CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Palestinian Uprising

Israel did not succeed in ameliorating its Palestinian problem .through its invasion of the Lebanon. Israel’s allies in that country, the Maronite Christians, having been abandoned by the Americans and realizing that Israel was not going to support them militarily, had to deal with the Muslim majority. The pro-Israeli commander in the south of Lebanon, Haddad, died of cancer on 15 January 1984, and was succeeded by Brigadier Antoine Lahad, but Israeli hopes of an unbreachable security zone on its northern border were not realized. The PLO was still able to attack Israelis in Israel. The defection of a minor party from the Likud coalition forced a general election in Israel which took place against the background of the trial of Gush Emunim settlers and two Israeli army officers for the attempted assassinations in 1980 of three West Bank Palestinian mayors and other measures intended to drive the Palestinians from territories Israel had occupied in 1967. Not only had the invasion of the Lebanon resulted in higher Israeli casualties than the June 1967 War, but it was costing $1m a day at a time when domestic inflation was around 15 per cent a month and the country was virtually bankrupt. The election on 23 July 1984 was inconclusive and enabled the ultra orthodox religious factions to dictate a government of national unity with Peres from the Labour side as Prime Minister and Shamir as Foreign Minister, the two men to exchange posts after eighteen months. Sharon, censored for the Sabra and Shatila massacres, emerged as Minister of Commerce and Industry, and Rabin, Peres’s rival, became Minister of Defence. Shamir asked for American mediation with Syria to enable an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, but little came from the efforts of Richard Murphy, the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. In January 1985 Israel announced a unilateral withdrawal from the Lebanon to be completed by July, but retained the commitment to intervene if threatened. ¹

Divided in its approach to the Palestinian question, Israel’s government of national unity was confronted by an emerging alliance between the PLO, Jordan and Egypt. Arafat, determined to show that he had the support of the majority of the Palestinians rather than Asad, wanted a meeting of the Palestine National Council, or parliament in exile, that had been set up in 1964 at the Arab summit meeting and had not met since February 1983. On 25 September 1984, in the wake of Egypt’s restoration of diplomatic ties with Moscow, Hussein made Jordan the first Arab country to re-establish diplomatic links with Cairo, broken after the peace treaty with Israel, and was followed by sixteen other Arab countries. Hussein offered Amman as a venue for the meeting of the Palestine National Council and so thwarted Asad’s attempts at sabotage. On 9 October President Mubarak, speaking in Amman, stressed that Egypt’s commitments to the Arab world had precedence over the treaty with Israel. Meeting in the Jordanian capital late in November 1984, the Palestine National Council rejected Hussein’s proposal for an initiative from Jordan and the PLO based on Resolution 242, the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and an exchange of territory for peace with Israel. On 11 February 1985, however, Hussein and Arafat signed the Amman agreement which allowed for Palestinian self-determination within the framework of a Jordanian–Palestinian confederation. At the end of May 1985 Hussein went to Washington and proposed an international conference to discuss these proposals, but the issue of who would represent the Palestinians proved to be an obstacle. The British Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, while on an official visit to Egypt and Jordan in September, intervened when, at a press conference in Cairo, she implied that Washington should not have stopped a meeting between Richard Murphy and a joint Jordanian–Palestinian delegation under pressure from Israel and the Zionist lobby in the United States. She felt that people associated with the PLO who had rejected terrorism could be included in the delegation. At a banquet in Amman Mrs Thatcher spoke of a peace settlement taking into account the legitimate rights of the Palestinians. Before leaving, at Aqaba, the British Prime Minister said that she had invited two members of the Executive Committee of the PLO to London to see the Foreign Secretary. The two would be members of a joint Palestinian–Jordanian delegation, and she considered them to be men of peace who endorsed the relevant United Nations resolutions. Mrs Thatcher hoped this would support Hussein’s initiative and would help the United States to do something similar.

Arafat’s attempts to secure members of the PLO seats at the negotiating table were undermined both by Israeli action and Abu Nidal, sponsored by Syria. A spokesman of Abu Nidal threatened to assassinate the men of peace if they accepted Mrs Thatcher’s invitation. In Israel Rabin blamed the PLO, whose offices had been reopened in Jordan, for the increase in attacks on Jewish settlers on the West Bank. The number of Jewish settlers there had doubled to 42,500 over the previous two years and many of the incidents were a consequence of individual Palestinians’ growing frustration over the continued occupation. Rabin found a pretext for his envisaged action against the PLO when, on 25 September 1985, three Israelis were murdered on a yacht in a marina at Larnaca, Cyprus. The Israelis claimed that this was the work of an élite commando from Fatah’s Force 17. The PLO denied this, and said that the three Israelis were Mossad agents reporting arms shipments to the Lebanon. One of the three assassins was a 28-year-old Englishman. On 1 October, using satellite intelligence information provided by Jonathan Jay Pollard, the Israeli spy at the United States Naval Security and Investigative Command, eight Israeli F-16 aircraft bombed the headquarters of the PLO outside Tunis. Fifty-six Palestinians and fifteen Tunisians were killed, but Arafat escaped. Although condemned by the United Nations and European leaders, Israel was supported in this action by President Reagan, who described the raid as a legitimate response to terrorism. In any case Mohammed Abu Abbas, the leader of a minor Palestinian faction, the Popular Liberation Front, instigated the hijacking on 7 October of an Italian liner, the Achille Lauro, with 400 passengers and crew. The PLO condemned the action and persuaded the four hijackers to surrender to the Egyptian authorities. The hijackers had murdered a crippled American Jew, Leon Klinghoffer, whose body was later washed up on the Syrian coast. While being flown in an Egyptian aircraft to Tunis to stand trial, the hijackers were diverted by American fighters to a NATO base in Sicily, but the Italians stopped the Americans from taking them into custody. Outrage in the United States over the Klinghoffer murder meant that Washington put pressure on London to cancel the meeting between the Foreign Secretary and the members of the PLO. Britain wanted the two men of peace to sign a statement committing themselves to oppose all forms of terrorism and violence from whatever sources. The Palestinians felt that they could not do this as it covered armed resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The meeting was cancelled. Jordan agreed with Syria that it would not make a separate peace with Israel. On 19 February 1986 Hussein formally announced the end of his collaboration with the leadership of the PLO, giving as his reason the organization’s refusal to accept Resolution 242.²

