Myths & Facts :The Palestinian Uprisings

MYTH
“The intifada was a spontaneous uprising, resulting solely from Arab anger at Israeli atrocities.”

FACT
False charges of Israeli atrocities and instigation from the Muslim clergy in the mosques played an important role in starting the intifada (popularly translated as "uprising," but literally means "shaking off").

On December 6, 1987, an Israeli was stabbed to death while shopping in Gaza. One day later, four residents of the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza were killed in a traffic accident. Rumors that the four had been killed by Israelis as a deliberate act of revenge began to spread among the Palestinians.1

Mass rioting broke out in Jabalya on the morning of December 9, during which a 17-year-old youth was killed by an Israeli soldier after throwing a Molotov cocktail at an army patrol.2 This soon sparked a wave of unrest that engulfed the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.

MYTH
“The intifada constituted passive resistance. At its worst, it involved nothing more than children tossing stones at heavily armed soldiers.”

FACT
The intifada was violent from the start. During the first four years of the uprising, more than 3,600 Molotov cocktail attacks, 100 hand grenade attacks and 600 assaults with guns or explosives were reported by the Israel Defense Forces. The violence was directed at soldiers and civilians alike. Between December 9, 1987, and the signing of the Oslo accords (September 13, 1993), 160 Israelis were killed, including 100 civilians. Thousands more were injured.3

MYTH
“Media coverage of the intifada was fair and balanced.”

FACT
Candid members of the media admitted that coverage of the intifada was skewed. According to Steven Emerson, then a CNN correspondent, U.S. reporters acquiesced to Palestinian control over what was filmed. An Israeli cameraman who worked for several U.S. networks told Emerson that "if we aim the camera at the wrong scene, we'll be dead." In other instances, the networks handed out dozens of video cameras to Palestinians so that they could provide footage of strikes, riots and funerals. "There is absolutely no way to ensure the authenticity of what is filmed, nor is there any way to stop the cameras from being used as a tool to mobilize a demonstration," he wrote.4

Although nearly one-third of all Palestinians murdered in 1989 were killed by their Arab brethren, only 12 of the more than 150 stories filed by U.S. networks from the West Bank that year dealt with the internecine warfare. "While Palestinian political terror on the West Bank fails to make the news," Emerson wrote, "utter fabrications about Israeli brutality are reported uncritically."

For example, in early 1988, reporters were called to el-Mokassed Hospital in Jerusalem to film a dying Palestinian boy. His Palestinian doctor showed him hooked to life-support tubes, and claimed the child had been savagely beaten by Israeli troops.

On February 8, 1988, ABC's Peter Jennings introduced the report by saying UN officials "say that the Israelis have beaten another Palestinian to death in the territories." NBC and CBS also gave the claims wide publicity.
But the story wasn't true. According to the child's autopsy and medical records, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He had been sick for more than a year.

Overall, the U.S. networks, Emerson wrote, "have been complicit in a massive deception about the West Bank conflict."
NBC's Tel Aviv bureau chief Martin Fletcher acknowledged that the intifada posed a fairness problem. He noted the Palestinians manipulated the Western media by casting themselves as "David" against the Israeli "Goliath," a metaphor used by

Fletcher himself in a 1988 report.
"The whole uprising was media-oriented, and, without a doubt, kept going because of the media," he said. Fletcher openly admitted accepting invitations from young Palestinians to film violent attacks against Jewish residents of the West Bank.

"It's really a matter of manipulation of the media. And the question is: How much do we play that game? [We do it] in the same way that we turn up at all those Bush or Reagan photo opportunities. We play along because we need the pictures."5

MYTH
“The PLO had no role in fomenting intifada violence.”

FACT
Throughout the intifada, the PLO played a lead role in orchestrating the insurrection. The PLO-dominated Unified Leadership of the Intifada (UNLI), for example, frequently issued leaflets dictating which days violence was to be escalated, and who was to be its target.
In 1989, for example, the PLO declared February 13 a day for "escalating attacks on the collaborators" and "traitors" who work for the Civil Administration in the territories.

