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Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israel Occupation
This collection of critical essays includes eyewitness accounts from the West Bank and Gaza, discussions of Palenstinian society and politics, and analyses of the role of the United States in the Middle East and Palestine.
423 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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December 12, 2023
I picked this up after the new wave of genocidal destruction unleashed by the IDF in Gaza. It was saddening to see how much hope for the future the intifada gave Palestinians in light of the suffering they’ve endured since. Hopefully it is darkest before the dawn.
March 27, 2024
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS (FROM A VARIETY OF WRITERS) ON THE 1ST INTIFADA
Editors Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin wrote in the Preface to this 1989 book, “This book is a project of the Middle East Research and Information Project, better known as MERIP… MERIP sought to put the question of US policy in the Middle East and support for popular struggles there on the agenda of the broad movement opposing the US war in Indochina. [MERIP publishes] a bi-monthly magazine… ‘Middle East Report.’ … The enthusiastic reception of Middle East Report’s coverage of the Palestinian intifada encouraged the editors to consider producing a book on the subject… To the eyewitness accounts and analyses of the uprising itself we have added historical background, a discussion of the uprising’s impact on Israel, and analysis of organizing and activism in the US around Palestinian-Israeli peace issues, a selection of resistance poetry by Palestinians and Israelis, a list of the martyrs of the first year of the intifada and other important documents. We hope… this book will help… the general public and activists acquire a deeper understanding of the struggles now underway in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel and thereby contribute to building the US movement for peace in the Middle East.”
Edward Said wrote in the opening essay, “What seems to have escaped ‘expert’ and official Israeli notice was that the occupied territories had already had twenty years of a regime designed to suppress, humiliate and perpetually disenfranchise Palestinians, and that the likelihood of an outside force actually improving the situation had gradually disappeared. Instead the situation for Palestinians had gotten worse, and their sense of embattled loneliness, even abandonment, had increased. Capitulation was impossible. An intensification of resistance therefore seemed required, and with it greater discipline, more determination and enhanced independence of method, planning and action. In discussing the unfolding intifada … we are in fact talking about two dynamics, one internal to Palestinian life under Israeli domination, the other external, in which the Palestinian exile presence has interacted dialectically with region and international powers…” (Pg. 5)
The essay by Penny Johnson, Lee O’Brien, and Joost Hilterman states, “Israeli policy toward the Palestinians has always contained a large element of denial: denial of rights, denial of legitimacy, denial of voice. Not surprisingly, the initial Israeli response to the uprising was to deny: 1) that it was an uprising; 2) that ‘normal’ measures were insufficient to control it; and 3) that it articulated the feelings of a majority of the population.” (Pg. 35)
Joe Stork observes, “Most Palestinians will not hesitate a minute if you ask what they think they have achieved. In the first place, they say, it has had a profound impact on their own lives, on the way they see the world, on the way they as individuals relate to one another. The up-rising has done a lot to bring Palestinians together, to close the gap of experience between Gaza and the West Bank.” (Pg. 77)
Lisa Hajjar, Mouin Rabbani and Joel Beinin explain, “The newly captured parts of former mandate Palestine, known since 1948 as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, have since 1967 often been referred to as ‘the occupied territories.’ The [1967] war established Israel as the dominant regional military power. The defeat discredited the Arab regimes especially the radical Arab nationalism represented by Egyptian President Nasser and the Ba’th parties of Syria and Iraq. By contrast, the Palestinian national movement, which had been relatively quiescent in the post-1948 period, emerged as a major political factor after 1967 in the form of the political and guerrilla groups that make up the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).” (Pg. 103)
They add later, “Only the Egyptian-Israeli part of the Camp David agreement was ever implemented. The Palestinians and other Arab states rejected the autonomy concept as contrary to self-determination, and Israel immediately sabotaged negotiations by continuing to confiscate Palestinian lands and build new settlements. As a result of Camp David, Egypt became estranged from the other Arab nations. Only after Sadat’s assassination did Egypt begin gradually to resume ties with the other Arab states. Egypt’s separate peace enabled Israel to invade Lebanon in 1982 without fear of Egyptian intervention.” (Pg. 108)