Shamir and the Reagan administration

Israel would not negotiate with the Palestinians. It used the pretext of terrorism. There was an irony in this in that the Israeli Foreign Minister, Shamir, had been a leader of the most extreme Zionist terrorist organization, the Stern gang, in the 1940s. Israel was also determined that the United States should not talk to members of the PLO. The Reagan administration, however, was especially sensitive to the issue of terrorism, particularly as threats to American citizens increased with Washington’s growing pro-Israeli sympathies. Just before his re-election as President in November 1984 Reagan gave Israel restricted American technology to develop its Levi fighter plane and set up a joint economic group to examine how Israel could be given more help. In 1988 Shamir said that the Reagan administration was the friendliest one that Israel had worked with: despite differences from time to time it had remained determined that the cooperation should be strengthened. In the decade between 1980 and 1989 United States government aid for Israel amounted to over $28,062m; the previous decade it had totalled $16,309m. There were tensions. In October 1985 the State Department said that the American-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, who after campaigning for the expulsion of Arabs from the occupied territories had been elected to the Knesset in 1984, was no longer an American citizen. This raised the issue of the tacit acceptance, until then, by Washington of dual Israeli–American citizenship. The Jewish community in the United States was alarmed by attempts by the Orthodox religious parties in Israel to change the Law of Return to allow for conversion by orthodox rites only and so deny the automatic right of entry into Israel of many American Jews who followed more liberal rites. In Israel itself, at the end of 1985 bus shelters carrying advertisements of women in swimming costumes were burnt down by extreme orthodox Jews. Some extreme secular Israelis retaliated by setting fire to a synagogue. The deepening religious–secular divide found focus in the debate on ‘Who is a Jew?’

In Arab eyes the United States’ credibility as a mediator in the Arab–Israeli conflict was undermined not only by its refusal to talk to the PLO, but its conviction that terrorism was the real reason for tension in the Middle East, and that this was often sponsored on an international level by Libya. After an explosion in a nightclub in West Berlin used by American servicemen which killed two and injured more than 200, on 15 April 1986 American bombers raided Tripoli and Benghazi, killing many civilians. American credibility was further undermined with the revelation in November 1986 of secret arms deals between Iran and the United States, initiated by Israel on the pretext that it could lead to the release of American hostages. At this time the revelations of Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli technician, to the London Sunday Times confirmed widely held suspicions that Israel had thermonuclear capability and was stockpiling weapons in the Negev desert. In September 1987, after a year during which the American Secretary of State, George Shultz, and Peres had toyed with the idea of an international conference which Shamir had refused even to consider, the State Department, under pressure from Congress, closed the Observer Mission of the PLO to the United Nations in New York and the Palestine Information Office in Washington. This was made possible by recent anti-terrorist legislation.³

Washington’s focus, however, was on developments in the Iran–Iraq War and not the Arab–Israeli conflict. The Arab states themselves shared this interest. At the summit meeting of the Arab League at Amman in November 1987 the concentration was on uniting the Arab nations against Iran. For the first time the Palestine issue did not have priority. In any case Syria and Jordan wanted to weaken the influence of the PLO. Nothing seemed able to shift Israel from the occupied territories, where Palestinians demonstrated fruitlessly over Arafat’s treatment in Amman. But the Arab world no longer seemed interested in the plight of the Palestinians.

The start of the intifada

On the afternoon of 8 December 1987 an Israeli vehicle crashed into a car full of Arab labourers queuing at a road block on the northern frontier of the Gaza Strip. Four of the Arabs were killed and the rest seriously injured. A rumour spread that this had not been an accident but was instead a revenge killing by a relative of an Israeli stabbed to death in the main market of Gaza two days previously. This rumour was widely believed on the West Bank and in Gaza. That evening a leaflet circulated in Gaza denounced the deaths and on 9 December an Arab newspaper published in East Jerusalem stated that the killings had been deliberate. When mourners returned from the funerals of the victims to their homes in Jebalya, the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip where 60,000 lived in grim conditions, they threw stones into the Israeli army compound shouting ‘Jihad’ (holy war). Riots flared up again in the camp the next morning, and students from the Islamic university went around Gaza city calling for demonstrations. Within a few days the riots had spread to Nablus on the West Bank. The demonstrations seemed different from the previous disturbances in the occupied territories. Palestinian men, women and children faced shooting, and attacked Israeli soldiers and even armed personnel carriers with a boldness not seen before. Rabin blamed Iran and Syria. Shamir said that the uprising had been instigated by the PLO. The Israeli army was unprepared to cope with what was in many ways a spontaneous upheaval during the early weeks of the poor and dispossessed: the Palestinian urban working-class inhabitants of the refugee camps in Gaza and the refugee populations of Bethlehem, Nablus and Ramallah. Initially the Israeli Defence Force did not send reinforcements into the disturbed areas. But some of the panic responses such as shootings at sight and the harassment of Muslims at prayer probably only helped to consolidate the defiance of a people who increasingly saw themselves as abused and forgotten even by their fellow Arabs. Even Arafat, at the beginning, did not grasp the significance of the fervour of what became known as the ‘intifada’, an Arabic word referring to the shivering of someone in fever, or the shaking of a dog with fleas.

