstanding taxes. Earlier that day military checkpoints
had been erected at all entrances to the town where all passing vehicles
were inspected and a number of them confiscated and impounded in the playground
of a local secondary school. In addition, troops stopped a number of residents
in the streets and confiscated their ID cards.
In response to the campaign, hundreds of people
marched on the police station and turned their ID cards in an act of solidarity
and protest at the tax raid.
A two-week curfew was then clamped on Beit
Sahour during which time all telephone lines in the town were cut.
Just over a year later, in mid-September 1989,
Israeli troops and tax officials launched an intensive tax collection campaign
in Beit Sahour. Tax raids on homes and businesses began on 21 September
and continued unabated until the last day of October. During the operation
homes were emptied of furniture, household appliances including fridges;
stoves, televisions and stereos; in some cases even children's toys were
seized. Troop sacked shops and other enterprises confiscating all goods
from the premises. Cases of looting were reported. At least NIS 3 million
worth of goods and possessions were seized, NIS 50,000 in cash confiscations
and approximately JD 11,600 frozen in bank accounts. Some of the seized
goods were then auctioned off to the Israeli public despite international
protest at the move.
During the operation the town was held in
complete isolation with all telephones disconnected and not press permitted
entry. Delegations of foreign consuls, Church dignatories and Israeli peace
groups were all turned back when they attempted to visit the town. Troops
prevented foodstuffs and other supplies from entering Beit Sahour.
Tax resisters were arrested and held in detention
pending trial on charges for refusing to pay taxes, refusing to pay fines
imposed for non-payment and refusing to hand over ledgers to the taxation
authorities. Of the first 40 to be tried by 23 November, all opted for
imprisonment with sentences of more than a year in some cases rather than
pay the sums required.
At a conference held on Beit Sahour by the
Nobel Institute, Oslo, Norway, the town was mentioned as a potential nominee
for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Agriculture
A range of sanctions have been implemented
against Palestinian agriculture during the uprising including sieges at
harvest time to prevent crop harvesting or sale, punitive bans on export
and uprooting and burning of trees (for more details see JMCC, 1989, "Bitter
Harvest: Israeli Sanctions Against Palestinian Agriculture During the Uprising,
Dec 1987 March 1989").
The following account is from an Israeli soldier
who was involved in imposing one of the many harvest sieges, on the town
of Qabatia. Qabatia had already been subjected to several weeks of continuous
curfew when he began his stint. Electricity supplies had been cut off,
food provisions were not allowed in and people allowed to leave their homes
for only two hours every three days:
"As we reach the end of a night patrol,
we spy a family bringing in a bucket of tomatoes. Suddenly
our jeep springs into action as if the future of our country depends
on it. We corner them and all are told to report to the commanding
officer. They tell us they have no food, are simply starving to
death and had no choice ... A 16-year-old barefoot kid starts
running away from us. In a chase, jeep versus bare feet, the
officer cocks his rifle and points at the kid from 10 meters away.
I shout at him to stop - that's how the "statistics" occur
... Soldiers steal vegetables from Arab fields and can't
understand when I say that you can't do that. You can't arrest 10-year
olds for picking tomatoes - their own tomatoes - and then laughingly
take them Yourself ... ".
The following are examples of export bans:
In July 1988 the export of all plums from
Beit Ummar and Idna was forbidden; villagers in Yamoun near jenin were
prevented from exporting their crops to Jordan; the export of all water
melons to Israel or Jordan was banned.
On 13 September the Israeli authorities banned
15,000 farmers from Halhoul and two nearby villages from marketing their
main product, grapes. The region harvests 10,000 tons of grapes each year
- approximately one-f ifth of the West Bank's annual grape crop. The ban
meant severe financial hardship for the many families who depend on the
crop for an income. 69 Community leaders in Halhoul were summoned to local
military headquarters and told that the ban would be lifted if they remained
quiet in the town.
Tree uprooting was another sanction which
has occurred throughout the period. Between December 1987 and March 1989
an estimated 19,000 trees valued at US$ 3.8 million were uprooted by the
army after alleged stone throwing incidents (see JMCC, 1989, "Bitter Harvest").
