Palestinian political violence

Palestinian political violence refers to actions carried out by Palestinians with the intent to achieve political objectives that can involve the use of force, some of which are considered acts of terrorism,^{[1][2][3][4][5]} and often carried out in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Common objectives of political violence by Palestinian groups^[6] include self-determination in and sovereignty over all of Palestine (including seeking to replace Israel),^[7][8] or the recognition of a Palestinian state inside the 1967 borders. This includes the objective of ending the Israeli occupation. More limited goals include the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and recognition of the Palestinian right of return.^{[9][10][11][12][13]}

Palestinian groups that have been involved in politically motivated violence include the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Abu Nidal Organization, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas.^[14] Several of these groups are considered terrorist organizations by the governments of the United States,^[15] Canada,^[16] the United Kingdom,^[17] Japan,^[18] New Zealand^[19] and the European Union.^[20][21]

Palestinian political violence has targeted Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Jordanians,^[22] Egyptians,^[23] Americans,^[24] and citizens of other countries.^[25] Attacks have taken place both within Israel and the Palestinian territories as well as internationally and have been directed at both military and civilian targets. Tactics have included hostage taking, plane hijacking, boat hijacking, stone and improvised weapon throwing, improvised explosive device (IED), knife attacks, shooting sprees, vehicle-ramming attacks, car bombs and assassinations. In the 1990s, groups seeking to disrupt the Israeli-Palestinian peace process began adopting suicide bombings, predominantly targeting civilians, which later peaked during the Second Intifada. In recent decades, violence has also included rocket attacks on Israeli urban centers. The October 7, 2023, attacks resulted in massacres, and hostage-taking.

Israeli statistics state that 3,500 Israelis have been killed as a result of Palestinian political violence since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.^[26][25] Suicide bombings constituted 0.5% of Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the first two years of the Al Aqsa Intifada; though this percentage accounted for half of the Israelis killed in that period.^[27] As of 2022,^[update] a majority of Palestinians, 59%, believe armed attacks against Israelis inside Israel are an effective measure to end the occupation, with 56% supporting them.^[28]

In protest against the Balfour Declaration, which proposed Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people, and its implementation under a League of Nations Mandate for Great Britain, Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, from November 1918 onwards, began to organize in opposition to Zionism. By the end of Ottoman rule, the Jewish population of Palestine was 56,000^[29] or one-sixth of the population.^[30] Hostility to Jewish immigration led to numerous incidents such as the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, the Jaffa riots of 1921, the 1929 Palestine riots and the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine (which was suppressed by British security forces and led to the deaths of approximately 5,000 Palestinians). After the passing of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 which called for the establishment of independent Arab and Jewish States, a Palestinian Civil War broke out. On the declaration of the state of Israel, May 15, 1948, a full-scale war, involving also the intervention of neighbouring Arab states, took place, with casualties of 6,000 Israelis and, according to the 1958 survey by Arif al-Arif, 13,000 Palestinians^[31] and the exodus, through expulsion, or panicked flight, of approximately 700,000 Arab Palestinians who subsequently became refugees.^[32]

In the Six-Day War, a further 280,000–360,000 Palestinians became refugees, and the remaining Palestinian territories were also occupied from Jordan and from Egypt, and later began to be settled by Jewish and Israeli settlers, while the Palestinians were placed under military administration. While historically, Palestinian militancy was fragmented into several groups, the PLO led, and eventually united, most factions, while conducting military campaigns that varied from airplane hijackings, militant operations and civil protest. In 1987, a mass revolt of predominantly civil resistance, called the First Intifada, exploded, leading to the Madrid Conference of 1991, and subsequently to the Oslo I Accord, which produced an interim understanding allowing a new Palestinian authority, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to exercise limited autonomy in 3% (later 17%) of the West Bank, and parts of the Gaza Strip not used or earmarked for Israeli settlement. In order to derail the peace process, Islamist organizations such as Hamas and the PIJ adopted the usage of suicide bombings,^[33][34] predominantly against Israeli civilians.^[35] Frustration over the perceived failure of the peace talks to yield a Palestinian state^[36] led to the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, which ended in 2005, coincident with the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The rise of Hamas, the use of Palestinian rocketry and Israel's control of Gaza's borders, has led to further chronic violence, culminating in a further two conflicts, the Gaza War of 2008–09 and Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012.