There had been major Palestinian eruptions before the intifada. The sufferings of the Palestinian people following the creation of the state of Israel perhaps created a rare sense of community, one crossing geographical, social and religious boundaries. This is to some extent reflected in the major Palestinian demonstrations: the ones of September 1967 largely involved students protesting against the establishment of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories after the June 1967 War; it was the Palestinian workers in the towns and cities that demonstrated after Arafat’s speech to the United Nations in November 1974 in which he demanded a democratic and secular state; the serious rioting in the spring and summer of 1976 over the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories showed the strength of Palestinian nationalism; in March 1982 there was virtually a revolt on the West Bank over the Israeli policy of establishing ‘village leagues’ as an attempt to counter the radical nationalism of the urban Palestinian leadership; in September 1985 the Israeli bombing of the headquarters of the PLO led to riots in the refugee camps; in the second half of 1986 the appointment of three Arab mayors by Israeli authorities in West Bank towns, the deportation of the editor of a Jerusalem newspaper hostile to Hussein’s plans for the West Bank, and attacks on Palestinian communities by Israeli settlers led to clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian demonstrators; the deaths of two students at Bir Zeit University were followed by its closure and that of al-Najah University in Nablus.

The activities of the young members of a recently formed terrorist organization, the Islamic Jihad, which accepted violence as a political tool and aimed at ridding Muslim countries of non-Muslim elements, provided the immediate background for the uprising. The call of Islamic Jihad was not only to use arms against Israel but to make that fight part of the Islamic revival with its return to religious values. On 18 May 1987 six young members of the organization escaped from the security wing of the Gaza Central Prison. This escapade changed their image from fanatics to heroes in the eyes of many of the Palestinian youth. Free, they continued to strike Israeli targets and also assassinated two Arabs suspected of collaborating with Israel. Some were killed in a gun battle with Israeli security forces on 6 October 1987, along with other members of Islamic Jihad, but one of the former detainees, Imad Siftawi, escaped to Egypt. The fighters became heroes. Islamic Jihad called for a general strike on 10 October. Almost the entire population of Gaza clashed with the Israeli occupiers, stoning vehicles, burning tyres, attacking a police station and listening to speeches in mosques. There were also religious brawls at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. A clash between Israeli troops and students demonstrating at Bethlehem University after arrests in the Dahaisha refugee camp resulted in the death of one student and the closure of the university by the Israeli military government. A record number of Palestinians had been detained without trial during 1987. Deportations, and threatened deportations, often led to rioting. The actions of Israeli settlers, seemingly endorsed by the authorities, seemed increasingly callous.

On 10 November a 17-year-old girl was shot in the grounds of her school in Gaza by a Jewish settler after his car had been stoned. The settler was released on bail. Palestinian morale was boosted when on 25 November a hang-glider was flown across the Lebanese border by a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, who killed six soldiers in an Israeli army camp.⁴

Although some of the Palestinians had access to arms these were not used against the Israelis. This technique helped to achieve a widespread international sympathy. The first wave of riots went on daily until 20 December 1987. Sections of the city of Gaza were blocked by stone barricades and burning tyres defended by Palestinian youths. Handbills calling for the liberation of Palestine fuelled the fervour which was often religious. Members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine carried the rioting into Jerusalem itself, and on 19 December the Green Line which used to divide the city was rebuilt with stones, earth and rubbish. The Israeli police managed to restore order though administrative measures such as road blocks, body searches and the use of identity cards, but during the first month of the intifada the Israeli military government was unable to control the Palestinian population. Israeli guns killed 26 Palestinians and injured 320. Fifty-six Israeli soldiers and 30 civilians were injured by stones and bottles thrown by Palestinians. Even when the Israeli Defence Force managed to restore some sort of order it seemed that the Palestinian population was no longer cowed.

The institutionalization of the intifada

During the second phase of the intifada what had initially been a spontaneous outburst became institutionalized with the formation of the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (Unlu), which included representatives of both the PLO and Islamic Jihad. This command organized strikes and encouraged those Palestinians, around 120,000, who worked in Israel to stay away from their jobs. The next phase between February and June 1988 consisted of an attack on the Israeli administrative structure in the occupied territories: Palestinians who worked as police and tax collectors were encouraged to resign; there was non-payment of taxes and a partial boycott of Israeli goods. Palestinian traders and shopkeepers, co-ordinated by merchants’ committees working with the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, successfully defied attempts by the Israeli forces to impose an image of business normality. Even remote villages became involved, especially after the imposition of collective punishments, and the enforcement of curfews during the harvests of 1988 which affected the livelihoods of almost a quarter of a million.

The Israelis did not have an overall strategy. Firing at demonstrators, collective punishments, detentions, deportation orders, and attempts to curb the Palestinian press evoked international criticism. At the end of January 1988 Rabin stopped the use of live ammunition against demonstrators and substituted instead tear gas and beatings with batons as a form of punishment. Television coverage of Israeli soldiers assaulting unarmed Palestinians, often seemingly gratuitously, smeared Israel’s international image and even shocked Jews in the United States, some of whom began to question their support of Israel. On 22 December 1987 the United States did not veto the Security Council resolution denouncing Israeli violence in the occupied territories.

