First Intifada

Overview

The First Intifada was an uprising that began in the Gaza Strip in December 1987 and spread to Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem. Its measured period extended through September 1993. Demonstrations, general strikes and a tax revolt took place alongside attacks on Israeli civilians and members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The uprising was violent from its outset. Its organization changed over time: local unrest preceded efforts by the PLO and its leading faction, Fatah, to direct events, while the newly founded terrorist organization Hamas competed for influence.

Participation extended across generations and households. Old men, women and children joined crowds in Gaza’s streets, while underground organizers called strikes and demonstrations. Those forms of mobilization did not define the whole campaign. During its first four years, the IDF recorded more than 3,600 Molotov cocktail attacks, 100 hand grenade attacks and 600 assaults involving guns or explosives. Arab attackers killed 16 Israeli civilians and 11 Israeli soldiers in Gaza and Judea and Samaria during that period. More than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 1,700 Israeli soldiers were injured. Approximately 1,100 Arabs died in clashes with Israeli troops during the same four years.

The uprising also brought severe harm within Arab communities. Death squads killed Arabs accused of collaboration with Israel, and PLO chairman Yasir Arafat defended the executions. By the time the uprising waned around the 1991 Gulf War, deaths attributed to Arab death squads for political and other reasons exceeded deaths in clashes with Israeli troops. The conflict’s political consequences included the PLO’s turn toward diplomacy in 1988, King Hussein’s withdrawal of Jordanian claims to Judea and Samaria, and the emergence of a lasting rivalry between Fatah and Hamas.

Background

Before December 1987, the PLO’s senior leadership was based in Tunisia, away from Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Fatah had operated from Jordan and Lebanon before the PLO’s move to Tunisia after 1982. That distance mattered when the uprising began: people living in Gaza and Judea and Samaria initiated unrest locally, placing pressure on an exiled leadership whose influence was already under strain. The PLO did not plan or control the outbreak from its start. It subsequently built a leading role in organizing the uprising and presenting its political demands abroad.

Different currents sought to shape Arab political activity. Fatah and other PLO factions pursued a national program; the Muslim Brotherhood had developed religious and social institutions in Gaza. Among those institutions was the al-Salah Society, founded in the late 1970s. Its network later helped support Hamas combatants, recruit and indoctrinate young people, and finance stores, kindergartens and land purchases for Hamas. Al-Salah director al-Kurd served on Hamas’s Shura Council in Gaza during the uprising. These organizations gave emerging leaders means to recruit, distribute instructions and compete for public support once unrest spread.

The immediate sequence began on December 6, 1987, when an Israeli was stabbed to death while shopping in Gaza. On December 7, four residents of Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp died in a traffic accident. A false rumor spread that Israelis had deliberately killed them in revenge for the stabbing. False accusations of Israeli atrocities and instigation from mosques contributed to the unrest. Mass rioting broke out in Jabalya on the morning of December 9. During the riot, an Israeli soldier killed a 17-year-old who had thrown a Molotov cocktail at an army patrol. The confrontation was followed by unrest across Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and Jerusalem.

Course of the war

The first days mixed crowds, confrontations with soldiers and attacks on Israeli targets. In Gaza, the participation of children, women and older men made the uprising a broad public event, but violence was present from the beginning. As unrest reached Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, strikes and demonstrations interrupted ordinary activity while attacks exposed civilians and soldiers to injury or death. Molotov cocktails, grenades, firearms and explosives formed part of the campaign. The scale of the recorded attacks over the first four years rules out an account of the uprising as exclusively nonviolent civil resistance.

Fatah moved to consolidate the initially varied local factions under the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising. Its underground leadership printed leaflets directing strikes and demonstrations. The PLO-dominated leadership also issued instructions about when violence should escalate and whom it should target. These directives gave the movement a more organized structure after its grassroots beginning. They connected local action to the PLO’s wider strategy without erasing the independent initiative that had produced the December 1987 outbreak.

