Ramallah- Today, December 8, marks the anniversary of the spark of the Stone Intifada, which the Palestinian people fought in rejection of the occupation in 1987. They paid a heavy price, which did not deter them from renewing their revolutions.
The Palestinians began their revolution with stones and moved to armed struggle, then military capabilities began to develop into missiles, leading to the Battle of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” on October 7 last year. On the other hand, Israeli responses ranged from killing, arrest, breaking bones, and demolishing homes, all the way to genocide in Gaza.
The spark of the uprising broke out in Gaza, when an Israeli military truck ran over a vehicle carrying Palestinian workers returning to the Gaza Strip from their places of work in Israel, killing 4 of them and wounding 7 others. Popular anger soon erupted in what was known as the First Intifada, and it moved to the West Bank, using stones as a weapon.
Based on data from the Palestinian National Information Center, 1,550 Palestinians were martyred during the intifada, the flames of which subsided with the start of the political process and the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993. About 100,000 were arrested, and nearly 70,000 were injured.
Data from the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem indicate that 741 Palestinian homes were demolished and closed as a punishment against Intifada activists, in addition to about 1,800 homes that were demolished under the pretext of building without a permit.
B’Tselem pointed out that tens of thousands of Palestinians were tortured during their arrest, and the killing of 383 Israeli settlers and soldiers.
In the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood, the Israeli occupation army killed more than 16,200 Palestinians, injured tens of thousands, and destroyed about 280,000 housing units in the Gaza Strip.
Bone cracking
Regarding his experience, Dr. Fahd Abu Al-Haj, who currently runs the Abu Jihad Center for Prisoner Studies at Al-Quds University, which specializes in documenting the experiences of Palestinian prisoners, including the prisoners of the Stone Intifada, of whom he was one, said that when he was once transferred from Ramallah Prison in the middle of the West Bank to Al-Dhahiriya Prison in the south, he was subjected to… He and other prisoners were beaten and forced, under torture, to chant against freedom and against the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Abu Al-Hajj – who specializes in documenting the experiences of Palestinian prisoners, including the prisoners of the Stone Intifada, of whom he was one – pointed out that he witnessed an incident of young men’s bones being broken near the city of Nablus, and the burial of a bound prisoner in a pit with a bulldozer, before people came to his rescue.
He talked about the conditions that the prisoners were experiencing, which were sometimes similar to the conditions of the prisoners in the battle of “Al-Aqsa Flood”: stripping, torture and abuse, overcrowding in prison rooms, and even spraying a chemical substance to control insects on their bodies.
In the opinion of the prisoner affairs researcher, the events of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” battle proved that the Palestinian people insist on freedom and reject the occupation and attempts to beautify or market it at the Arab, Islamic, and international levels.
The same spokesman adds, “The forces of the land together will not be able to undermine the resistance in Gaza today. There is a difference between an usurping occupier and the owner of the land and the cause. The latter has a right and has the will to move it, regardless of the losses.”
He continued that the occupation practiced collective punishment of various kinds, including killing innocent people, destroying homes, and arresting people, even though the Palestinians’ weapons were stones. Today, it is more intent on exterminating and killing children, the elderly, and women “in a desperate attempt to deter the resistance, which has developed its tools.”
In 1987, 36 years ago before the attack on October 7, 2023
The Israeli occupation forces arrested two Palestinian children and beat them to death.
They smash children’s arms and elbows with rocks so they can never use their hands again.Israel has been practicing this oppression against the Palestinians for 75 years
So you occupy… pic.twitter.com/MQU4b9mq7D– Dr. Jamal Al Mulla (@DrJamal11) November 29, 2023
Why continue?
The Palestinian revolution did not stop at the Stone Intifada, but after that they rose in support of Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1996, and they rose up in support of this Noble Mosque as well in 2000. While the West Bank witnessed a series of popular uprisings, Gaza fought successive wars.
But the Palestinian revolutions have not yet led them to a state, and if the PLO considers the Palestinian Authority its nucleus, why do the Palestinians continue to repeat the experience?
Mahmoud Fatafta, a researcher in media and political issues, says, “Faith and freedom are the most precious things that a person has, and whoever maintains his belief works to achieve his freedom.”
The researcher added in his interview with Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the Palestinian people “have been working to achieve their freedom, even if they face difficulties and suffering, for more than a century, specifically with the beginning of the British mandate to the Israeli occupation.”
He continued that Israel had always “destroyed the place, killed the Palestinian person, or expelled him to the diaspora. However, he did not surrender, and despite the harsh conditions and disappointment, he rose up and ignited his uprisings on every occasion when he felt the danger escalating.”
Fatafta considered that it is natural for any person to defend his humanity and dignity, “and the insistence becomes greater when the sense of religious duty and the importance of the holy land on which he lives is close to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which deepens the immunity of Palestinian resistance work.”
A war of extermination
In a quick comparison between the two resistance weapons in 1987 and 2023, and the corresponding Israeli responses, Fatafta says, “Diversity in forms of resistance is matched by escalation in aggression, diversification in the use of tools of killing and destruction, and expansion of the geography of aggression.”
The researcher said that the shift in the occupation’s responses from individual killing and partial destruction, in previous attacks, to a war of genocide, in response to the battle of “Al-Aqsa Flood” is due to “the serious dimension of the stage, and the occupation’s feeling of an existential threat more than any previous intifada.”
However, Fatafta says, the Palestinian revolutions produced results, including withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and concluding deals with the occupation, according to which prisoners were released.