At a meeting of Arab foreign ministers at Tunis in January 1988 Palestine was restored to the top of the Arab agenda. Members of the Arab League were obliged to contribute to a fund for sustaining the uprising. President Mubarak of Egypt urged Washington to revive the peace process. The Assistant Under-Secretary, Richard Murphy, outlined the American plan on a shuttle tour of the Middle East between 5 and 11 February 1988: Israel and a joint Jordanian/Palestinian delegation would decide on a form of interim autonomy for the occupied territories; the Israeli military would withdraw from the West Bank and there would be municipal elections for Palestinian officials in 1989; an international conference would be held though it would have no power to impose a solution; a settlement was envisaged within three years.

Coinciding with the end of Murphy’s visit a new organization, Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, Movement of the Islamic Resistance), issued a signed communiqué on 11 February. The acronym corresponds to the word in Arabic meaning ‘zeal’, and the organization described itself as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood which had been established in Egypt, as well as linking itself with a ‘chain of Jihad’ through Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a Palestinian rebellion leader of the 1930s, and the jihad proclaimed after the United Nations partition resolution of November 1947.⁵

The American peace plan

Shultz saw leaders in the Middle East at the end of February. Peres had reservations but endorsed the plan. Shamir rejected it as impracticable and warned that pressure to implement it could lead to a general election in Israel which the Likud might win outright. As there was no provision for a Palestinian state the plan was rejected by the PLO, and the leadership of the intifada dismissed it as a ruse to stem the growth of a worldwide sympathy for the rights of the Palestinians. Arafat’s deputy, Abu Jihad, thought by the Israelis to be capable of managing the intifada from outside, was assassinated in Tunis on 16 April 1988. This resulted in a partial rapprochement between Arafat and Asad, and in June 1988 the Arab League meeting in Algiers finally rejected the American plan. Its communiqué insisted on an independent Palestinian state and the participation of the PLO in an international conference.

Jordan withdraws from the West Bank

There were indications, however, that the position of the PLO was softening. An aide of Arafat, Bassam Abu Sharif, early in June suggested a ‘two state’ solution. He also implied that the Palestinians were prepared to negotiate with the Israeli leaders, and explicitly accepted United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338. There was some unease in Israel over this. The Jordanian option, often favoured by the Labour Party in Israel and the Americans, ceased when on 31 July Hussein announced that the Jordanian government would give up its administration of the West Bank. He also dissolved the Jordanian parliament which had had West Bank representation, and cancelled Jordan’s West Bank development scheme. The Palestine National Council said that it would take over the responsibilities, and early in August Jordan stopped paying the salaries of 21,000 Arab school teachers and civil servants on the West Bank. Hussein’s move strengthened the position of the Likud in the preparations for the general election in Israel to be held in November 1988, as well as weakening the American position as Washington had anticipated using Jordan as an intermediary with the PLO.

The declaration of Palestinian statehood

The fourth stage of the intifada from July to November 1988 was influenced by Hussein’s decision and saw the coming together of the PLO and the local leadership in the moves towards the declaration of Palestinian statehood. At the end of August 1988 Reagan accepted the decision of the Federal District Court in New York that the PLO had the right to maintain an office in New York as it was accredited to the United Nations. Shortly afterwards, when speaking at the European parliament in Strasbourg, Arafat said that the PLO would accept Israel’s right to security if that country recognized an independent Palestinian state. In the occupied territories as well as using deportations and curfews the Israelis tried to cope with the demonstrations by outlawing the committees which had been set up to administer the intifada. But it was these committees which the PLO thought could become the basis of a Palestinian government. The Palestine National Council met in Algiers between 12 and 15 November 1988, and at the end of the session proclaimed the establishment of the state of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, in the terms of the United Nations resolution of November 1947 which had partitioned Palestine. Members of the council divided on whether to accept Resolution 242, which would have meant recognition of the state of Israel, but Arafat said that he wanted this as a mandate with which to pursue peace. In the interim period the occupied territories should be administered by the United Nations. The Palestine National Council rejected terrorism, and confined the use of violence to Israel and the occupied territories. The leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Georges Habash, accepted the majority vote.

In the Israeli general election held at this time Shamir scraped back. He dismissed the resolutions of the Palestine National Council. Another Republican president, George Bush, was elected in the United States. At a time when sixty countries recognized the state of Palestine the outgoing Reagan administration refused Arafat an entry visa to the United States. Arafat wanted to address the General Assembly. Shultz banned Arafat as an accessory to terrorism. The General Assembly then voted to hold its plenary session in Geneva where on 13 December Arafat appealed for peace negotiations. The next day, under pressure from Shultz, Arafat explicitly stated that the PLO accepted Resolutions 242 and 338, recognized Israel’s right to exist, and renounced resort to terrorism, repeating the Secretary of State’s phrases almost word for word. Shultz named the American ambassador to Tunisia, Robert Pelletreau, as Washington’s contact with the PLO.

In December, in the occupied territories, there was serious rioting after Israeli troops fired on a funeral procession in Nablus on 18 December. Plastic bullets had replaced the use of batons for crowd control. Statistics provided by the American State Department on 7 February 1989 claimed that 366 Palestinians had died and more than 20,000 had been wounded in the intifada. The uprising had killed 11 Israelis and wounded 1,100. Ten thousand Palestinians had been imprisoned and some, it was alleged, had been tortured. The fifth phase of the intifada, the Israeli counter-offensive during the first half of 1989, was notable for the worst violence since the start of the uprising: on 7 April at Nahalin, outside Bethlehem, Israeli police attacked people leaving the village mosque and killed four; in May the violence in Gaza was such that the Israelis sealed off the territory for the month and then used identity cards to deny entry to people with political records into Israel. Palestinians in the occupied territories regrouped and formed a clandestine network.