JMCC has records of 427 tree uprooting incidents since the uprising began.
The graph on page 26 shows the number of incidents by month.
Popular Organisations Outlawed
Following King Hussein's severance of ties
with the West Bank, the Israeli authorities launched a concerted attack
on Palestinian institutions under the pretext that they served as covers
for P.L.O. activities.
"The establishment of popular committees
is against the law. Any person who cooperates with these
committees will be punished ... The Civil Administration
is the only authority in the occupied territories,"
The West Bank commander of the Israeli army,
Amram Mitzna, on Israeli television, 1 July 1988.
On 18 August, Defence Minister Rabin issued
a statement declaring all popular committees to be "illegal organisations."
Overnight, any person participating in the activities of a popular committee
became liable to a ten year prison sentence. Attending a committee meeting,
being in possession of leaflets, contributing money and services to its
cause was now a serious offence.
Declaring that the popular committees were
the moving force behind the uprising, Rabin went on to state that they
were responsible for what he termed the "institutionalization of the uprising".
In practice, the decision simply meant that,
instead of being accused. of secret "security crimes," Palestinian detainees
were now imprisoned on charges of "belonging to popular committees."
3.3 Economic Gains
and Losses
Israel Counts the Cost
Official Israeli statistics showed that a
US$ 300 million decline in exports to the occupied
territories for the' year 1988. Israel's Industry
and Trade Minister Ariel Sharon admitted that there had been a "drastic
reduction" in the consumption of Israeli products in the occupied territories
since the beginning of the uprising - although he explained the fall in
terms of the declining standard of living. 73 Palestinians, however, put
the fall down to the success of their boycott.
Quoting local factory owners observations,
the Arabic press reported a dramatic increase in sales of Palestinian products,
that while the pre-uprising local market often preferred Israeli-made commodities,
now Palestinian factories could barely keep up with the new consumer demand
for Palestinian products. Some local manufacturers reported sales increases
of 30-50%.
Israeli Officials Count the Cost
Official Israeli estimates of Economic Results
of the Uprising
Trade and Industry Minister Sharon that between
1987 and 1988 sales of Israel products to the occupied territories fell
by the following percentages:
Agriculture products 60%
Textiles 18%
Clothes 8%
Rubber/Plastic 11%
Non-metalic minerals 10%
Quarry stone 8%
Overall losses to the Israeli Economy due
to the Uprising
Minister of Communications Gad Ya'acobi estimated
a total loss of NIS 1.5 billion.
In July 1989, Deputy Finance Minister Yossi
Beilin told an Israeli bonds meeting that the Palestinian boycott of Israeli
products cost Israeli businesses a total of US$ 300 millioin lost trade
since the start of the uprising. Beilin added that the uprising had cost
Israel 3% of its annual GNP.
In February 1989, the Bank of Israel published
preliminary figures revealing the direct loses incurred in 1988 as a result
of the uprising:
-
trade surplus in goods and services exported to the West
Bank and Gaza Strip totaled only US$ 56 million in 1988, a two-thirds drop
compared to the previous year when Israeli surplus stood at $174 million;
-
- in 1988, Israeli exports to the occupied territories dropped
to an estimated $650 million from $928 million in 1987;
-
Israeli imports from the West Bank and Gaza Strip fell to
$170 million compared with $304 million in 1987;
-
Services purchased from the occupied territories - mainly
its labour force - dropped to $639 million from $670 million in 1987.
At the end of May 1989, a Bank of Israel representative
stated that Israeli exports to the occupied territories had fallen by approximately
40% while Palestinian imports to Israel had dropped by 48%. In total Israel's
surplus with the West Bank and Gaza had decreased by 76% to US$ 42 million.
The same representative stated that the uprising
had cost Israel US$ 650 million last year in lost exports which included
US $280 million in tourist revenues that the uprising deterred and "further
incalculable losses by creating a climate of uncertainty that deterred
investors - both foreign and Israeli - from putting money into the economy".