Jerusalem-based activist Mubarak Awad promoted a tax revolt and general strikes during the uprising. His approach offered a form of civil action distinct from armed assaults, although the wider campaign continued to include both. Israel deported Awad in 1988 after his case reached the Israeli Supreme Court. The court ruled that his residency papers had expired and that his other citizenship placed him outside the protections of permanent residency. The dispute over his status became one episode in the wider contest over leadership and methods.

Hamas developed as a rival center of organization. Muslim Brotherhood leaders, including Ahmed Yassin, formally founded it under its current name in December 1987. Its first uprising leaflet bearing the Hamas name appeared on February 11, 1988. Its founders called for jihad, meaning struggle or effort, against Israel; in their campaign, this included armed action. Hamas rejected peace negotiations with Israel and challenged Fatah’s claim to lead the uprising. The two organizations competed to direct demonstrations, civil strikes and the movement’s ideology. Their rivalry also led to violent clashes in Gaza.

Hamas’s military apparatus changed during the First Intifada before taking its later Al-Qassam form. Its early recruitment drew in young men who later became prominent in the organization. Hassan Salameh joined Hamas at age 16 and was placed in administrative detention six times for activities during the uprising. Mohammed Deif became involved with Hamas in 1987, while Yahya Sinwar was among its founding members in the late 1980s. Bassem al-Sa’adi participated in the uprising after joining the Islamic Jihad Movement in May 1987. Their participation illustrates how the uprising became a formative period for several armed organizations, even as Fatah remained central to PLO-led activity.

By the uprising’s second year, some people in Gaza opposed its damaging effects and encouraged its end. Strikes disrupted work and commerce; Israel revoked work permits that had provided income to many Arabs and blocked agricultural exports from Gaza. Those measures, together with the uprising’s own interruptions of economic life, imposed heavy costs on households. The movement nevertheless continued into the early 1990s. Its ability to mobilize crowds did not remove the growing pressure created by lost earnings, interrupted services and violence within Arab communities.

Israel's conduct and the protection of civilians

Israeli forces faced a campaign in which mass gatherings and strikes occurred alongside assaults on soldiers and civilians. The IDF reinforced its presence and adapted its methods to prolonged crowd confrontation and security duties in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. It developed means of crowd control and changed operational arrangements as the uprising continued. Those tasks differed from conventional combat: soldiers operated among densely populated communities while also responding to Molotov cocktails, grenades, guns and explosives.

Israeli civilians were direct targets. During the first four years, Arab attackers killed 16 civilians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria and injured more than 1,400. Eleven Israeli soldiers were killed and more than 1,700 injured. The December 6 stabbing in Gaza preceded the Jabalya accident and riot; later attacks extended the threat well beyond that initial sequence. Protecting civilians and soldiers while controlling widespread unrest became a sustained Israeli security challenge.

Israeli measures also affected Arab residents. The IDF arrested around 175,000 Arabs during the First Intifada. Approximately 1,100 Arabs died in clashes with Israeli troops during its first four years, a toll separate from killings by Arab death squads. Revoked work permits reduced earnings for many families, and blocked agricultural exports damaged Gaza’s economy. These consequences formed part of the uprising’s course and help explain why some Gaza residents began encouraging an end to it in its second year.

The Awad case shows one legal route through which an Israeli action was reviewed. After his deportation reached the Supreme Court, the court examined his residency status and ruled that expired papers and his other citizenship left him outside permanent residency protections. Its decision concerned Awad’s legal status; it did not settle the broader questions raised by the uprising. Throughout the campaign, attacks on civilians remained distinct from confrontations between armed attackers and soldiers, even when they occurred amid the same wave of unrest.

Terrorist tactics and propaganda

The false revenge rumor following the Jabalya traffic accident helped turn four accidental deaths into a catalyst for mass rioting. Claims of Israeli atrocities and agitation from mosques further inflamed the opening phase. Once the uprising spread, underground leaflets became a means of directing action. The Fatah-led Unified National Leadership ordered strikes and demonstrations, while the PLO-dominated leadership identified occasions for escalated violence and targets. Organization and messaging thus shaped both public protest and attacks.