Since 1967, some reports estimate that some 40% of the male population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been arrested or detained in Israeli prisons for political or military reasons.^[37]

Violence against the Jews in Palestine followed the Balfour Declaration in November 1917 which stimulated Jewish migrants to settle in Palestine. At this time the Arabs were both geographically and demographically dominant compared to the Jewish population, where the majority of Arabs were distributed throughout the highlands of Judea, Samaria and Galilee and the Jewish population was scattered in small towns and rural communities. The Arabs realized that the Jewish community, due to their lower numbers, was vulnerable to attrition and less able to take casualties. Therefore, they adopted a "war of attrition" tactic which was advantageous to the more numerous Arab community.^[38]

Many of the deaths were inflicted during short time spans and in a few locations. For instance, in April 1920 about 216 Jews became casualties (killed or wounded) in a single day in Jerusalem. By May 1921, the casualty rate for Jews was approaching 40 per day and in August 1929 it had risen to 80 per day. During the 1929 riots, one percent of the Jewish population of Jerusalem became casualties, in Safed 2 percent and in Hebron 12 percent.^[38] During the 1920–1929 attacks on Jews were organized by local groups and encouraged by local religious leaders. As the Jewish community did not count on the British authorities to protect them, they formed the Haganah which were predominantly defensive in the 1920s.^[38] During the Arab Revolt in the 1936–1939 period, violence was coordinated and organized by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and was directed against both Jews and the British. Due to the rising level of Arab violence, the Haganah started to pursue an offensive strategy.^[38]

Throughout the period 1949–56 the Egyptian government opposed the movement of refugees from the Gaza strip into Israel, but following the IDF's Gaza Raid on February 28, 1955, the Egyptian authorities facilitated militant infiltration but still continued to oppose civilian infiltration.^[39]

Around 400 Palestinian "infiltrators" were killed by Israeli Security Forces each year in 1951, 1952 and 1953; a similar number and probably far more were killed in 1950. 1,000 or more were killed in 1949. At least 100 were killed during 1954–1956. In total upward of 2,700 and possibly as many as 5,000 'infiltrators' were killed by the IDF, police, and civilians along Israel's borders between 1949 and 1956. Most of the people in question were refugees attempting to return to their homes, take back possessions that had been left behind during the war and to gather crops from their former fields and orchards inside the new Israeli state.^[40] Meron Benivasti states that the fact that the "infiltrators" were for the most part former inhabitants of the land returning for personal, economic and sentimental reasons was suppressed in Israel as it was feared that this may lead to an understanding of their motives and to the justification of their actions.^[40]

After Israel's Operation Black Arrow in 1955 which came as a result of a series of massacres in the city of Rehovot, the Palestinian fedayeen were incorporated into an Egyptian unit.^[41] John Bagot Glubb, a British general who commanded the Arab Legion, claimed in his 1957 autobiography A Soldier with the Arabs that he convinced the Legion to arm and train the fedayeen for free.^[42] Between 1951 and 1956, 400 Israelis were killed and 900 wounded by fedayeen attacks.^[43][44]

The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in 1964. At its first convention in Cairo, hundreds of Palestinians met to "call for the right of self-determination and the upholding of the rights of the Palestinian nation".^[45] To achieve these goals, a Palestinian army of liberation was thought to be essential; thus, the Palestinian Liberation Army (PLA) was established with the support of the Arab states.^[45] Fatah, a Palestinian group founded in the late 1950s to organize the armed resistance against Israel, and headed by Yasser Arafat, soon rose to prominence within the PLO. The PLO charter called for "an end to the State of Israel, a return of Palestinians to their homeland, and the establishment of a single democratic state throughout Palestine".^[46]

Our basic aim is to liberate the land from the Mediterranean Seas to the Jordan River. We are not concerned with what took place in June 1967 or in eliminating the consequences of the June War. The Palestinian revolution's basic concern is the uprooting of the Zionist entity from our land and liberating it.

