First Intifada

And these settlements are illegal, according to international law, but Israel counters by saying that they aren't really illegal because Palestine isn't really a state.

By the late 1980s, Palestinians launched the first intifada, which literally means shaking off.

And this began with, like, boycotts of Israeli products and services and refusing to pay Israeli taxes.

But when the Israeli armed forces cracked down on protesters, violence ensued.

And the First Intifada also saw the founding of Hamas, which launched the first suicide bombing against Israel in 1993.

Hamas gained support partly because of its militancy, but mostly because of its social welfare projects in Gaza.

It built and staffed schools, mosques, and clinics.

The most important legacy of the First Intifada was the emergence of peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis.

I, myself, disagree with it.

But, um, but looking for the signs of, of treason, I came away feeling really astonished by the degree to which, uh, these parties have, for years, been morally serious and been careful and have demonstrated what, to me, seems to be, um, a kind of exemplary citizenship in the face of really, really hard times ever since the First Intifada.

So I, I looked, trying to come up with things that I could say, "Well, here you should understand why the people who say we cannot sit with, with these parties, why they feel what they feel." And I, I came up with much, much less than, than I expected.

In a way, it made me hopeful about some shared future, um, with these parties, which I would not have allowed myself to feel fully until I heard y- you remind me that, um, minds can sometimes be changed.

Do you know what the impetus was for those permits?

Yeah, so this is during the First Intifada, right? So beginning in this period of the first uprising when Palestinians rose up in this leaderless uprising, sit-ins, boycotts, refusal to pay taxes, leafleting, flyering, burning tires, throwing stones, Molotov cocktails, right? It was basically an unarmed uprising, and it was causing Israel a lot of problems.

And during the first year of the uprising, Israel killed about 1,100 Palestinians, and I believe Palestinians killed about maybe 130 or 140 Israelis.

The vast majority of Israelis killed being soldiers and security forces.

You wanna divide and rule the colonized society to make it weak and undefensible, and that's exactly what Israel does.

By empowering Hamas, at the time known as the Islamic Collective, they think they can weaken the PLO led by Yasser Arafat.

And obviously it blew up in their face, but in December 1987, you get this Israeli truck driver kills four Palestinians in Gaza, and this leads to the outbreak of the First Intifada.

And at that time, Hamas is still not called Hamas.

Is that a legitimate question to ask?

Yeah, I think so, and I mean, I think I can anticipate maybe what they would answer is they lived, I mean, through the First Intifada.

That's when they were young and active.

And my dad, one of the main reasons he was arrested in university is because he was president of student council.

It was a perfect storm.

Internally, you have the outbreak of the First Intifada.

Yes, starting in December 1987, so just a few months prior to this broadcast.

The Intifada erupted across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Right.

And what this did was fundamentally shatter the internal stabilization assumptions of the Israeli security establishment.

He warned the NBC panel that prolonging the military occupation of the territories would do two things, neither of which enhanced Israeli security.

What were they?

I first learned about Ali 20 years ago, watching the film Encounterpoint.

And I was so struck by his transformation from this young guy throwing stones during the first intifada to spending four years in prison, where ironically he learned and read up on the power of nonviolence.

to then being shot by an Israeli settler during the Second Intifada and having his brother Yusuf killed by an Israeli soldier.

So Ali had every excuse to exact revenge and take up arms, but instead he chose the harder path, the path of reconciliation and nonviolence.

You know, Israel fear, freak out from nonviolence activism in Palestine.

But we have never did it the right way.

Ali, wouldn't you call the first intifada nonviolence in the right way or no?

Not exactly, because it was like uprising.

Including the Polisario, including, you know, many other groups like, you know, the Red Brigades or whatever, the Basques, you know, we could talk on and on about like, you know, how many of these networks like, you know, were left orphans.

Why do you think the PLO decided to see the writing on the wall and decided to seek peace with the Israelis just immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union? And the First Intifada.

Exactly.

So therefore, I mean, we can see that even the beginning of the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis actually started because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and President George Bush, the father, more or less mandating that there will be a new world order.

Well, I've been always careful about this diary and, uh, fearful that the Israeli army would come to my house and destroy it.

So I first moved it during the First Intifada to the office, the law office, and they came to the office, but they didn't see it, and then I took it back to the house and put it in a fireproof cabinets in the garage.

And then in 2002 they came to the house, but they didn't go to the garage, and I was very worried.

In '82, of course, they went to Beirut and carted off all the Palestine Research Center documents and took them back to Israel.