Salim Tamari notes, “Demographically, roughly 60 percent of the people of the West Bank and Gaza are today under seventeen years of age. These are the core of the people you watch every day confronting Israeli soldiers. Age is significant here: it suggests the context in which young people begin to lose fear in facing death of mutilation of their bodies.” (Pg. 127) Later, he adds, “The Palestine national movement signaled its willingness to establish a state coexisting with the State of Israel, given certain conditions---among which is the right of Palestinians either to return to those areas in which Israel will remain in full control or to be compensated for their losses. One consequence of this strategy is that it distinguishes the nature of struggle for Palestinians living in Israel, from those living in the West Bank and Gaza, where the focus has become separation and independence… Secularism is still the ideology of the Palestinian national movement, but… it sees the conflict as basically a national struggle between Arabs and Jews.” (Pg. 131)
He continues, “What it boils down to, ultimately, is that the greatest military power in the Mediterranean can no longer subdue the spontaneous defiance of a civilian population whose only armament is street stones and lack of fear. Secondly, the uprising signifies a shift in the center of gravity of Palestinian politics, from the Palestinian diaspora communities in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan… Thirdly, the uprising is significant also because it involved not only the West Bank and Gaza but, for the first time, full participation of Israel’s Arab citizens in the Galilee and elsewhere… A fourth … consequence … is that it created an instrument of political unification for all the various Palestinian factions that have so far been divided… Finally, at the political level, I think the uprising has defeated the notion that the physical, economic, infrastructural integration of the West Bank and Gaza into the body of the State of Israel creates irreversible facts… The best we can hope for now is a fight for civic equality, for enfranchisement… I think it’s clear… that separation of the only way, and separation along the lines of Palestinian sovereignty is becoming a very clear-cut option for the future.” (Pg. 133-134)
Zachary Lockman points out, “Although historians have been able to point to numerous specific cases of expulsion… no one has come up with the ‘smoking gun’---evidence of an explicit decision taken at the highest levels of the government and the army to render the new state more homogeneously Jewish by expelling Palestinians and barring their return.” (Pg. 192)
Azmy Bishara states, “The struggle against the occupation has essentially been a political conflict with important economic, social and cultural aspects. It is not an economic struggle with political aspects. Strikes, boycotts, refusal to pay taxes---these are primarily political tactics to mobilize as many people as possible into the struggle against the occupation. But the results have indeed transformed the occupation into an economic burden for Israel.” (Pg. 225) Later, he admits, “The uprising has not yet accomplished anything significant in the area of foreign economic pressure on Israel.” (Pg. 228)
Reuven Kaminer argues, “On the eve of the intifada, Peace Now had been languishing in a state of limbo for quite a while… Though it has been the most widely recognized peace group both in Israel and abroad, Peace Now did not move beyond the Israeli national consensus on the Palestinian question… While recognizing in principle the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, Peace Now has not demanded the establishment of an independent Palestinian state; it has never advocated Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in 1967, and it has supported the annexation of Jerusalem, echoing the official line about the ‘unified’ character of the city.’ (Pg. 232)
This collection of writings will be of great interest to those studying the first Intifada.
Editors Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin wrote in the Preface to this 1989 book, “This book is a project of the Middle East Research and Information Project, better known as MERIP… MERIP sought to put the question of US policy in the Middle East and support for popular struggles there on the agenda of the broad movement opposing the US war in Indochina. [MERIP publishes] a bi-monthly magazine… ‘Middle East Report.’ … The enthusiastic reception of Middle East Report’s coverage of the Palestinian intifada encouraged the editors to consider producing a book on the subject… To the eyewitness accounts and analyses of the uprising itself we have added historical background, a discussion of the uprising’s impact on Israel, and analysis of organizing and activism in the US around Palestinian-Israeli peace issues, a selection of resistance poetry by Palestinians and Israelis, a list of the martyrs of the first year of the intifada and other important documents. We hope… this book will help… the general public and activists acquire a deeper understanding of the struggles now underway in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel and thereby contribute to building the US movement for peace in the Middle East.”
