Although the Palestinians realized that
their strength came from mass civil disobedience in the form of boycotting Israeli
goods, denying tax collections and organizing unarmed confrontations in the First Intifada, Israel
was very successful to play both the victim and justified arbitrator of the
occupied territories.
As Dajani points out, Israel successfully
broke down any power that the Palestinian popular committees worked towards
using “divide and rule” tactics such as massive tax raids and travel bans
against communities that stood out against the occupation. There were paid collaborators that worked on
behalf of Israel to infiltrate the Palestinian community and would identify the activists who would
become “the victims of Israeli death squads.” The Palestinians were also disillusioned with the Arab leadership in general
because of Israeli overview, and the PLO in particular, which they felt had not
come to their aid or worked toward their independence.
Violence that was attributed to the First Intifada was not solely attributed to the Israeli government. Although
the root of the problem goes back to Israel conquering the occupied territories
in the 1967 six day war, the tensions that mounted during the First Intifada
had a self-destructive effect from within Palestinian Communities which then transitioned
to a rebirth of identity that gained international recognition in the years
that followed. The internal struggle of
conflict between Palestinians loyal to the calls for freedom and those who collaborated
with the Israeli forces resulted in around 1,000 casualties compared to the
1,100 estimated Palestinians killed directly by Israeli forces.
Overall, the First Intifada was successful
in that it unified a national identity and structured a plan for future change. Many groups that organized in the Intifada
had the end goal of a two state solution; however they realized that focusing on
more specific rights first would create a sense of change that the masses could
get behind.
What are the specific rights you are talking about in the last paragraph? Do those specific rights still dominate the conversation or is it more of a focus on a one-state or two-state solution? Though this is one of the most well studied conflicts in the world, a lot of people don't get into the nitty gritty. They just recite basic talking points and then go back to debating one state or two state.
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