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Issue: April, 1988

. . .the struggle of older, less physically active people—such as shopkeepers who defy beatings and destruction in order to honor area-wide strikes—continues to be ignored by the media, although their resistance is no less important than that of the children being shot.

Since December 8, 1987, Palestinian youth, armed only with stones, has daily confronted the best equipped military in the world. Largely unnoticed, the same confrontation has taken place throughout the Occupied Territories for the past twenty years. According to Israeli researcher Meron Benvenisti, director of the West Bank Data Base Project, between 1977 and 1982 there were about 500 violent demonstrations a year by occupied Palestinians. Since the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that number increased to about 3,000 a year. Why is this uprising different?

MEDIA COVERAGE?
Media coverage is one reason, but not the primary one. Certainly, the David and Goliath nature of the confrontation makes for spectacular, rivetting video. However, the struggle of older, less physically active people—such as shopkeepers who defy beatings and destruction in order to honor area-wide strikes—continues to be ignored by the media, although their resistance is no less important than that of the children being shot.

More importantly, this uprising is much more broadly-based and comprehensive than anything over the past twenty years, including all sectors of the occupied Palestinian population - all ages, professions, economic classes, etc. It is spontaneous, unplanned, initially unled, yet unified and cohesive, unlike anything in the past; more intense qualitatively and quantitatively. Even better situated "Israeli Arabs" (Palestinians with Israeli citizenship) living in the official state of Israel have joined in massive protest against the treatment of their brothers and sisters in the Territories.

Also for the first time in history, considerable numbers of prominent Jews, both American and Israeli, have protested both the treatment of the Palestinians as well as the fact of the occupation itself. (Primarily behind these Jewish protests is concern for the effects upon the State of Israel, not the plight of a repressed population.)

INVISIBLE LEADERSHIP
From all appearances, spontaneity has preempted any visible leadership of the uprising. Appearances in this case are deceiving because Palestinian "leaders" have long ago learned the need for anonymity. In the only elections ever permitted by the Israelis, for example, all but one of the Palestinians elected mayors in 1976 were deposed, deported, imprisoned, maimed or murdered shortly thereafter. So it has gone for anyone presumptuous enough to genuinely represent Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Only those lacking popular credibility are exempt from such treatment. In this category are the likes of Hana Sinora and Mubarak Awad who have some foreign following but no domestic credibility, and they have had nothing to do with the uprising.

On the other hand, exiled PLO officialdom has had little to do with initiating or leading the uprising either. However, after appraising the devastation of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the PLO delineated a policy of prioritizing resistance in the Occupied Territories, but what connection that policy has had to this uprising is not clear. Since the uprising got underway, in any case, the PLO has poured large sums of money into the Territories in an effort to support and maintain the mass strikes and work stoppages that are part and parcel of the resistance. This is necessary in order to sustain the occupied economy which is totally dependent upon Israeli employment. (Interestingly, the Jewish Federation for Labor, the Histadrut [comparable to our AFL-CIO], has encouraged its membership to scab and strikebreak by picking citrus and undertaking other menial tasks normally performed by Palestinians.)

EARLY UNIFICATION
Unified by the uprising (and to a lesser extent by the Palestine National Congress of April 1987) were several contentious political groupings in the Territories, most notably the various factions of the PLO and the Islamic Jihad, which is probably the best organized of the groups in Gaza. Communiques originating from various committees and work groups "for the uprising" betray little or no factionalism.

Occupied Palestinian society is highly organized, highly politicized. Communications between the West Bank and Gaza, between various towns, camps and sectors is incredibly rapid. Virtually everybody is an active member of at least one PLO-related organization, all of which are illegal. When children come out to establish roadblocks and to stone soldiers, they do so in groups of their own political organization. When imprisoned, they sup and study with their own organization. While imprisoned, these kids also participate in strikes and demonstrations of their own. We cannot underestimate the impact of such a high percentage of Palestinians&emdash; certainly the majority of young people—imprisoned by Israelis.

STARTING YOUNG
The very experience of the occupation has distributed leadership. Everyone knows what it is like, everyone knows what is needed. A single purpose permeates the entire being of the population, fusing mind and spirit, nerve and sinew. Behind every rebel child is another with even more enthusiasm. In one story, for example, an eight year old stone-throwing Palestinian was captured by Israelis and bullied into confessing who had "put him up to it." "It was my brother Mohamet," he cried, and off went the soldiers to arrest the instigator. Breaking down the door and terrorizing the boys' mother, they find Mohamet in a back room and throw up their hands in disgust. Mohamet is six years old.

What's behind the uprising? Why now? Since many of the answers can be found in past articles in this column, we will try not to repeat ourselves here.