But by the beginning of 1989 the intifada had created an international climate which increasingly recognized the rights of the Palestinians. On 13 January a British Minister of State at the Foreign Office, William Waldegrave, met Arafat in Tunisia, the first official British contact with the PLO. After the meeting Waldegrave compared the terrorism of the PLO with that of Shamir’s Stern gang and its assassination of Lord Moyne in Cairo in November 1944. The new American administration, however, seemed to prevaricate, a point made by Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviet Foreign Minister, on his visit to the Middle East in February. Key members believed in the close military relationship between Israel and the United States: Lawrence Eagleburger, the Under-Secretary of State; Dennis Ross, the Director of the Policy Planning Staff; and Richard Haass, the National Security Council expert for the Middle East.

Early in 1989, however, Shamir did propose a peace plan, originating from Rabin and discussed through an intermediary with the leadership of the PLO: if the intifada stopped there could be elections in the occupied territories. The scheme was similar to one developed by a presidential study group in Washington which included Martin Indyk, a member of the pro-Israeli American-Israel Public Affairs Committee and later a director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Eagleburger, Ross and Haass. Rabin, on a visit to Washington in April, received cautious American approval for the Shamir plan. In May, however, Shamir rejected the idea of exchanging land for peace: the American Secretary of State, James Baker, warned against the vision of the ‘Greater Israel’; Mrs Thatcher seemed to indicate that Shamir’s plan did not go far enough. Sharon condemned Shamir for giving too much away. On 5 July the Israeli Prime Minister rejected forever the idea of a Palestinian state and excluded Palestinians in East Jerusalem from voting in the proposed elections. Washington strengthened its military ties with Israel: in September 1989 Rabin and Richard Cheney, the Secretary of Defence, signed a Memorandum of Understanding by which the United States would lend Israel war materials for research and development; this was followed by an agreement under which the United States would stockpile $100m of military supplies in Israel which Israel could use in a crisis. In October 1989 Washington stopped the flow of Russian Jews into the United States, which in effect meant that many more went to Israel to be settled in the occupied territories.⁶

The sudden influx of Russian Jewish immigrants into Israel at the end of 1989 was followed by Yitzhak Shamir’s speech on 14 January 1990 in which the Israeli Prime Minister spoke of settling the Russian Jews in the occupied territories. This settlement was to be largely paid for by American money. Three days after Shamir’s ‘big Israel’ speech, Bob Dole, the minority leader in the American Senate, demanded a cut in American aid to Israel. In February the Central Intelligence Agency warned Bush that Israeli claims that only 1 per cent of the Russian immigrants were being settled in the occupied territories were misleading as a further 10 per cent were being moved into East Jerusalem. On 2 March Israel imposed censorship on the reporting of Russian Jewish immigration, and the next day Bush told a press conference that he wanted Israel to stop settling Russian Jews on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. Although Bush was only reiterating the official American position on Jerusalem that Washington did not acknowledge the Israeli annexation of 1967, the American President’s statement was seen as an indication that East Jerusalem should not be excluded from any peace negotiations. Moscow’s reaction was similar. In December 1989 Moscow had agreed to start direct flights between Israel and the Soviet Union, but these were suspended in February 1990 in protest over the settlement of Russian Jews in the occupied territories. Moscow made a formal complaint on 13 March 1990. On 13 June President Gorbachev went further: while on a visit to the United States he threatened to suspend the issuing of visas for Russian Jews. Gorbachev mentioned the barrage of criticism from Arab countries. Shamir insisted that Israel would not accept restrictions on the movements of its citizens, but on 25 June assured Gorbachev that the Russian immigrants would not be settled in the occupied territories. This followed an announcement by Ariel Sharon, the Minister of Housing, that immigrant housing would be built in developing areas such as the Negev desert and the Galilee region. On the surface at any rate the right-wing governments in Israel responded to the combined pressure from Washington and Moscow on the issue of the settlement of Russian Jews.⁷

At the same time as the issue of the Russian Jews was exercising the superpowers, Egypt took the Arab lead in trying to promote the peace process. Cairo was well placed to do this. In March 1989 the border dispute with Israel over Taba had been settled in Egypt’s favour. In June 1989 Egypt resumed its membership of the Arab League, and by December Syria and Libya, the last two Arab states to do so, resumed diplomatic relations with Egypt. Mubarak and Qaddafi established a good rapport between their two countries. On 15 September 1989 Mubarak announced a ten-point peace initiative which was in effect an extension of the Shamir plan. This was an attempt to sustain the American initiative, and on 10 October James Baker, the American Secretary of State, released a five-point framework which was an unofficial proposal to help Israel and the Palestinians to talk. But the planned meeting in Cairo did not materialize, and the overtures came to little, partly as a result of internal politics in Israel with the formation in June 1990 of a new right-wing Israeli Cabinet which promised to retain the occupied territories and crush the intifada, and the breakdown of the dialogue between the Palestinians and the United States after Arafat’s hesitations over the denouncing of a seaborne terrorist attack against Israel on 30 May 1990 by the Palestine Liberation Front.⁸

Early in January 1990 Ezer Weizman, considered a ‘dove’ in Israeli terms, was forced to resign from the Israeli inner Cabinet after Mossad revelations about his contacts with the PLO. By February 1990 it was evident that the coalition government was split in its attitude to the peace process: on the one hand Ariel Sharon resigned from the Cabinet objecting to what he considered as too liberal a policy towards the Palestinians; on the other the Labour Party gave Shamir an ultimatum that Israel had to accept the American-backed peace plan, and the government collapsed on 15 March over this. On 8 June Shamir was able to form a new coalition with religious and nationalist parties, and Israel’s government on the surface appeared to have moved even further to the right.⁹

Shortly after the new coalition government was formed in Israel, on 20 June 1990, Bush suspended the American dialogue with the Palestinians. This followed a raid on 30 May by the Abu Abbas faction of the PLO on Israel’s beaches which was thwarted by Israeli forces. Despite American pressure Arafat refused to dissociate the PLO from the attack and would only say that he opposed ‘any military action that targets civilians’.¹⁰