The Palestinian Economy
In February, the Ramallah Chamber of Commerce
reported that Palestinians had suffered an average 50% decline in living
standards since the beginning of the uprising. The report put the drastic
fall down to two factors: the economic war being waged by the Israeli authorities
in an attempt to subjugate the Palestinian population, and the decline
in the Jordanian dinar.
Amidst Israeli fears that the crisis could
fuel the uprising still further, Israeli observers also cited the economic
slowdown in Israel as a factor in the financial hardships. Analysts noted
that the decline in the Israeli economy had resulted in price increases
in the prices of basic foodstuffs, which Palestinians cannot boycott and
must import from Israel, and rising unemployment in both Israel and the
occupied territories with Israeli employers sacking Palestinian workers
first when making staff cutbacks and reducing the amount of work subcontracted
out to Palestinian firms.
The Jordanian dinar, which is the major currency
in the West Bank and Gaza, first began to decline during the summer of
1988. By February 1989, it had fallen from US $3.30 to US$ 1.60 (NIS 5.5
to NIS 2.7) and so lost approximately half of its former value. Most West
Bank employees receive their salaries in dinars. Palestinians contended
that the Israeli government was at least partly responsible for the crisis
since it had recently sold a large amount of Jordanian dinars that it held-
in deposit and had thus flooded the market, lowering the exchange rate
still further.
3.4 Reformulation
of International Diplomatic Stances
As the uprising continued, new diplomatic
moves were launched in the international arena concerning the Palestinian
issue. The first was by the then US Secretary of State George Shultz.
The Shultz Plan
"We have a workable plan," announced Secretary
of State George Shultz on arrival in Israel, 25 February 1988. The plan
proposed a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to represent the Palestinians
in negotiations. The scheme entailed the division of administrative responsibility
for the occupied territories between Israel and Jordan, with no Palestinian
state and little substantive change from the status quo. The Palestinians
rejected the plan; when Shultz went to East Jerusalem to meet with twelve
Palestinians invited by the Americans, none of them turned up. He held
the press conference, intended to mark the end of a successful meeting,
alone.
Soon after Shultz returned to Washington,
the US Justice Department, on 12 March, ordered the PLO to close its observer
mission to the United Nations in New York.
Shultz again came to Israel at the beginning
of June to discuss the "US peace proposal", and on 5 June Palestinians
throughout the occupied territories again observed a general strike in
protest at the Shultz plan.
The whole basis of the Shultz plan later became
unworkable when King Hussein took the decision to cut ties with the West
Bank.
The Arab Summit
In early June, the member states of the Arab
League convened an emergency summit conference to discuss the Palestinian
uprising. The extraordinary session ended with resolutions which gave,
for the first time, the full backing of the Arab world to the goal of an
independent Palestinian state. UNLU communiqués had appealed to
the Arab nations to declare a clear public position which affirmed the
role of the PLO as the leadership of the Palestinian people, rejected US
proposals, in particular the Shultz initiative, and called for an international
peace conference leading to an independent Palestinian state.
Resolutions passed by the Arab Summit
-
endorsed the national rights of the Palestinian people to
self-determination in an independent state under PLO leadership;
-
confirmed the PLO's role as the sole legitimate representative
of the Palestinian people;
-
upheld the need for an authoritative international conference
on the Middle East to be convened under UN auspices;
-
condemned US policies in the Middle East for the first time
in many summits;
-
pledged full backing for the uprising.
Jordan Cuts Ties
At the end of July 1988, King Hussein of Jordan
announced in a special broadcast that he was "severing legal and administrative
ties" with the West Bank. The UNLU had been openly critical of Jordan's
role in the occupied territories from the beginning of the uprising. Early
communiqués urged people to boycott An-Nahar, the pro-Jordanian
daily newspaper, and called for Jordanian appointed parliamentarians to
step down.
The Palestinian Debate
Debate and discussion over the Palestinian
political programme intensified during the summer of 1988.
