Editing First Intifada (section)

=== Israel's occupation and Palestinian unrest ===
Israel's drive into the occupied territories had occasioned spontaneous acts of resistance, but the administration, pursuing an "iron fist" policy of collective punishment including deportations, [[House demolition in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict|demolition of homes]], curfews, [[collective punishment]], and the suppression of political and educational institutions, was confident that Palestinian resistance was exhausted. The assessment that the unrest would collapse proved to be mistaken.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-02-02 |title=Israel: Collective Punishment against Palestinians {{!}} Human Rights Watch |url=https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/02/israel-collective-punishment-against-palestinians |access-date=2024-12-29 |language=en}}</ref><ref>Mark Tessler, ''A History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,''Indiana University Press, 1994 p. 677.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Dacey |first1=Raymond |title=Risk Attitude, Punishment, and the Intifada |journal=Conflict Management and Peace Science |date=1998 |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=85 |doi=10.1177/073889429801600104 |jstor=26273649 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26273649 |issn=0738-8942}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Abu-Amr |first1=Ziad |title=The Palestinian Uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip |journal=Arab Studies Quarterly |date=1988 |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=386 |jstor=41857979 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41857979 |issn=0271-3519}}</ref>
[[File:TireNail1-2.jpg|thumb|An improvised [[tire]]-puncturing device (slang term 'Ninja') comprising an iron nail inserted into a rubber disc (from used tire). Many of these makeshift weapons were scattered by Palestinians on main roads in the occupied territories of the [[West Bank]] during the First Intifada.]]
On 8 December 1987, an Israeli truck crashed into a row of cars containing Palestinians returning from working in Israel, at the [[Erez Crossing|Erez checkpoint]]. Four Palestinians, three of them residents of the [[Jabaliya Camp|Jabalya]] refugee camp, the largest of the eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, were killed and seven others seriously injured. The traffic incident was witnessed by hundreds of Palestinian labourers returning home from work.<ref>Vitullo p. 46.</ref> The funerals, attended by 10,000 people from the camp that evening, quickly led to a large demonstration. Rumours swept the camp that the incident was an act of intentional retaliation for the stabbing to death of an Israeli businessman, killed while shopping in Gaza two days earlier.<ref>Ruth Margolies Beitler, ''The Path to Mass Rebellion: An Analysis of Two Intifadas'', Lexington Books, 2004 p.xiii.</ref><ref>Vitullo, p. 46:'Although Palestinians rushed to aid the man, no one cooperated with military interrogators, who arrested scores of people and clamped a curfew on the area.'</ref> The next day, December 9, Palestinian teenagers threw stones and, according to the IDF, also gasoline bombs,<ref group=note>The Israeli military said at least two gasoline bombs landed on the army patrol vehicle but they did not explode</ref> at military vehicles. The soldiers started shooting in response, killing 17 year-old Hatem Al-Sesi and wounding 16 others.<ref>''Israeli Troops Kill Arab in Gaza''. The New York Times, 10 December 1987. ''The shootings today took place about 9 A.M., when teen-agers at the Jabalya refugee district surrounded an army patrol car and showered it with rocks and gasoline bombs. At least two of the firebombs landed on the car but did not explode, the army said. The officer in charge of the patrol opened fire, the army said. "As a result, a 17-year-old resident was killed," the army spokesman said. "One must presume he was among those who were throwing the Molotov cocktails."''</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://remix.aljazeera.com/aje/PalestineRemix/mobile/remix/create/#!/23 | title=Al Jazeera - Palestine Remix }}</ref><ref>Ruth Margolies Beitler,''The Path to Mass Rebellion: An Analysis of Two Intifadas'', p. 116 n.75.</ref><ref>Tessler, ''A History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict'', pp. 677-8.</ref>

