expert report by Saleh Abdel Jawad 

Why the Intifada became militarized

An expert report by Dr. Saleh Abed Jawad, professor of political science at Birzeit University

THIS PAPER examines the reasons that led to the militarization of the 2000 Intifada, contrasting it with the first Intifada in 1987, which was characterized by non-violent forms of protest. In spite of my personal objection to the militarization of the Intifada from the outset for political and humanitarian considerations, this paper does not broach the reasons for this opposition. It is confined to finding the answer to two key questions: why did the Intifada become militarized and what are the ramifications of this militarization on Palestinian society?

Why was the Intifada militarized?
Here I adopt the assumption that the militarization of the Intifada resulted from the interaction of several factors, most significantly:

1 – the intentions and plans of the political decision makers and the army in Israel following the tunnel riots of 1996.
2 – the condition of the Palestinian Authority and the setback in its popularity on the eve of the outbreak of the Intifada.
3 – the desire of Hamas and elements within Fateh to change the political equation in the name of national interests and to change internal balances of power in their favor.
4 – The geo-political map of Oslo, which made it difficult to mobilize popular protests as was done in the first Intifada.

Israeli policies and the role of the army
Almost four years before the start of the 2000 Intifada, specifically on September 25 and 26, 1996, violent confrontations broke out between Palestinian protestors and the Israeli army at the entrances to Palestinian cities. Armed Palestinian elements soon joined in confrontations that ultimately resulted in the deaths of some 90 Palestinians and 19 Israeli soldiers.

The main reason for these confrontations, which became known as the “tunnel riots”, was the inauguration of an Israeli-dug tunnel under the Aqsa Mosque. However, the underlying reason was Palestinian frustration with the political process that had come to a complete dead end with Benjamin Netanyahu’s premiership, begun three months earlier.

The riots came as a shock to the Israeli security establishment, which did not expect such a high body count. Israel also expressed “disappointment” at the participation of elements from within the PA in the clashes even though this participation was limited in terms of size and power.

Hence, an internal debate was sparked within the corridors of the Israeli army establishment in preparation for the confrontation it knew was inevitable. Today, there is detailed information about these preparations and plans, which have leaked into the public domain, some even before the start of the Intifada in 2000.

The debate within the Israeli military establishment was influenced by two factors. The first was the increase in extremism within the army in the decades following the Likud’s rise to power in 1977 and the election of Netanyahu in 1996 on the backdrop of the Likud’s political program. This program never agreed to any kind of return of the
PLO to the West Bank and Gaza Strip and did not accept the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority, which was realized as a result of the Oslo Accords. The army feared it would have to confront a new Intifada, much like the first one except one in which Israel would be prevented from again using without restraint its main source of superiority, i.e., its military power.

It was this military superiority that allowed Israel time and again to finish off their wars against the Arabs with short and decisive battles. Indeed, at the start of the first Intifada in 1987 there was a strong current of thought within the Israeli army calling for “crushing the Intifada in its infancy” through the use of excessive and decisive force “like in the Arab world.”

In the end, the army did not adopt these recommendations. The matter was decided on given the nature of the Intifada, which did not provide Israel with the excuse to crush the popular protests in this fashion. But some within the Israeli political leadership and the army saw a correlation between the refusal to accept those recommendations and the length of time of the first Intifada.

After discussing and studying a number of scenarios based on the lessons learned from the first Intifada and the tunnel events, the Israeli army reached the following conclusions:

1 – In the end, the Palestinians, whose patience was beginning to fray, would not accept Israeli policies, in particular those pertaining to settlements and final status issues. Therefore, an impending comprehensive explosion was inevitable for which the army must prepare itself. And if this explosion, which was predicted to be a qualitative confrontation, had been delayed this far, it was because of Arafat’s adaptability to Israeli pressure and the reluctance of either side to be in direct confrontation with the Clinton administration and be seen as the party responsible for “sabotaging the peace process”.

2 – After studying a number of possibilities, the army concluded that the worst possible scenario for Israel in general and the army in particular, would be the outbreak of another widespread popular protest like the first Intifada. Based on this, the army and intelligence service started work on preventing a situation that could allow for a long-term civil disobedience movement that would exhaust Israel and deny the army once again the use of unrestrained force.