Violence reached beyond clashes with the IDF. Molotov cocktails were thrown at Israeli targets thousands of times during the first four years, alongside grenade attacks and assaults using guns or explosives. The recorded attacks killed and injured Israeli civilians as well as soldiers. Hamas, founded during the uprising, sought to challenge Fatah’s leadership through its own ideological program and armed activity. The al-Salah Society supported Hamas-affiliated combatants and recruited young people for the organization, while financing parts of its social and commercial network.

Arab death squads created another pattern of intimidation. They killed other Arabs on accusations of collaboration with Israel and for political or other reasons. Local PLO death squads sent case files to the PLO after carrying out killings. In January 1990, Arafat defended 118 executions and acknowledged that two of those killed were innocent. He had authorized the uprising’s leadership to carry out executions. The killings cannot be understood as incidental to fighting with Israel: they were directed at members of the same Arab communities the uprising claimed to represent.

As the uprising waned around the 1991 Gulf War, killings by Arab death squads exceeded deaths in clashes with Israeli troops. Fear of accusations and punishment became a feature of daily life alongside Israeli security operations and the loss of income caused by prolonged unrest. Fatah’s 1989 political program praised the uprising, attacked Zionism—the Jewish people’s national movement for self-determination in their historical homeland—and opposed Israel’s existence. At the same time, Hamas rejected negotiations with Israel and sought to displace Fatah’s leadership. Their competing messages gave the uprising political directions that could not be reduced to a single program.

Outcome

The First Intifada did not produce a decisive military result. It lasted, in its measured period, from December 1987 through September 1993, while its most intense phases changed over time. An estimate places overall Arab deaths at 1,376. That total should be distinguished from the approximately 1,100 Arabs killed in clashes with Israeli troops during the first four years and from killings committed within Arab communities. The prolonged campaign left Israeli civilians and soldiers dead or injured, damaged livelihoods in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, and compelled changes in Israeli security operations.

In July 1988, King Hussein relinquished Jordan’s claims to Judea and Samaria and severed legal and administrative ties. The decision ended crucial Jordanian services and salaries there. It also reflected the uprising’s effect on the contest between Jordan and the PLO over political representation. For residents who had depended on Jordanian support, its withdrawal added to the economic disruption caused by strikes, lost work permits and restricted exports.

The grassroots uprising pressured the weakened PLO leadership in Tunisia to change its diplomatic approach. In 1988, Arafat accepted UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the 1947 partition resolution, in a step treated as tacit recognition of Israel. He then called for a peace conference based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. The change raised the PLO’s international standing and opened a path toward negotiations. It did not end the rivalry with Hamas, whose leaders rejected peace talks and challenged Fatah’s authority throughout the uprising.

Aftermath and legacy

The First Intifada changed the relationship between local Arab activists, the exiled PLO leadership and Israel. Its outbreak demonstrated that events in Gaza and Judea and Samaria could force a shift in the PLO’s agenda. Fatah’s subsequent control of the Unified National Leadership gave the PLO a means to direct strikes and demonstrations, while Arafat used the uprising’s prominence to advance diplomacy. The period helped set the stage for the Oslo Accords in 1993, at the close of the uprising’s measured span.

Hamas’s emergence had an equally durable effect. Built by Muslim Brotherhood leaders during the December 1987 outbreak, it developed social and military networks and rejected the diplomatic course pursued by the PLO. Competition with Fatah over demonstrations, civil action and armed struggle became a lasting division. The difference between their approaches grew sharper as the PLO moved toward negotiations. Hamas remained a terrorist organization and continued to oppose Israel’s existence.

The uprising is also remembered for its combination of broad participation and sustained violence. Strikes and tax resistance occurred beside thousands of Molotov cocktail attacks, shootings, grenade attacks and the killing of Arabs by Arab death squads. Its civilian toll, economic damage and political realignments remain essential to understanding it. The Second Intifada, which began in 2000, was a later and separate uprising; its outbreak should not be treated as a continuation of the events that began in Jabalya in 1987.