Released in early July, a document written
by Bassam Abu Sharif, a political advisor to Arafat, provoked political
debate over the need for a new political programme. The document called
for a two-state solution, and a diplomatic offensive to openly pursue the
goal.
On 12 July, the UNLU sent a letter to the
United Nations General Secretary Javier Peres de Cuellar and the five permanent
members of the Security Council urging them to intervene to end Israeli
actions in the West Bank and Gaza.
As the PLO began to talk of convening an emergency
Palestine National Council (PNC) session as early as September 1988, the
debate focussed on what exactly the agenda of the forthcoming extraordinary
conference was to be. A unilateral declaration of Palestinian independence;
a government in exile; and a provisional government composed of Palestinians
from the occupied territories as well as PLO officials abroad, were all
possibilities for the new political programme that the PNC was widely expected
to endorse.
During this period of intense debate, UNLU
communiqués reiterated calls for Israeli withdrawal to the 1967
borders and the sending of an international peacekeeping force to oversee
the transition to Palestinian independence in the West Bank, including
East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip
In a speech delivered to the European Parliament
in Strasbourg on 13 September, PLO Chairman Arafat not only declared that
the PLO accepted all UN resolutions relevant to the Palestinian/Israeli
situation including a Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338) providing
that all parties recognise the Palestinian right to self-determination.
Chairman Arafat also expressed PLO readiness to negotiate with Israel within
the framework of an international conference, and accepted all UN resolutions
as the basis for negotiations.
UNLU Communiqué No. 26, released immediately
after Arafat delivered his speech, hailed the statement and repeated Palestinian
calls for the UN to affirm Palestinian rights and force Israel to withdraw
from all territories occupied in , East Jerusalem included.
Subsequently, through its communiqués
the UNLU stepped up its calls for Palestinian independence and reiterated
five main demands:
-
withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian population
centres;
-
an end to the use of the British Mandate regulations and
cancellation of all Israeli military orders passed since 1967;
-
an end to Israeli settlement of the occupied territories
and dismantling of all existing Israeli settlements;
-
the release of all Palestinian detainees and closure of Israeli
prison camps;
-
an international observer force to oversee a transition period
to self-determination in an independent state with its capital in Jerusalem.
Prior to the PNC meeting, Israel was concerned
that it would be at a diplomatic disadvantage if the PLO adopted a new
platform; Chief of Staff Shomron stated on 7 December that "if the PLO
is to cross the threshold and accept 242 and 338, then Israel will be faced
with a problem".
On 15 November, the Palestine National Council
declared the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with the
explicit recognition of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. This
declaration marked the start of a new diplomatic campaign, in which the
PLO explicitly called for a two-state solution.
Israel responded characteristically:
"Our intention is to say clearly that the
resolutions in Algiers are meaningless. Defence Minister Rabin,
Jerusalem Post, 10 November 1988.
"There is nothing new or surprising in
the PNC decisions which are just another step in the terrorist
organization's war against Israel's independence and existence."
Israeli Prime Minister/Likud party leader Yitzhak Shamir, Jerusalem
Post, 16 November 1988.
"We feel very strongly that behind the
smokescreen ... of moderation, what really happened is
the PNC took a more extreme position ... [The Palestinians]
are not accepting 242, they are in fact rejecting it. " Israeli
Foreign Minister/Labour party leader Shimon Peres, Jerusalem Post,
17 November 1988.
One of the consequences of the new Palestinian
diplomatic stance was the opening of the US-PLO diplomatic relations.
The United States had adhered to an agreement
with Israel signed in 1975 not to negotiate with the PLO unless it recognised
Israel. Following the PNC, Israeli officials continued to insist that nothing
had changed. The US administration at first supported the Israeli position
by refusing Arafat an entry visa to address the UN General Assembly in
New York.
On 13 December 1988, Chairman Arafat, denied
access to New York, instead addressed the United Nations-,, General Assembly
in Geneva. Israeli Prime Minister Shamir termed the speech "a monumental
act of deception." So The Americans thought otherwise. The following day,
the United States announced its intention to open dialogue with the PLO.
