Summary: Reading Time: 12 minutesThe first Palestinian intifada represented a significant game changer for the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (FYI: The story of the second intifada is coming up later in this series.) It was the first time that many in the world began to see or consider the levels of injustice which the Palestinians were living under within Israel. It caused the people of Israel to begin to question themselves and their own government when it came to the question of the Palestinians. It also changed the nature of the conflict from something that was being acted upon outside of Israel’s borders, either at the United Nations or in the surrounding Arab world, to something that was being fought and forcibly discussed within Israel itself.<br> <br> <br> The Timing of the Intifada <br> <br> It is unlikely that the intifada could have come about at any other time in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Conditions were almost perfect for this unique stage of the conflict.<br> <br> The Palestinians’ old patron, the Egyptians, had recently concluded a peace treaty with Israel. The Palestinians were barely mentioned in the peace negotiations. They were no longer the concern of Egypt.<br> <br> The Jordanians would have been next in line among the Arab states to take up the cause of the Palestinians but in 1970 the events of Black September severed those ties. In the mid 70s even the Syrians turned against the PLO when they invaded Lebanon.<br> <br> The PLO had been ejected to northern African after the United Nations intervened in Lebanon. The Palestinian people were without representation and without a voice in the global order.<br> <br> The nation of Israel had existed on lands that many of the Palestinians believed was theirs for more than 40 years now. The occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza were now approaching the 20 year mark of Israeli dominance. In these lands the Palestinians had lost their homes and faced oppression and persecution under the Israelis with no end in sight. If anything, by the mid 1980s, things had only gotten worse.<br> <br> The final years of the Begin administration saw increasing pressure and oppression upon the Palestinians who still lived in Israel. Many Israelis feared the Palestinians who lived in Israel represented a sort of fifth column threat in their conflict with the PLO and the surrounding Arab states. At any moment the local Palestinians could rise up and turn against Israel.<br> <br> Israel was pursuing aggressive settlement policies where Jewish settlers were building homes on occupied lands that had once belonged to the Palestinians. The Jewish settlers represented some of the most ideologically driven elements of Israel, frequently given to promoting injustices against the Palestinians in an effort to push the Palestinians once and for all out of Israel. Even if a peaceful solution was ever going to be found in the future of the conflict, no one was going to remove these settlers who had built and settled their homes in the occupied lands.<br> Conditions that Led to the Intifada<br> <br> The state of affairs for the Palestinians living in Israel and the occupied territories by the mid 1980s was one of perpetual victims. They had no power or voice to fight back against increasingly assertive and humiliating Israeli domestic policies which were aimed at limiting and controlling the Palestinian people.<br> <br> Economically the Palestinians were struggling. Even those who were college educated had difficulty finding jobs. Those who did find jobs were typically forced into day labor as a means to provide for their families. Among the humiliating tactics frequently afflicted upon these Palestinians included being hired to build Jewish settlements on the very lands that had been forcibly taken from them by Israel.<br> <br>