Initially, it must be noted that Palestinians have a long history of resisting oppression. In Damascus, Syria are statues of several Palestinians hung in 1917 for leading the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks as early as 1915. The present Palestinian national flag dates from that struggle. In 1936, Palestinians staged a five-month general strike against their British occupiers, culminating in the massive, unsuccessful Palestinian revolt of 1939. Defeat in that revolt was largely responsible for the insipid Palestinian response to the Zionist aggression that led to the establishment of the State of Israel, but that's another story. Israelis today use many of the same prisons and tactics used by the British to repress the Palestinian resistance from 1921 to 1939, when the characteristic Palestinian-patterned headdress, the keffiyeh, became a national symbol of resistance.

WHY NOW?
The most obvious reason for the current uprising is the occupation itself&emdash; twenty years with no end in sight. The racist, sadistic character of Israeli repression is likened by one witness to "picking wings off flies." It is torturous on a daily basis, physically and psychologically. The ever-encroaching Israeli settlements—acres of swimming pools and playgrounds for single Israeli families—land taken from Palestinians with insufficient land and drinking water to begin with. Every day Palestinians must pass those swimming pools and playgrounds&emdash; no longer their homes—in order to beg employment from their occupiers.

The Gaza Strip is the second-most densely populated area in the world. It has the highest birthrate in the world (despite an infant mortality rate approaching ten percent) with the youngest average age in the world. These children have seen their homes bulldozed, their parents, brothers and sisters beaten, abused, urinated and spat upon by Israelis, virtually on a daily basis for the past twenty years. They have known nothing but occupation and the despair of dying the same prisoners they were born. They have nothing to lose; they are fearless! They suffer from none of the humiliation or degradation of their parents who were originally driven from their homes.

OTHER CONTRIBUTING FACTORS
Contributing to the despair were the results of the Amman, Jordan Arab summit, November 1987, which focused its attention on the Iran-Iraq war, granting less than lip service to the plight of Palestinians. Interestingly, this uprising began within one month of Western press accolades of the new Arab priorities letting Israel off the hook for the occupation.

Finally, economic conditions—never adequate to begin with&emdash; deteriorated measurably with the reduction of revenue from exiled Palestinian oilfield workers in the Persian Gulf states; this, since 1984, due to the drop in oil production and prices.

. . .AND THE CATALYSTS
Then, literally out of the autumn blue, came two inspirations to ignite the uprising. The first was an armed glider attack on a crack Israeli battalion in northern Israel. More than merely imaginative, the attack was successful: casualties were just about even and, unknown to most of us, two of the Palestinians returned safely. In Gaza itself, an even greater rarity: a successful jailbreak—armed no less! Getting arms into the hands of occupied Palestinians is perhaps the greatest rarity of all. To our knowledge, none of the escapees have been recaptured. For such a severely repressed population, the inspirational value of even such seemingly small events cannot be underestimated.

Then in early December 1987, four Gaza-Palestinian workers in a pick-up truck were intentionally crushed to death by an Israeli military vehicle, according to eyewitnesses. These kinds of common occurrences, incidentally, are always listed by Israelis as accidents.

Which of these events inspired the first stone? Who is to say? The important point is that everyone agrees there will be no end to it. Not that Israelis haven't tried their best, sending more troops into the Gaza Strip than were used to capture the territory in the war of 1967; staging nightly raids into thousands of homes, systematically breaking the bones of children; burying people alive; arresting tens of thousands; curfewing over 250,000 at a time; cutting-off water, electricity, medical supplies and even food; condoning brutal vigilante actions by armed Israeli settlers. Nothing has worked. The uprising grows every day. As a result, many ardent Zionists concede that there must be a political solution, although it must be noted that polls in Israel indicate overwhelming approval for the most brutal sorts of military "solutions" to the uprising.

WHO SPEAKS OUT?
Yet, domestically, not a murmur of criticism has been heard from Washington or (with the exception of Jesse Jackson) from Washingtonian-aspirants. It is business as usual, with AIPAC (American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee) money pouring into campaign coffers and American aid pouring out to Israel. (Delegates touring the Territories in January 1988 retrieved expended tear gas cannisters marked "Salisbury, Pennsylvania, January 1988.") The Palestine Information Office in Washington, D.C. has been closed by executive order and the P.L.O. Observer Mission to the United Nations has been ordered closed by Congress. Our enlightened Department of State proposes to bring peace by ignoring the P.L.O. and talking with Egypt and Jordan - clearly the most relevant parties to the uprising.

Even in our San Francisco Bay Area, the Spring Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice again refuses any mention of the Middle East (let alone Palestine) on its April 30th San Francisco march agenda.

What has your Congressperson said or done about the plight of the Palestinians? Please call and ask.

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