The third phase of the uprising extended through
the year 1989. In phase three, the Palestinians sought to promote their
new peace plan, and hence make political gains in the international arena,
while the Israelis, under pressure to make some kind of positive response,
came up with a competing plan of their own. In the international arena
there were a series of maneuvers and statements related to the respective
proposals. At the time of writing, the consequences for a future adoption
of the new political programme at settlement remain unclear.
Over the same period the demonstrations and
protests in the occupied territories continued without a reduction in frequency
(see page 5) as did Israeli measures against the uprising. In addition,
several new measures were imposed, including new opening fire regulations
for the IDF, the introduction of new identity cards for released prisoners,
and new regulations for house demolitions, deportations and administrative
detention. Economic sanctions also took a new turn when restrictions were
imposed on the entry of Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
Israeli Defence Minister Rabin publicly warned that Israeli measures against
the uprising would increase if Palestinians failed to accept the Israeli
elections plan.
4.1 The Palestinian
Diplomatic Initiative
The International Campaign
Following the Declaration of Independence,
the Palestinians embarked on a campaign of promoting their peace plan in
the international arena while at the same time continuing the uprising.
"In the past few weeks the diplomatic aspect
of the Palestinian problem has changed shape more radically than at any
time since Israeli occupied what used to be British Mandatory Palestine
in June 1967… roles have been reversed". Sir Antony Parsons, former
British Ambassador to Iraq, in Middle East International, 6 January
1989.
The diplomatic campaign aimed to secure world
recognition for both the PLO as leadership of the Palestinians and their
programme for peace - an independent state side by side with Israel. Within
ten days of the the PNC, 60 states had recognised the Palestinian state,
including two of the five members of the UN Security Council, all the Arab
states (excepting Syria), most African nations and the socialist bloc.
Some - notably France, Greece and Italy - expressed support for the principle
of creating an independent state. Others, while withholding full recognition
on grounds that the new state had no territorial sovereignty, of f icially
acknowledged its existences.
In Tunis Arafat met British Foreign Office
Minister William Waldgrave in a meeting that marked the opening of high-level
PLO-British contacts. Only a few days earlier Arafat had held talks with
Gerald Kaufman, the British Shadow Foreign Secretary. Soon Geoffrey Howe
then Foreign Secretary, added more weight to changing British policy in
the Middle East when he declared that "the Palestinians have gone as far
as they can reasonably be expected to go ... it is up to Israel to make
the next move". In the wake of the November Declaration of Independence
he had already stated that it was time "Israel matched Palestinian concessions".
Prime Minister Thatcher commented during a visit to Washington that "when-it
looks as though [the Palestinians] are going in the right direction, if
you don't encourage them, you won't get any further moves.
By March 1989, 160 countries had recognised
the independent State of Palestine; Israel founded in 1948, was still only
formerly recognised by 80 states. By the beginning in May the first president
of the Palestinian state Arafat, was on visiting terms with most heads
of government in Western Europe, the East and the developing world. In
the meantime, despite repeated Israeli objections, the PLO-US dialogue
in Tunis continued.
May was also the month in which Arafat arrived
in Paris to pronounce the former Palestinian National Charter caduc
(a French legalistic term meaning null and void or lapsed), implying
that the new constitution of the State of Palestine superceded the
old charter. This answered the demands of proIsrael critics who argued
that as long as the covenant had not been publicly cancelled, the two-state
formula was only a tactical ploy. Arafat's chosen platform, a f ace-to-face
meeting with the head of state of one of the five permanent members of
the UN Security Council, not only provided an indicator of the rise in
status that the PLO now enjoyed but, with France about to assume the rotating
chair of the European Community, also displayed a sense of diplomatic timing.
