The Roots of the Conflict in the Middle East - Part 4: 1987 - 1993

In December 1987, the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza started a mass uprising against the Israeli occupation. This uprising, or intifada ("shaking off" in Arabic) was not organized by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership in Tunis. Rather, it was a mass popular uprising linked with the local organizations that had developed under occupation.

The uprising involved hundreds of thousands of people including children, youth and women, who engaged in a variety of acts of civil disobedience. These ranged from demonstrations and strikes, to boycotts of Israeli goods and refusal to pay taxes, to erecting barricades to impede the movement of Israeli troops. The activism was organized through popular local committees loosely organized under the umbrella of the PLO. It drew widespread international attention to the situation facing the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and challenged the occupation as never before.

The response of the Israelis, under the leadership of Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was to try and smash the intifada. Army commanders were instructed to break the bones of demonstrators and use whatever force was needed to suppress the uprising. Between1987 and 1991 Israeli forces killed over 1,000 Palestinians, at least 200 of whom were under the age of 16. By 1990 most of the leaders had been arrested and, although it continued for several more years, the uprising had lost its cohesiveness, organization and force.

Although this first intifada did not end the occupation, it had made it clear that the status quo was untenable. It brought attention back to the occupied territories and prompted the PLO to adopt a program to guide the struggle for independence. In 1988 the Palestine National Council (a Palestinian government-in-exile) was convened in Algeria. It recognized the state of Israel, proclaimed an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and renounced terrorism. The Israeli government, with the backing of the U.S., simply ignored these gestures, claiming that nothing had changed and that it would never negotiate with the PLO which it labelled a terrorist organization.

Following the American initiated Gulf War of 1991, the U.S. wanted to stabilize its position in the Middle East by promoting a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. To this end, U.S. President Bush Snr. pressured a reluctant Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to begin negotiations with the Palestinians and the Arab states at a multilateral conference convened in Madrid, Spain in October 1991. Shamir's conditions for participating, which were accepted by the Americans, were that the PLO be excluded from the talks and that the Palestinian desire for independence and statehood not be directly addressed.

The negotiations subsequently moved to Washington D.C. where the Palestinians were represented by a delegation from the occupied territories. Participants in this delegation had to be screened and approved by the Israelis, and residents of East Jerusalem were excluded on the basis that the city was part of Israel. Despite their formal exclusion from the talks, the PLO regularly consulted with and advised the Palestinian delegates. Despite many meetings little progress was made and, after he left office, Prime Minister Shamir openly acknowledged that his strategy was to drag out the negotiations for 10 years, by which time the annexation of the West Bank would be an accomplished fact.

A new Israeli Labour Party government led by Yithak Rabin took office in June 1992 and promised the rapid conclusion of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. However, the negotiations reached a stalemate in December when Israel expelled over 400 Palestinian residents of the occupied territories who it accused (but never tried or convicted) of being radical Islamic activists.

Meanwhile, lack of progress in the Washington talks and deteriorating economic and social conditions in the West Bank and Gaza led to increasing violent attacks against Israeli targets by the more radical HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement) and Islamic Jihad. Prior to the intifada, Israel had in fact encouraged the development of these organizations as a means to divide Palestinians in the occupied territories and defeat the secular nationalism of the PLO.

Faced with growing pressure from the Americans, the Rabin government reversed Israel's longstanding refusal to negotiate with the PLO. It initiated secret negotiations in Oslo, Norway with PLO representatives who had been excluded from the talks in Madrid and Washington. These negotiations produced the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles which was signed in Washington in September 1993. This declaration has come to be known as the Oslo Accords.

The Declaration of Principles was based on mutual recognition of Israel and the PLO. It established that Israel would withdraw from the Gaza Strip and Jericho, with additional withdrawals from further unspecified areas of the West Bank during a five-year interim period. During this period the PLO was to form a Palestinian Authority (PA) with some self-governing powers. In January 1996, elections were held for a Palestinian Legislative Council and for the presidency of the PA. This position was easily won by Yasser Arafat.

The Oslo Accords set aside most of the key issues for later discussion in final status talks. These issues included the extent of the territory to be ceded by Israel, the nature of the Palestinian entity to be established, the future of the Israeli settlements, water rights, the resolution of the refugee problem and the status of Jerusalem. Essentially the Oslo process required the Palestinians to make their principal compromises at the beginning, whereas Israel's principal compromises, beyond recognition of the PLO, were to be left for later at the final status talks.