On 9 December, several popular and professional Palestinian leaders held a press conference in West Jerusalem with the [[Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights]] in response to the deterioration of the situation. While they convened, reports came in that demonstrations at the Jabalya camp were underway and that a 17-year-old Palestinian had been shot to death by Israeli soldiers (after, as the IDF claimed, a group of Palestinians threw gasoline bombs at an IDF vehicle). He would later become known as the first [[shahid|martyr]] of the Intifada.<ref>Vitullo, p. 46. writes 20-year-old man. The Israeli military and other sources say he was 17 years old.</ref><ref name="Intifada, p284">'Intifada,' in David Seddon,(ed.) ''A Political and Economic Dictionary of the Middle East'', p. 284.</ref> Protests rapidly spread into the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Youths took control of neighbourhoods, closed off camps with barricades of garbage, stone and [[burning tires]], meeting soldiers who endeavoured to break through with petrol bombs. Palestinian shopkeepers closed their businesses, and labourers refused to turn up to their work in Israel. Israel defined these activities as 'riots', and justified the repression as necessary to restore 'law and order'.<ref>Vitullo p. 47 challenges this:'To the contrary, the protests showed restraint and rationality. . .Demonstrations were not "peaceful" but neither did they turn Palestinians into mindless mobs. Youths stripped one Israeli down to his underwear in front of Shifa hospital, but then let him run back to his fellow soldiers. A young Palestinian took another soldier's rifle away from him, broke it in two, then handed it back'.</ref> Within days the occupied territories were engulfed in a wave of demonstrations and commercial strikes on an unprecedented scale. Specific elements of the occupation were targeted for attack: military vehicles, Israeli buses and Israeli banks. None of the dozen Israeli settlements were attacked and there were no Israeli fatalities from stone-throwing at cars at this early period of the outbreak.<ref>Vitullo, p. 47</ref> Equally unprecedented was the extent of mass participation in these disturbances: tens of thousands of civilians, including [[Women in the First Intifada|women]] and children. The Israeli security forces used the full panoply of crowd control measures to try and quell the disturbances: cudgels, nightsticks, [[tear gas]], water cannons, rubber bullets, and live ammunition. But the disturbances only gathered momentum.<ref name="Shlaim2000_450-451">[[#Shlaim2000|Shlaim (2000)]], pp.&nbsp;450–1.</ref>

Soon there was widespread [[Palestinian stone-throwing|rock-throwing]], road-blocking and tire burning throughout the territories. By 12 December, six Palestinians had died and 30 had been injured in the violence. The next day, rioters threw a gasoline bomb at the U.S. consulate in [[East Jerusalem]], though no one was hurt.<ref name="Intifada, p284" /> The [[Israeli responses to the First Intifada|Israeli police and military response]] also led to a number of injuries and deaths. The IDF killed many Palestinians at the beginning of the Intifada, the majority killed during demonstrations and riots. Since initially a high proportion of those killed were civilians and youths, Yitzhak Rabin adopted a fallback policy of 'might, power and beatings'.<ref>Audrey Kurth Cronin, 'How fighting ends: asymmetric wars, terrorism and suicide bombing,' inHolger Afflerbach, [[Hew Strachan]] (eds.) ''How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender'', Oxford University Press, 2012 pp. 417-433, p. 426</ref> Israel used [[mass arrest]]s of Palestinians, engaged in collective punishments like [[Education during the First Intifada|closing down]] West Bank universities for most years of the Intifada, and West Bank schools for a total of 12 months. [[Hebron University]] was closed by the army from January 1988 to June 1991.<ref>[[Middle East International]] No 400, 17 May 1991, Publishers [[Christopher Mayhew|Lord Mayhew]], [[Dennis Walters]] MP; p. 15 ‘fourteen days in brief’</ref> Round-the-clock curfews were imposed over 1600 times in just the first year. Communities were cut off from supplies of water, electricity and fuel. At any one time, 25,000 Palestinians would be confined to their homes. Trees were uprooted on Palestinians farms, and agricultural produce blocked from being sold. In the first year over 1,000 Palestinians had their homes either demolished or blocked up. Settlers also engaged in private attacks on Palestinians. Palestinian refusals to pay taxes were met with confiscations of property and licenses, new car taxes, and heavy fines for any family whose members had been identified as stone-throwers.<ref>Pearlman, p. 115.</ref>