The EEC countries voiced strong appreciation
of the Palestinian acceptance of ' UN Security Council Resolutions 242
and 338 and the recognition of Israel as a major step forward in solving
the Arab-Israeli conflict, highlighting the Palestinian right to self-determination
as a necessary condition for lasting peace in the Middle East. The Venice
Declaration had adopted the two-state programme as the most promising way
forward some years earlier. "The PLO has done what the EEC has been asking
it to do since we adopted the statement in Venice in June 1980," it noted
an Italian diplomat soon after the PNC declaration.
With Foreign Minister Shevardnadze's tour
of the Middle East in late February, the SovietUnion affirmed support for
Palestinian self-determination and underlined its calls for an international
peace conference involving the PLO. Meanwhile in the United States, opinion
polls indicated a change in attitude to Israel. A survey conducted jointly
by the Washington Post and CBS revealed that 52% of those
interviewed now held a negative attitude towards Israel while 56% stated
that they no longer considered Israel to be a reliable ally.
Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue
The new political programme facilitated closer
links between the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements. "Peace Now",
for example, now supported direct negotiations with the PLO. Joint demonstrations
and meetings between Israeli and , Palestinian groups proliferated on the
common platform of Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and
negotiations with the PLO.
Mobilising for Peace
From the start of the uprising Israeli peace
groups had staged protest and provided aid to Palestinians in the occupied
territories. As the number of Israelis willing to protest against the occupation
rose, more demonstrations took place. By early 1989, with the uprising
in its second year, the peace movement was not only staging camp-ins outside
Ansar 3 in the Negev but was also participating in peace visits to the
occupied territories arranged by Palestinian community leaders.
Organisers of the Peace Days explained that
they were intended to allay Israeli doubts concerning the peaceful intentions
of the uprising by underlining that the uprising was targeted not against
Israelis but rather directed towards peace with them.
At the beginning of March a day of "peace
meetings" was scheduled to take place across the West Bank. Two thousand
Israelis entered the West Bank to find soldiers under orders from Defence
Minister Rabin to block roads to arranged meeting places. However when
the prepared meetings were thus prevented from going ahead, Palestinians
in other areas staged impromptu welcomes to the Israeli visitors instead.
One such meeting took place in Tubas after the IDF turned back a group
of peace activists trying to reach the nearby al-Fara'a Refugee Camp.
Shamir portrayed the Israel participants in
these meetings as traitors who were sabotaging "the struggle for our very
existence". The Palestinian press offered an analysis of the Israeli premier's
fury:
"What makes Shamir angry is that the Israel
have started to understand, after this revelation of Palestinian public
opinion, that the uprising is in essence a peace movement whose
stones are as olive branches; the stones are thrown at the Israeli
military presence but are turned into flowers to be offered to the
Jewish representatives of peace who aspire to have two states
for two peoples - with no enmity, no hatred, but with good relations
and common aspirations for security, cooperation and peace".
Editorial in Attalia, 9 March 1989
During another Peace Day held in late May,
Israeli peace activists were greeted by villagers in Nahaleen only six
weeks after a Border Police unit shot dead five Palestinians in a nighttime
raid on the village. 88 Israeli delegations of peace activists visited
various other Palestinian communities during the year, including Beit Sahour
in the aftermath of the intensive tax collection operation.
Flouting the Anti-Peace Law
Under the 1986 Amendment to the Anti Terrorism
Ordinance, any direct contact with a member of a "terrorist Organisation"
became an offence punishable by imprisonment.
In 1988, four members of an Israeli peace
delegation were each sentenced to six months in jail for meeting with PLO
officials in Rumania in 1986. Then, in early 1989, four Israeli Knesset
members including a Labour MK participated in a peace dialogue with a PLO
delegation in Paris. Parliamentary immunity from prosecution meant that
they were not prosecuted for breaking the law. Later the same year the
veteran Israeli peace activist Abie Nathan was jailed for meeting PLO Chairman
Arafat in Cairo.
4.2 The Israeli
Response
As the PLO's image continued to improve, pressure
mounted on Israel - in particular from the United States - to make some
response. Israeli Prime Minister Shamir eventually came up with a plan
for elections which aimed to buy Israel time both in the international
arena and on the ground where one year of intensive military campaign had
yet to accomplish its objective of defeating the uprising. Shamir later
acknowledged that the Israeli plan had been motivated by the public relations
crisis Israel was f acing abroad, especially in the US.