— Yasser Arafat, 1970^[47]

Due to Israel's defeat of Arab armies in the Six-Day War, the Palestinian leadership came to the conclusion that the Arab world was unable to challenge Israel militarily in open warfare. Simultaneously, the Palestinians drew lessons from movements and uprisings in Latin America, North Africa and Southeast Asia which led them to move away from guerilla warfare in rural areas towards terrorist attacks in urban environments with an international reach. This led to a series of aircraft hijackings, bombings and kidnappings which culminated in the killings of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. The military superiority of Israel led Palestinian fighters to employ guerrilla tactics from bases in Jordan and Lebanon.^[46]

In the wake of the Six-Day War, confrontations between Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan and government forces became a major problem within the kingdom. By early 1970, at least seven Palestinian guerrilla organizations were active in Jordan, one of the most important being the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) led by George Habash. Based in the Jordanian refugee camps, the fedayeen developed a virtual state within a state, receiving funds and arms from both the Arab states and Eastern Europe and openly flouting the law of the country. The guerrillas initially focused on attacking Israel, but by late 1968, the main fedayeen activities in Jordan appeared to shift to attempts to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy.^[22]

Various clashes between the fedayeen and the army occurred between the years 1968–1970. The situation climaxed in September 1970, when several attempts to assassinate King Hussein failed. On September 7, 1970, in the series of Dawson's Field hijackings, three planes were hijacked by PFLP: a SwissAir and a TWA that were landed in Azraq area and a Pan Am that was landed in Cairo. Then on September 9, a BOAC flight from Bahrain was also hijacked to Zarqa. The PFLP announced that the hijackings were intended "to pay special attention to the Palestinian problem". After all hostages were removed, the planes were dramatically blown up in front of TV cameras.

A bitterly fought 10-day civil war known as Black September ensued, drawing involvement by Syria and Iraq, and sparking troop movements by Israel and the United States Navy. The number of people killed on all sides were estimated as high as 3,500,^[22] other sources claiming it to be as high as 20,000.

Battles between Palestinian guerrilla forces and the Jordanian army continued during the closing months of 1970 and the first six months of 1971. In November 1971, members of the Palestinian Black September group, who took their name from the civil war, assassinated Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi al-Tal in Cairo. In December the group made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Jordanian ambassador in Britain.^[22]

In the aftermath of Black September in Jordan, many Palestinians arrived in Lebanon, among them Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). In the early 1970s their presence exacerbated an already tense situation in Lebanon, and in 1975 the Lebanese Civil War broke out. Beginning with street fighting in Beirut between Christian Phalangists and Palestinian militiamen, the war quickly deteriorated into a conflict between two loosely defined factions: the side wishing to preserve the status quo, consisting primarily of Maronite militias, and the side seeking change, which included a variety of militias from leftist organizations and guerrillas from rejectionist Palestinian (nonmainstream PLO) organizations. The Lebanese civil war lasted until 1990 and resulted in an estimated 130,000 to 250,000 civilian fatalities and one million wounded.^{[citation needed]}

After Black September, the PLO and its offshoots waged an international campaign against Israelis. Notable events were the Munich Olympics massacre (1972), the hijacking of several civilian airliners (some were thwarted, see for example: Entebbe Operation), the Savoy Hotel attack, the Zion Square explosive refrigerator and the Coastal Road massacre. During the 1970s and the early 1980s, Israel suffered attacks from PLO bases in Lebanon, such as the Avivim school bus massacre in 1970, the Maalot massacre in 1974 (where Palestinian militants massacred 21 school children) and the Nahariya attack led by Samir Kuntar in 1979, as well as a terrorist bombing by Ziad Abu Ein that killed two Israeli 16-year-olds and left 36 other youths wounded during the Lag BaOmer celebration in Tiberias.^[49][50] Following the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, called "Operation Peace for Galilee" by the IDF, and the exile of the PLO to Tunis, Israel had a relatively quiet decade.^{[citation needed]}

The First Intifada was characterized more by grassroots and non-violent political actions from among the population in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories.^[51] A total of 160 Israelis and 2,162 Palestinians were killed, including 1,000 Palestinians killed by other Palestinians under the accusation of being collaborators.^[52] The Intifada lasted five years and ended with the signing of the Oslo Accords.^[53] The strategy of non-violence, though widespread among Palestinians, was not always adhered to, and there were youth who threw molotov cocktails and stones, with such violence generally directed against Israeli soldiers and settlers.^[54]

There were two attacks that represented new developments in terms of political violence inside Israel in this period. The first Palestinian suicide attack took place on July 6, 1989, when a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad boarded the Tel Aviv Jerusalem bus 405. He walked up to the driver and pulled the wheel to the right, driving the vehicle into a ravine, killing 16 people.^[55] The end of the intifada also saw the first use of suicide bombing as a tacti