The PLO's Baghdad radio station described methods of arson through which "the orchards and fields of the Zionist enemy can be set ablaze."6
The New York Times described the discovery of "a cache of detailed secret documents showing that the PLO hired local killers to assassinate other Palestinians and carry out 'military activity' against Israelis." One document described how the PLO wanted the attacks credited to fictional groups so as not to disturb the U.S.-PLO dialogue.7

Yasser Arafat defended the killing of Arabs deemed to be "collaborating with Israel." He delegated the authority to carry out executions to the intifada leadership. After the murders, the local PLO death squad sent the file on the case to the PLO. "We have studied the files of those who were executed, and found that only two of the 118 who were executed were innocent," Arafat said. The innocent victims were declared "martyrs of the Palestinian revolution" by the PLO.8
Palestinians were stabbed, hacked with axes, shot, clubbed and burned with acid.

The justifications offered for the killings varied. Sometimes, being employed by the Civil Administration in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was reason enough. In other cases, contact with Jews warranted a death sentence. In October 1989, a Palestinian father of seven was knifed to death in Jericho after selling floral decorations to Jews who were building a succah. Accusations of "collaboration" with Israel were sometimes used as a pretext for acts of personal vengeance.

Women deemed to have behaved "immorally" were also among the victims.9
The UNLI's calls for violence escalated after the 1990 Temple Mount riot in which 17 Arabs were killed.. Yasser Abd-Rabbo — formerly the PLO's interlocutor in its dialogue with the U.S. — declared that "the war of stabbing with knives against the usurpers of Jerusalem is just beginning."10

The PLO continued its efforts to foment violence throughout 1991. On March 3, the UNLI issued a communiqué calling for "increased confrontation" with Israeli forces in the West Bank and Gaza. Another PLO leaflet, issued in September, called for the "execution" of anyone who sells property in Jerusalem to Jews.11
According to the Israeli government, the PFLP alone carried out 122 terrorist attacks during 1991, resulting in the murders of 18 residents of Israel and the territories.

Crimes committed by Fatah included the July 4 murder of a 61-year-old Arab villager near Jenin; the September killing of Israeli Sgt. Yoram Cohen and the October murder of a man found stabbed to death in a Gaza street, his head covered with a sack. A note bearing the words "Force-17," denoting Arafat's personal bodyguard, was found on the body.12
Later in the intifada, Hamas began to vie with the PLO for control of the uprising. In December 1992, for example, Hamas began to target IDF troops, killing four in several daring ambushes.

MYTH
“The Palestinians who died in the intifada were all killed by the Israelis.”

FACT
Initially, more Palestinians died in clashes with Israeli troops — battles usually triggered by Arab attacks against soldiers — than were killed by their fellow Palestinians in the intrafada. This changed dramatically in early 1990. In that year, the number of Palestinians dying in engagements with Israelis fell by more than half.

More Palestinians were murdered by Palestinians in the intrafada during that period. The internecine killings increased in 1991, with 238 Palestinians (up from 156) dying in the intrafada, more than triple the number who died at the hands of Israelis.13

Nearly 200 Palestinians were killed by their fellow Palestinians in 1992, more than double the number killed in clashes with Israeli security forces. The methods of murder, Steven Emerson reported, included beheading, mutilation, cutting off ears and limbs and pouring acid on a victim's face.14

The reign of terror became so serious that some Palestinians expressed public concern about the disorder. The PLO began to call for an end to the violence, but murders by its members and rivals continued.

When many Palestinians heard a knock at the door late at night, the New York Times reported, they were relieved to find an Israeli soldier rather than a masked Palestinian standing outside.15 Even after the intifada fizzled out following the signing of the Declaration of Principles in 1993, internecine warfare among the Palestinians continued, and persists to this day.

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