Against the background of international diplomacy and changes of government in Israel, the intifada at times seemed to have fizzled out. The increased use of informers by the Israeli Defence Force and the Shin Bet, the secret police, led to some of these collaborators being killed, over eighty between January and September 1989 according to an Israeli spokesman. But the intifada erupted again in May 1990. Firstly in the Jabalya refugee camp an incident in which a border guard patrol tried to prevent Palestinian youths from burning tyres led to an outburst reminiscent of that on 7 December 1987, and showed that the whole situation was still highly explosive. On 20 May there were major riots after a mentally deranged Israeli shot seven labourers from Gaza at Rashon Le Zion, and the Israeli army lost control of parts of Gaza for a time.¹¹

Following Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 Arafat overrode Egyptian objections and issued a joint statement from Baghdad with Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, that they were united in their struggle against the Israeli occupation and the American intervention in the Gulf. This resulted in the expulsion of Palestinians by Saudi Arabia and Gulf states, particularly Qatar. Palestinians were settled in fleeing Kuwaitis’ homes. Saddam Hussein increasingly linked any solution in the Gulf to the Palestinian question. On 12 August he suggested a comprehensive solution to ‘all issues of occupation … in the entire region’: there should be an immediate and unconditional withdrawal by Israel from occupied Arab territories in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, and Iran should also withdraw from those parts of Iraq still in dispute; only after all these issues had been settled could there be discussions over a solution in Kuwait which would consider the historic rights of Iraq to Kuwait as well as the choice of the Kuwaiti people. Palestinians in Jordan, as well as many Jordanians, were inspired. King Hussein allowed George Habash of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Nayef Hawatmeh of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, banned for twenty years, back into Jordan to attend a conference of Arab Popular Forces on 15 September 1990. Hussein himself met the two Palestinian leaders. On 2 October Bush told the General Assembly that an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait would enable Iraq and Kuwait to settle their differences permanently, allow the Gulf states to make new arrangements to ensure stability, and for ‘all the states and people of the region to settle the conflict that divides the Arabs from Israel’. Douglas Hurd, the British Foreign Secretary, suggested that after Iraq left Kuwait, the permanent members of the Security Council should arrange a Middle East peace conference.¹²

The Temple Mount killings

On 8 October 1990 21 Palestinians were killed and 150 wounded on Temple Mount in Jerusalem by Israeli forces in a stoning incident involving Jewish worshippers: Palestinian eyewitnesses claimed that the stone throwing began only after the Israelis opened fire; Israeli police say individuals fired in their own protection. The United States voted to condemn Israeli action in the Security Council. This new departure by Israel’s historical sponsor and principal ally was criticized by the Israeli Foreign Minister, David Levy, when pressure was put on Israel to receive a United Nations mission to investigate the Temple Mount killings: ‘the United States is held captive by the coalition it has formed against Saddam Hussein’. Levy insisted that Israel could not receive a mission which failed to take account of the Arab stone throwing at Jewish worshippers or which infringed Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. Shamir described the United Nations mission’s brief to find ways of ‘protecting’ the Palestinian population as an infringement of Israeli sovereignty. It was apparent that Israel was worried that the United Nations would give in to Palestinian demands to replace the Israeli administration on the West Bank and in Gaza with United Nations troops and would then allow a PLO state to develop de facto if not de jure.¹³

The Gulf War

Against the background of the deteriorating situation in the Gulf and the insistence of the Iraqi Revolutionary Council on 1 December that any direct talks with the Americans should include the future of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, the Security Council, on 20 December, with American support, approved a resolution criticizing Israel for its deportation of four Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, and asked the Secretary General ‘to monitor and observe’ the conditions of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. But on 2 January 1991 both Arafat and Saddam Hussein said that neither of them insisted on a solution to the Palestinian problem as a condition of the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

On the day, 14 January, that Saddam Hussein described the Palestine issue as being ‘the crux of the confrontation’, an Israeli high court judge declared that there had been blatant discrimination in the issuing of gas masks. As early as 1 October 1990, with the widespread fear that Saddam Hussein would use chemical weapons, the Israeli military had announced that it would distribute gas masks to Israeli citizens, residents and visitors to Israel, and that Palestinians in the occupied territories could buy masks when further supplies arrived. The Palestinians argued that gas masks had been distributed to all Israeli citizens, to Jewish settlers in the occupied territories and to the arriving Russian immigrants.

Following the expiry of the United Nations deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the coalition headed by the United States and including Britain, France and other European nations, as well as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Turkey, launched Operation Desert Storm on 17 January and bombed Iraq and Kuwait. With the news of the first bombing raid on Baghdad the Israeli army placed some districts of East Jerusalem under curfew, and then the rest of the occupied territories. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were already under a blanket curfew following the assassination in Tunis on 14 January of PLO leaders. As Iraqi Scud missiles landed in Tel Aviv and Haifa, the United States mounted the largest airlift of military equipment for Israel since the October War, with 30 Galaxy transport planes flying in American Patriot surface-to-air missiles to counter the Scuds.

Despite pressure from its generals, the Israeli government followed what Marlin Fitzwater, the American spokesman, described as ‘a policy of remarkable restraint’ which won it widespread international sympathy as well as financial rewards, though the initial request by the Israeli Finance Minister, Yitzhak Modai, for $13bn in American aid – $3bn for anticipated damage during the Gulf War and $10bn for the resettlement of Russian Jews – was coolly received by Lawrence S. Eagleburger, the Deputy Secretary of State.

Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein increased with the Scud attacks: he was seen as the first Arab leader to pay more than lip service to the Palestinian cause and to attack the heart of the Zionist state. Some Palestinian spokespersons regretted the deaths of Israeli civilians but argued that Israel shelled civilians in Lebanon. Palestinian popular support for Saddam Hussein meant that the curfew in the occupied territories remained in force, and this hampered the distribution of gas masks to Palestinians: by 28 January only between 20–30,000 had been issued.¹⁴

Israeli officials, including Avi Pazner, Shamir’s media adviser, insisted the curfew would continue so long as Palestinians supported Saddam Hussein. There were reports of Palestinians cheering the Iraqi missiles from their rooftops. The underground leadership of the intifada, however, cancelled all strikes, and for the first time since the start of the uprising did not urge attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers. Likud, whose parliamentary position had already been strengthened when on 16 November 1990 the Agudat Israel Party, an orthodox religious group, had joined the coalition, secured a majority of six in the Knesset when on 1 February the right-wing Moledat (Homeland) Party joined as well. The Moledat Party advocated the transfer of Palestinians from the occupied territories to neighbouring Arab states, and its leader, Rehavam Ze’evi, became Minister without Portfolio and a member of the Ministerial committee on security affairs. Some members of the Israeli Cabinet opposed this move. On 3 February Shamir described the alliance as pragmatic and said that his government did not endorse the policy of transfer. The next day the Israeli Prime Minister rejected the idea of an international peace conference on the Palestinian issue as one fervently supported by Saddam Hussein and Arafat and thus ‘not the means for advancing a peace settlement but for imposing the will of the aggressor’.

Curfew restrictions were eased on 5 February, but apart from a small number, Palestinians were not allowed to enter Israel, and the economic difficulties in the occupied territories increased. When on 15 February Iraq offered to leave Kuwait, one of the conditions was that Israel should withdraw ‘from Palestine and the Arab territories it is occupying in the Golan and southern Lebanon’, or if this were not done, the United Nations pass resolutions against Israel identical to those condemning Iraq. Following the expiry of the deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait, a curfew was imposed again throughout the occupied territories, but was eased when the American-led coalition liberated Kuwait.¹⁵

The Gulf War polarized divisions in the Arab world: whereas Jordan and the PLO supported Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia, its allies in the Gulf Co-operation Council, Egypt and Syria opposed the Iraqi leader. Pictures of Saddam Hussein and Arafat were plastered side by side all over the occupied territories. Support for the PLO in the West, greatly enhanced by the intifada and the Temple Mount killings, largely evaporated. No alternative leadership to the PLO emerged. HAMAS saw an opportunity to gain at the expense of the PLO: if Saddam Hussein lost the war, as seemed likely, the PLO would be further weakened and support for HAMAS increased.¹⁶

Palestinian fervour for Saddam Hussein helped to weaken international sympathy for the Palestinian cause at a time when Israel was widely praised for its restraint in not responding violently to Iraqi missile attacks. But President Bush, in his victory speech to congress on 6 March, insisted that: ‘A comprehensive peace must be grounded in United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and the principle of territory for peace. This principle must be elaborated to provide for Israel’s security and recognition, and at the same time for legitimate Palestinian political rights.’

Against the background of a Saudi plan for a new Palestinian state consisting of the occupied territories and Jordan economically linked to Israel in a common market, the first meeting took place between an American Secretary of State and a wide-ranging Palestinian delegation when James Baker saw ten Palestinian personalities in Jerusalem on 12 March. About the same time 48 senators and 100 members of the House of Representatives attended the annual dinner of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington to hear the announcement of its goals for the year: increased aid to Israel, particularly for the resettlement of Russian immigrants; opposition to arms sales to Arab states; and to Arafat as a negotiator. Within Israel itself arbitrary knife attacks by Palestinians resulted in at least seven Israeli deaths in March, but interrogation of the captured killers failed to link them to any Palestinian organization. Motives ranged from revenge killings for relatives killed by Israeli security forces, to a statement from a medical orderly who had killed four unarmed women that ‘it was a message to Baker’. An Israeli Cabinet member, and leader of the right-wing Tehiya Party, complained about American expectations of Israeli ‘gestures of goodwill’ towards the Palestinians. On 31 March the Israeli government voted for extraordinary measures against Palestinians, including deportation. Gush Emunim confirmed on 22 April that it was preparing to open two more sites for settlement on the West Bank. Then, after efforts by Baker to secure concessions from Israel, David Levy, the Foreign Minister, promised on 26 April that Israel would agree to attend ‘open-ended regional peace talks’.

Levy was supported in this by only one member of the Israeli Cabinet, and on 28 April Shamir announced that Israel opposed such meetings. The Prime Minister said that if decisions were made in an international forum unacceptable conditions could be imposed on Israel by the other parties, and Israel could be forced to trade captured Arab lands for peace. Shamir preferred separate negotiations with Arab states and individual peace agreements.¹⁷

References

1.Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel. Vol. II. From the Aftermath of the Yom Kippur War (New York 1987), pp. 207–61; Itamar Rabinovich, The War for Lebanon 1970–1985 (London 1985), pp. 194–236; George Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East (London 1990), pp. 224–226.

2Alan Hart, Arafat (London 1987), pp. 458–515; Patrick Seale, Asad (Berkeley 1989), pp. 464–73; Alain Gresh, The PLO. The Struggle Within (London 1988), pp. 234–45.

3Jonathan Marcus, ‘Israel: the politics of piety’, The World Today, 42 (Nov. 1986), pp. 188–92; Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace (London 1990), pp. 123–42; Martha Wenger, ‘The money tree: US aid to Israel’, ‘US aid to Israel: from handshake to embrace’, Middle East Report, 20 (1990), pp. 12–15; Lenczowski, op. cit., pp. 254–5, 267–70.

4Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, Intifada (New York 1990), pp. 1–78; Salim Tamari, ‘The uprising’s dilemma’, Middle East Report, 20 (1990), pp. 4–8; Walid Khalidi, ‘Toward peace in the Holy Land’, Foreign Affairs, 66 (1988), pp. 771–89; Robert Satloff, ‘Islam in the Palestinian uprising’, Orbis, XXXIII (1989), pp. 389–401.

5See Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin (Eds), Intifada. The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation (London 1990), pp. 172–3; Satloff, op. cit., pp. 396–8; Yezid Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement 1949–1993 (Oxford 1997), pp. 607–637; Mohamed Heikal, Secret Channels: The Inside Story of Arab–Israeli Peace Negotiations (London 1996), pp. 377–87; Buruch Kimmeling and Joel S. Migdal, The Palestinians: The Making of a People (Cambridge, Mass. 1994), p. 274; Beverley Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine (London 1996), pp. 144–63.

6Schiff and Ya’ari, op. cit., pp. 132–335; Aaron David Miller, ‘Palestinians and the intifada: one year later’, Current History (Feb. 1989), pp. 73–6, 106; Helena Cobban, ‘The PLO and the intifada’, Middle East Journal, 44 (1990), pp. 207–33; Lenczowski, op. cit., pp. 276–9; Lawrence Joffe, ‘Historical survey’, in Martin Wright (Ed.), Israel and the Palestinians (Harlow 1989), pp. 59–69; Tamari, op. cit., pp. 4–8; Wenger, op. cit., pp. 12–15; Joe Stork and Rashid Khalidi, ‘Washington’s game plan in the Middle East’, Middle East Report, 20 (1990), pp. 9–11, 16; Linda B. Miller, ‘The United States and the Middle East: years of living cautiously?’, World Today, 46 (1990), pp. 4–5; Richard N. Haass, Conflicts Unending: The United States and Regional Disputes (New Haven 1990), pp. 30–56; Don Peretz, ‘The intifada and Middle East peace’, Survival, XXXII (1990), pp. 387–401.

7Keesing’s Record of World Events, XXXVI (1990), pp. 37748–50, 37304; Israeli Mirror, 25 January 1990; Melvin A. Goodman and Carolyn Mcgiffert Ekedahl, ‘Trends in Soviet policy in the Middle East and the Gulf’, International Journal, XLV (1990), pp. 602–30; Clive Jones, Soviet Jewish Aliyah 1989–1992: Impact and Implications for Israel and the Middle East (London 1996), pp. 16–56.

8Ali E. Hillal Dessouki, ‘Egypt and the peace process’, International Journal, XLV (1990), pp. 553–67; Keesing’s Record of World Events, XXXVI (1990), pp. 37750–1.

9Efraim Inbar and Giora Goldberg, ‘Is Israel’s political élite becoming more hawkish?’, International Journal, XLV (1990), pp. 630–60; Keesing’s Record of World Events, XXXVI (1990), p. 37747.

10Brian S. Mandell, ‘Rethinking the mediator’s calculus: challenges for American peacemaking in the Arab–Israeli conflict’, International Journal, XLV (1990), pp. 568–602 at p. 592.

11Israeli Mirror, 29 May 1990; The Times, 21 May 1990.

12Keesing’s Record of World Events, XXXVI (1990), p. 37751; Ahron Bregman and Jihan El-Tahri, The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs (London 1998), pp. 177, 201–2.

13The Times, 12 Oct. 1990; 15 Oct. 1990; The Independent on Sunday, 14 Oct. 1990; The Guardian, 10 Oct. 1990.

14Current History (Feb. 1991), pp. 91–2; (Mar. 1991), p. 139; Keesing’s Record of World Events, XXXVII (1991), p. 37939; Current History (Dec. 1990), p. 441; Middle East International (25 Jan. 1991), pp. 6, 12–13, 18–20; Current History (Mar. 1991), p. 140; Middle East International (8 Feb. 1991), pp. 3–5.

15Middle East International (8 Feb. 1991), pp. 12–13; Current History (Jan. 1991), p. 45; (Apr. 1991), p. 190; Time (18 Feb. 1991), p. 27; Keesing’s Record of World Events, XXXVII (1991), p. 37983; Israeli Mirror (Feb. 1991). For a collection of articles on the response of fundamentalist movements to the Gulf War see James Piscatori (Ed.), Islamic Fundamentalism and the Gulf Crisis (Chicago 1991). Narrative accounts include: John Bulloch and Harvey Morris, Saddam’s War. The Origin of the Kuwait Conflict and the International Response (London 1991); Dilip Hiro, Desert Shield to Desert Storm. The Second Gulf War (London 1992); Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict 1990–1991. Diplomacy and War in the New World Order, 2nd edn (London 1994). The conventional Western view of the Gulf War is challenged in Mohamed Heikal, Illusions of Triumph. An Arab View of the Gulf War (London 1992); Majid Khadduri and Edmund Ghareeb, War in the Gulf, 1990–91: The Iraq–Kuwait Conflict and its Implications (New York 1997); Edward W. Said, The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination 1969–1994 (London 1994), pp. 297, 374.

16Middle East International (22 Feb. 1991), p. 9; Keesing’s Record of World Events, XXXVII (1991), p. 38024.

17Middle East International (22 Mar. 1991), pp. 3–4, 7; Time (18 Mar. 1991), p. 24; Middle East International (5 Apr. 1991), pp. 10–11, 8–9; The Times, 23 Apr. 1991; 29 Apr. 1991; Israeli Mirror (Mar. 1991).