Israel on the Defensive: The "Peace Initiative"
The Israeli "peace initiative" was officially unveiled in May 1989 after
several months of gestation.
Six months previously, in December 1988, Likud
Prime Minister Shamir had produced a plan for municipal elections to be
held in the occupied territories, on condition that the Palestinians halted
the uprising before the elections, and providing that the region remained
under Israeli control during the election period. Thereafter the details
of the plan remained unclear. What it was that Israel intended to negotiate
with the locally-elected "administrative council" was not disclosed by
Shamir.
At the time Shamir was under increasing pressure
from within the Israeli establishment as well as from abroad to come up
with a plan to deflect criticisms of inaction and impotence.
Then, at the end of January 1989, Labour Defence
Minister Rabin put forward a rival plan of his own, without leaving any
doubt about what was on offer: following "restoration of order" over a
period of three to six months, elections were to be held to select representatives
who would then become part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation
which was to negotiate "autonomy". After an interim period of "self-rule",
Palestinians were to be allowed to choose between confederation with Israel
or confederation with Jordan.
Soon after Rabin had announced his plan, Shamir
himself clarified what his own proposals meant. In an interview with the
French newspaper Le Monde, he asserted that there were two non-negotiable
issues: no negotiations for an independent Palestinian state, and no negotiations
with the PLO. He wound up the interview by declaring, "Israel will not
participate in an international conference and no one will force it to
do it
UNLU communiqués issued during this
period interpreted the Israeli proposals as another Israeli attempt to
impose an alternative leadership to the PLO and promote a vague concept
of autonomy in place of the Palestinian call for full independence.
a. Playing for Time
The year 1989 opened for Israel with strong
American criticism of Israeli human rights violations in the occupied territories.
The 1988 US State Department's Report on Human Rights Worldwide took Israel
to task on several counts including causing many unwarranted Palestinian
deaths and injuries and implementing harsh measures against the popular
committees.
A few months later, US Secretary of State
Baker criticised Israel in a speech delivered to the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee, the pro-Israeli lobby:
"For Israel now is the time to Jay aside,
once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel
... and to reach out to the Palestinians as neighbours who
deserve political rights".The Jerusalem Post, 23 May 1989
The same speech also called on Israel to end
settlement building in the West Bank and Gaza and to reopen Palestinian
schools.
Israeli Intelligence
Not all of the Israeli establishment was in
agreement with Shamir: the annual review of the Israeli intelligence services
presented to the Israeli cabinet by Chief of Military Intelligence Ammon
Shahak concluded in March 1989 that:
-
No alternative leadership to the PLO exists in the occupied
territories. There is no option for negotiations with any Palestinian element
without the full consent of the PLO;
-
Jordan will not assume a leading role in any future diplomatic
process;
-
The new two-state solution position of the PLO, although
not endorsed by all factions, is accepted by the majority and represents
a real change in the orgainsation's policy;
-
The uprican only be stopped in conjunction with a major diplomatic
achievement for the Palestinians;
-
The lack of Israeli diplomatic flexibility is a basis for
the potential erosion of US support for Israel.
The report was released to the press by members
of the Alignment. One day after the report's findings were made public,
Shamir denounced the report as "a total lie". Labour leader Peres made
no comment. Jerusalem Post, 21 March 1989.
In the same month the Jaffee Center for Strategic
Studies, known as the top Israeli national security think-tank, published
a report supporting the possibility of a Palestinian state" after a period
of confidence-building of 10-15 years". Jerusalem Post, 9 March
1989.
At the beginning of April, Prime Minister
Shamir announced, during a visit to Washington, a "new" peace plan in which
elections were to be held in "Judea and Samaria" to elect Palestinian representatives
with whom Israel could negotiate during "an interim period of autonomy
pending a final settlement." Egypt and Jordan were to be involved in the
final negotiations. Shamir described the elections which he envisaged as
"free" and "democratic".