Edward Said wrote in the opening essay, “What seems to have escaped ‘expert’ and official Israeli notice was that the occupied territories had already had twenty years of a regime designed to suppress, humiliate and perpetually disenfranchise Palestinians, and that the likelihood of an outside force actually improving the situation had gradually disappeared. Instead the situation for Palestinians had gotten worse, and their sense of embattled loneliness, even abandonment, had increased. Capitulation was impossible. An intensification of resistance therefore seemed required, and with it greater discipline, more determination and enhanced independence of method, planning and action. In discussing the unfolding intifada … we are in fact talking about two dynamics, one internal to Palestinian life under Israeli domination, the other external, in which the Palestinian exile presence has interacted dialectically with region and international powers…” (Pg. 5)
The essay by Penny Johnson, Lee O’Brien, and Joost Hilterman states, “Israeli policy toward the Palestinians has always contained a large element of denial: denial of rights, denial of legitimacy, denial of voice. Not surprisingly, the initial Israeli response to the uprising was to deny: 1) that it was an uprising; 2) that ‘normal’ measures were insufficient to control it; and 3) that it articulated the feelings of a majority of the population.” (Pg. 35)
Joe Stork observes, “Most Palestinians will not hesitate a minute if you ask what they think they have achieved. In the first place, they say, it has had a profound impact on their own lives, on the way they see the world, on the way they as individuals relate to one another. The up-rising has done a lot to bring Palestinians together, to close the gap of experience between Gaza and the West Bank.” (Pg. 77)
Lisa Hajjar, Mouin Rabbani and Joel Beinin explain, “The newly captured parts of former mandate Palestine, known since 1948 as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, have since 1967 often been referred to as ‘the occupied territories.’ The [1967] war established Israel as the dominant regional military power. The defeat discredited the Arab regimes especially the radical Arab nationalism represented by Egyptian President Nasser and the Ba’th parties of Syria and Iraq. By contrast, the Palestinian national movement, which had been relatively quiescent in the post-1948 period, emerged as a major political factor after 1967 in the form of the political and guerrilla groups that make up the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).” (Pg. 103)
They add later, “Only the Egyptian-Israeli part of the Camp David agreement was ever implemented. The Palestinians and other Arab states rejected the autonomy concept as contrary to self-determination, and Israel immediately sabotaged negotiations by continuing to confiscate Palestinian lands and build new settlements. As a result of Camp David, Egypt became estranged from the other Arab nations. Only after Sadat’s assassination did Egypt begin gradually to resume ties with the other Arab states. Egypt’s separate peace enabled Israel to invade Lebanon in 1982 without fear of Egyptian intervention.” (Pg. 108)
Salim Tamari notes, “Demographically, roughly 60 percent of the people of the West Bank and Gaza are today under seventeen years of age. These are the core of the people you watch every day confronting Israeli soldiers. Age is significant here: it suggests the context in which young people begin to lose fear in facing death of mutilation of their bodies.” (Pg. 127) Later, he adds, “The Palestine national movement signaled its willingness to establish a state coexisting with the State of Israel, given certain conditions---among which is the right of Palestinians either to return to those areas in which Israel will remain in full control or to be compensated for their losses. One consequence of this strategy is that it distinguishes the nature of struggle for Palestinians living in Israel, from those living in the West Bank and Gaza, where the focus has become separation and independence… Secularism is still the ideology of the Palestinian national movement, but… it sees the conflict as basically a national struggle between Arabs and Jews.” (Pg. 131)
He continues, “What it boils down to, ultimately, is that the greatest military power in the Mediterranean can no longer subdue the spontaneous defiance of a civilian population whose only armament is street stones and lack of fear. Secondly, the uprising signifies a shift in the center of gravity of Palestinian politics, from the Palestinian diaspora communities in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan… Thirdly, the uprising is significant also because it involved not only the West Bank and Gaza but, for the first time, full participation of Israel’s Arab citizens in the Galilee and elsewhere… A fourth … consequence … is that it created an instrument of political unification for all the various Palestinian factions that have so far been divided… Finally, at the political level, I think the uprising has defeated the notion that the physical, economic, infrastructural integration of the West Bank and Gaza into the body of the State of Israel creates irreversible facts… The best we can hope for now is a fight for civic equality, for enfranchisement… I think it’s clear… that separation of the only way, and separation along the lines of Palestinian sovereignty is becoming a very clear-cut option for the future.” (Pg. 133-134)