3 – To preempt the atmosphere that surrounded the first Intifada where the international community viewed Israel (under the leadership of Yitzhak Shamir) as a state that did not seek a political settlement, Israel wanted to provide the appropriate political atmosphere to show the Palestinians as opponents of a historical and reasonable political settlement. This is what happened in 1947 where Palestinian opposition to the UN’s partition plan was perceived as a decision for war for which they were held responsible and which consequently resulted in the refugee issue.

Creating such a perception again would contribute to the international isolation of the Palestinians and would create consensus within Israel. It became clear that Israel was preparing the Israeli foreign ministry (headed by Shlomo Ben Ami) as the catalyst for this goal, which was achieved after the failure of the negotiations at Camp David that caught the attention of the world because of Arafat’s so-called intransigence and Israel’s “generosity” and “concessions”. (In the two weeks at Camp David, Barak met Arafat only once.)

True, there were some new proposals with Israeli “concessions” on the table at Camp David. However, these proposals – which were not enough to achieve even minimum Palestinian demands – sprung from the fact that for the first time negotiations were being conducted over final status. Ultimately, the Israeli negotiators were successful in portraying the Camp David negotiations as Palestinian intransigence with the help of the American president – already laden with his own scandals – and a biased American negotiating team that supported Barak’s claims. At the same time the Palestinian side failed to provide a counter version. The failure of negotiations at Camp David thus became the basis for future political assaults on the Palestinian side.

4 – The Palestinians also had to be provoked into making mistakes that would justify the use of force. Never successful in the past at developing a clear and effective strategy for armed resistance, the Palestinians had to be drawn into the use of violence during the impending confrontation. Such a situation would sooner or later drag the PA into action defending its people at which point the opportunity would present itself for the use of armed force to dismantle the Palestinian Authority by projecting the struggle as a struggle between two armies. This would expedite the policy of socio-cide against Palestinian society, i.e. the destruction of the Palestinian economy and the creation of unbearable living conditions.

Once these ideas had been developed, the Israeli army began formulating practical plans. Dozens of maneuvers were held including training programs for urban warfare in a model of a Palestinian neighborhood. According to then General Shaul Mofaz, the total cost of such training in the year before the Intifada came to about $120 million.

The rise to power of the military man Ehud Barak in 1999 had not led to any rehashing of the guidelines formulated by the army while Netanyahu was in office. Barak, who was originally opposed to the Oslo Accords like his predecessor, believed firmly, also like Netanyahu, in the role of military might in settling the conflict.

Barak also contributed to the failure of the peace process when he stalled implementing the provisions of the Wye River Accords signed by Netanyahu in 1998 that stipulated a significant Israeli withdrawal from Area B. This would have greatly lessened Palestinian frustration over the peace process. Barak justified this lack of action by saying there was “no need” for such a move. What was needed, he said, was a final agreement, which he knew could not be realized.

Barak thus increased the heat under the “pressure cooker” to the point of no return. He then set the right political climate after Camp David to isolate internationally and within Israel the Palestinian side by repeating ad nauseum that Arafat had refused his “generous” offer. The spark for the explosion was provided, however, by the visit of
Ariel Sharon to the Aqsa Mosque on September 28, 2000, which led the following day to the killing of seven Palestinian protestors in the Aqsa courtyard.

The Palestinian Authority and the Islamists
The situation in which the PA found itself on the eve of the Intifada, illustrated by the lack of any hope for a political solution with Israel and the loss of a major part of its popularity as a result of its mediocre performance and corruption along with the rise in unemployment and the ever-growing number of settlements, contributed to the PA’s acceptance of limited militarization. This, it believed, would help it regain popularity and improve its negotiating stance.

The tunnel riots of 1996 impacted not only the thinking of the Israelis. After the 1996 confrontations, the Netanyahu government agreed to withdraw Israeli forces from four-fifths of the city of Hebron in accordance with an agreement reached by the previous government under Rabin and that Peres, who had succeeded Rabin, stalled implementing.

In light of this partial withdrawal, certain quarters within Fateh, first and foremost President Arafat and Marwan Barghouti, came to the conclusion that the Israelis were flexible when confronted with violence.

The Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon only reinforced this feeling on the street and provided a strong incentive in light of the impasse in the peace process and the Israeli violations of the spirit and letter of the Oslo Accords. Then came the failure of the Camp David talks and Sharon’s visit to Al Aqsa, which took place with the consent – if not the blessing – of Barak. The killings of large numbers of Palestinian protesters in the first days of the Intifada (an average of 10 people a day) led the Palestinian leadership to accept the idea of the use of violence.

But while the Israeli and Palestinian sides both came to the conclusion that the use of violence was necessary, the form and goals of this violence were radically different. The PA wanted to employ the use of limited militarization to achieve two goals: to invest in the Intifada as a bargaining chip for improving negotiating conditions – with the Intifada, the PA saw a conflict in the framework of an agreement on a settlement; and second, the PA wanted to regain part of its popularity. The Israelis, on the other hand, wanted an all-out confrontation that would lead to an end to the peace process and the dismantling of the PA.

The Israeli position had logical reasons, which go beyond the conventional division of the “Zionist left and right”. At the start of the Oslo Accords, Israel won its share of benefits: a Palestinian recognition of the state of Israel and the concession that international resolutions should serve only as a reference for arbitration between the occupied and the colonizer. Israel received an assurance of an “end to the conflict”, the opening of channels to the Arab world, and an end to the boycott of Israel by third world countries, etc. Then there was the silence of the Palestinian side vis-à-vis the network of bypass roads and settlement expansion. At the end of the 1990s, however, the continuation of the peace process meant Israel would have to start paying its share of the bill, including significant withdrawals from Area B, a Palestinian airport and seaport, and safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza, etc. Once that became clear, foiling Oslo – in spite of the enormous Palestinian concessions and the benefits Israel had reaped from the Accords – became the undeclared goal of Netanyahu and Barak.

As it turned out, the militarization of the Intifada did not unfold as the PA had wanted. This was largely because of the Israeli desire for a full-blown conflict, which, in turn, led to the un-restrainable entrance of the Islamists onto the scene and the PA’s loss of control over events.

The Islamist had their own very different agenda from the PA, more compatible with the Israeli agenda insofar as it aimed at sabotaging the Oslo-based peace process. At the start of the Intifada, the Islamists had held back from entering the battle with full force. As a result of their lack of trust in the PA, the Islamists at first, like some Palestinian intellectuals and a large number of ordinary people, believed the unfolding events were theatrics aimed at producing a secret agreement already reached in Camp David. However, the continuation of the events on the one hand, and the tremendous losses to the Palestinian side at the start of the Intifada on the other, quickly pushed the Islamists to throw all of their organizational and military muscle into the fighting.

For a number of reasons, neither Fateh nor the PA could constrain the Islamists. Corruption and poor political performance had severely damaged the PA to such an extent that, even with the presence of thousands of its security forces, it was unable to prevent the lynching of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah on October 10, 2000 for fear of being accused of treason.

Arafat and Barghouti, however, were keen to stem the leakage of popularity from Fateh to the Islamists. The formation of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades was one tactical response to the Islamic resistance and a means of undoing the damage done to Fateh by its merger with the PA after Oslo. In addition, some circles within Fateh felt cooperation and alliance with the Islamists would guarantee that their chances would be strengthened in terms of a predecessor to Arafat.

The geo-political map and the behavior of the Israeli army at the start of the Intifada

While the Oslo Accords led to the withdrawal of the Israeli army from major Palestinian cities, Israel also expedited the establishment of a huge network of bypass roads that allowed settlers and soldiers to avoid passing through Palestinian areas. This separation between occupier and resident made points of friction between the two sides limited, thus, in contrast to the first Intifada, also making popular protests more difficult. The initial confrontations between Palestinian protestors and the army took place at the entrance to cities. Israeli snipers, shooting at a distance of 100 to 150 meters, could thus pick out field commanders before protestors reached the army. The tremendous losses among unarmed protestors and the violent oppression of civilians before the eyes of the Palestinian security forces, who could not officially intervene to protect their people, in turn gave further incentive for Palestinians to turn to the armed resistance.

Since then, the situation has sharply deteriorated in the direction the Israelis have wanted from the start.