President Bush welcomed the Israeli proposals
as "encouraging". Yet just prior to the visit, Secretary of State Baker
had told the House of Representatives Committee that Israel might have
to talk to the PLO. It appeared that Israel had succeeded in gaining time.
Middle East International commented:
"Above all Mr Shamir wants time. That is
the immediate stake that he is playing for, and the hint
about elections may be a good way of buying time. The word has a
familiar and reasonable sound in Western ears". Middle East
International, 14 May 1989
On 14 April, the text of a cable circulated
from the Israeli Foreign Ministry to Israeli embassies around the world
explained that Palestinians who would stand in the proposed municipal elections
would have to agree in advance to participate in a process leading to "interim
self-government". In an interview with Ha'aretz, Israeli Defence
Minister Rabin announced that he would arrest and imprison any Palestinian
candidate who declared their membership of the PLO.
On Shamir's return from Washington, the Israeli
government endorsed a joint Shamir- Rabin proposal which clarified beyond
all possible doubt what the Israeli elections entailed. The 14 May cabinet
session laid down a detailed 20-point programme which stipulated, among
other conditions, that the uprising must halt before any elections were
to be held and that the elections were to bring forward "representatives
for a transitional period of self-rule" who would then negotiate a "permanent
settlement". Point 3 revealed that the essence of the Israeli plan was
to stop far short of Palestinian independence and to firmly bypass the
PLO.
Three days later Shamir delivered a speech
to the Knesset in which he declared: "We shall not give the Arabs one inch
of our land, even if we have to negotiate for 10 years ... We won't give
them a thing" . An editorial in the Palestinian newspaper Attalia commented
that "from the start, the purpose of the elections idea was clear - it
was designed to force the Palestinians to reject it.
On 5 July following the addition of more conditions
to the Israeli elections proposal, Prime Minister Shamir stated:
"Settlement in Judea, Samaria and Gaza
will continue ... Every -Jew who wishes to do so will
be able to settle in any part of Greater Israel ... There
will be no foreign sovereignty in any part of Israel. The Arabs
of East Jerusalem will not participate in the elections. We
will do away with all terror and violence before any negotiations
get under way. There will be no negotiations with the PLO ...
[and] no Palestinian state in the Land of Israel." The
Jerusalem Post, 6 July 1989.
b. The Palestinian Position
While the Israeli government claimed that
they were looking for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with
whom they could engage in dialogue, local Palestinian leaders publicly
stated that "the address for negotiations was the PLO".
In this regard, Abba Eban, ex-Labour Minister,
noted:
"The Defence Minister speaks of a hidden
race called "non-PLO Palestinians in the
territories" whom Israeli leaders will select from among "the
leaders of the uprising" and who will emerge out of thick anonymity,
defy the unanimous. consensus of the Arab world and form
a separate delegation independent of the PLO in Tunis.
Candidates for this employ7nent
are presumably being interviewed in Arab villages, in
refugee camps, in detention centres and in other arenas not always
congenial to the free expression of political attitudes, in the
meantime the Labour Party joins the Likud in rejecting contact
with the PLO ... We refuse to negotiate with those who are
willing and are ready to negotiate with those who don't exist
... Can anyone seriously believe that a Palestinian Organisation
which can get 160 states to affirm its representative status can
be totally and permanently excluded from the negotiating process?"
Abba Eban in Jerusalem Post, 14 July 1989.
With the US administration expressing support
for the Israeli plan, Palestinians both in the occupied territories and
abroad embarked on a diplomatic campaign to explain why Shamir's elections
proposal was unacceptable.
In a meeting with US Assistant of State John
Kelly in East Jerusalem, a number of leading Palestinian figures from the
West Bank and Gaza called on the US administration to "demonstrate a genuine
commitment to a just peace" based on the Palestinian right to self-determination
and the "exchanging land for peace" principle through the convening of
an international peace conference.
In addition, a group of eighty prominent Palestinians
from the West Bank and Gaza S
