38 years on: How the First Intifada broke chains of occupation and reshaped resistance

By Press TV Website Staff

December 8, 2025, marks 38 years since the First Intifada – the landmark Palestinian uprising that reshaped the very meaning of resistance to Israeli occupation and apartheid.

The word Intifada in Arabic signifies a revolt or mass upheaval. Literally, it conveys the idea of a “tremor,” a “shaking,” or a vigorous act of “shaking off,” originating from the verb nafada.

Although the term existed earlier, it became embedded in political and revolutionary discourse in 1987, when Palestinians rose collectively against Israeli occupation following a deadly incident in the northern Gaza Strip, where an Israeli military vehicle ran over and killed four Palestinian laborers.

This uprising, later labeled the “Stone Intifada,” unfolded in the 40th year after the creation of the Zionist entity and transformed the dynamic between the occupation and the occupied.

Before this point, Palestinian political activism was largely led by secular and left-wing groups that operated outside or on the periphery of the territories under Israeli control. Their approach placed the core of the struggle outside the immediate lived reality of Palestinians in the occupied land.

However, by the late 1980s, newly emerging movements were promoting a unified, broad-based, and homegrown form of resistance on Palestinian soil, profoundly shaping the character of the uprising that erupted in December 1987.

Causes of the First Intifada

The spark behind the First Intifada came from many sources: decades of brutal military occupation, routine humiliation, regional upheavals, and specific triggering events.

The most significant driver, however, was the lived experience of Palestinians who were treated as second-class inhabitants under occupation and faced continuous loss of land to settlers arriving from abroad.

At the same time, Palestinians were frustrated by the political decisions of neighboring Arab states and former allies. Many of these states had begun abandoning armed struggle, accepting UN resolutions that softened their stance, and participating in reconciliation efforts with Israel.

This retreat from the Palestinian cause was epitomized at the Amman Summit, where Arab leaders effectively downgraded the Palestinian issue — despite the fact that championing Palestinian liberation was central to the founding purpose of the Arab League.

Under these circumstances, much of the political leadership involved in the Palestinian question concluded that the only realistic path forward lay in compromise and concessions.

Meanwhile, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran served as an inspiration in two significant ways: it offered a model of a people-driven struggle and influenced the strategic political thinking of Arab governments in the region.

Drawing on the Iranian example, Palestinians mobilized in ways tailored to their own political, economic, and social conditions, shifting the battleground back into the occupied territories and out of the framework of regional power politics.

How the first Intifada unfolded

The historic uprising began on December 8, 1987, in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, after an Israeli truck driver struck and killed four Palestinian workers, three of whom lived in the camp.

This deadly ramming was widely viewed as an act of vengeance for the killing of the commander of Israel’s military police, who had died days earlier in an ambush carried out by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement against a Zionist patrol.

In that operation, four Palestinian fighters – Muhammad Saeed Jamal, Sami Sheikh Khalil, Ahmad Halas, and Zuhdi Qurtaba – were also killed.

The truck attack was especially shocking due to its public and ruthless nature: four unarmed Palestinian workers were crushed beneath its wheels, and nine others were severely wounded.

The brutality of the incident sent shockwaves throughout the occupied territories. Large numbers of Palestinian men and women poured onto the streets, forming the foundation of what became the Intifada.

The Palestinian response took the form of mass marches, widespread civil disobedience, strikes, boycotts, barricades, and the frequent use of stones and Molotov cocktails against Israeli troops and infrastructure in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

The uprising stretched over six years. During this period, Israel responded with overwhelming force, killing nearly 2,000 Palestinians.

The severity of the resistance’s impact is evident in a statement by then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

“I wish that one day I would wake up and see all of Gaza submerged in the sea and that I would be free from the evil of this region,” he said.

Consequences of the First Intifada

The First Intifada produced several major shifts in Palestinian political and social life.

One of its most important achievements was bringing the center of the struggle back onto the ground in the occupied territories, after years in which Palestinian fate was shaped mainly by outside diplomats, Arab and Western alike.

Following December 1987, Palestinians no longer appeared solely as a defeated side. In many scenarios, they succeeded in forcing their occupiers to respond to Palestinian terms.

The uprising pushed Israeli authorities into a defensive stance and compelled them to grant concessions to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in hopes of calming the widespread unrest.

A major political breakthrough came one year into the uprising: the declaration of an independent Palestinian state, which was announced in 1988.

To this day, that declaration enjoys recognition from most countries worldwide.

The First Intifada also strengthened Palestinian resistance movements, encouraging them to continue their struggle against occupation and injustice. At the same time, it drew significant international attention to the Palestinian cause, reshaping global perceptions.

Nearly 36 years after the First Intifada, Palestinians carried out an unprecedented resistance operation against the Zionist enemy that shook the regime and its Western backers.

Operation Al-Aqsa Flood changed the way the world looks at the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

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