Zachary Lockman points out, “Although historians have been able to point to numerous specific cases of expulsion… no one has come up with the ‘smoking gun’---evidence of an explicit decision taken at the highest levels of the government and the army to render the new state more homogeneously Jewish by expelling Palestinians and barring their return.” (Pg. 192)
Azmy Bishara states, “The struggle against the occupation has essentially been a political conflict with important economic, social and cultural aspects. It is not an economic struggle with political aspects. Strikes, boycotts, refusal to pay taxes---these are primarily political tactics to mobilize as many people as possible into the struggle against the occupation. But the results have indeed transformed the occupation into an economic burden for Israel.” (Pg. 225) Later, he admits, “The uprising has not yet accomplished anything significant in the area of foreign economic pressure on Israel.” (Pg. 228)
Reuven Kaminer argues, “On the eve of the intifada, Peace Now had been languishing in a state of limbo for quite a while… Though it has been the most widely recognized peace group both in Israel and abroad, Peace Now did not move beyond the Israeli national consensus on the Palestinian question… While recognizing in principle the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, Peace Now has not demanded the establishment of an independent Palestinian state; it has never advocated Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in 1967, and it has supported the annexation of Jerusalem, echoing the official line about the ‘unified’ character of the city.’ (Pg. 232)
This collection of writings will be of great interest to those studying the first Intifada.
June 18, 2024
"No voice rises above the voice of the Uprising..."
A militant book of a classic type, compiled from the pages of MERIP Report during the first year of so of the First Intifada. It's a snapshot of one moment in history (and there are some hostages to fortune, like the chapter on Hamas, which doesn't anticipate their rise at all), but an incredibly vivid one. It provides a powerful portrait of the dynamic of mass participation in the national uprising and the range of forms it took: street confrontations with the occupying army, strikes by workers in Israel or the settlements, school walkouts (or when Israel closed the schools, alternative schools in the community), boycotts of Israeli goods; an all-embracing mass mobilization. The sections analyzing the political impacts of the Intifada in Israel and in the United States contain some insights that still apply, although much has changed (the collection portrays a mass peace movement in Israel and only the stuttering beginnings of a mass solidarity movement in the US, virtually the opposite of the current situation). The appendix of communiques and statements from the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising gives even more of the flavour of this remarkable historical moment.
A militant book of a classic type, compiled from the pages of MERIP Report during the first year of so of the First Intifada. It's a snapshot of one moment in history (and there are some hostages to fortune, like the chapter on Hamas, which doesn't anticipate their rise at all), but an incredibly vivid one. It provides a powerful portrait of the dynamic of mass participation in the national uprising and the range of forms it took: street confrontations with the occupying army, strikes by workers in Israel or the settlements, school walkouts (or when Israel closed the schools, alternative schools in the community), boycotts of Israeli goods; an all-embracing mass mobilization. The sections analyzing the political impacts of the Intifada in Israel and in the United States contain some insights that still apply, although much has changed (the collection portrays a mass peace movement in Israel and only the stuttering beginnings of a mass solidarity movement in the US, virtually the opposite of the current situation). The appendix of communiques and statements from the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising gives even more of the flavour of this remarkable historical moment.
September 11, 2022
Not the book to read if you're looking for a macro history of the intifada - seems very much written for people who'd already been reading about it in the news and more or less knew what was going on, and some of what's included here (while informative) isn't really much about the intifada at all. Still contains a lot of valuable information and a worthy read, but would only recommend to folks who were either alive & informed when this was happening or who've read a more straightforward history of the period.
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April 17, 2008This is the first book I read that presented a Palestinian perspective of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, specifically the first intifada. It's pretty easy to read, because it's a compilation of short pieces from different authors.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews