As Palestinians have not had a fully recognized state with a regular army, much of Palestinian political violence in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has taken the form of insurgency. Common objectives of political violence by Palestinian groups include self-determination in or sovereignty over the region of Palestine, seeking a one-state solution, or the recognition of a Palestinian state. This includes the objective of ending the Israeli occupation. Goals also include the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and recognition of the Palestinian right of return.
Palestinian groups that have been involved in politically motivated violence include the Palestine 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. Several of these groups are considered terrorist organizations by the governments of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand and the European Union.
Attacks have taken place both within Israel and Palestine as well as internationally. They have been directed at both military targets and civilians of many countries. Tactics have included hostage taking, plane hijacking, boat hijacking, stone throwing, improvised explosive device, knife attacks, shooting sprees, attacks with vehicles, car bombs and assassinations. In the 1990s, groups seeking to stop Israeli-Palestinian negotiations 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 attacks resulted in massacres and hostage-taking.
Suicide bombings constituted 0.5% of Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the first two years of the Second Intifada, though this percentage accounted for half of the Israelis killed in that period. As of 2022, a majority of Palestinians, 59%, believe armed attacks against Israelis inside Israel are an effective measure to end the occupation, with 56% supporting them.
History
Overview and context
In protest against the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which proposed a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, both Muslim and Christian Palestinians began to organize in opposition to Zionism. By the end of Ottoman rule, the Jewish population of Palestine was 56,000 or one-sixth of the total population. Hostility to Jewish immigration led to numerous incidents such as the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, the 1921 Jaffa riots, the 1929 Palestine riots and the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine. The Arab revolt 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, the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine broke out. Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence on May 15, 1948, the 1948 Arab–Israeli War began, involving intervention by neighboring Arab states. Casualties included 6,000 Israelis and, according to the 1958 survey by Arif al-Arif, 13,000 Palestinians. Additionally some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled during the Nakba subsequently becoming refugees.
In the Six-Day War, a further 280,000–360,000 Palestinians became refugees, the West Bank including Jerusalem was captured and occupied from Jordan and Gaza was occupied from Egypt. These occupied Palestinian territories later began to be settled by Jewish and Israeli settlers, while the Palestinians were placed under Israeli military administration. Historically, Palestinian militancy was fragmented into several groups. The Palestine Liberation Organization led, and eventually united, most factions, while conducting military campaigns, varying from airplane hijackings, militant operations, and civil protest. In 1987, the First Intifada, a revolt of predominantly civil resistance, broke out. It led to the Madrid Conference of 1991, and subsequently to the Oslo I Accord. Oslo I produced an interim understanding allowing the new Palestinian National Authority to exercise limited autonomy in 3%, later 17%, of the West Bank, and parts of the Gaza Strip, which were not used or designated for Israeli settlement. Unsatisfied with concessions, Islamist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad adopted the usage of suicide bombings, predominantly against Israeli civilians. Frustration over the perceived failure of the peace talks to yield a Palestinian state led to the outbreak of the Second Intifada from September 2000 until 2005, coincident with Israel's unilateral disengagement plan. 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.
British Mandate for Palestine (1917–1947)
Following the Balfour Declaration in November 1917 which encouraged Jewish migrants to settle in Palestine, violence against the Jews increased in the region. At this time Arabs were the majority, both geographically and demographically compared to the Jewish population. The majority of Arab Palestinians were distributed throughout the highlands of Judea, Samaria and Galilee whereas the Jewish population was scattered in small towns and rural communities. Arabs hostile to the Jewish population adopted a "war of attrition" tactic which was advantageous to the more numerous Arab community.
Many of the deaths were inflicted during short time spans and in a few locations. On a day in April 1920, about 216 Jews were wounded or killed in Jerusalem. By May 1921, around 40 Jews were killed or wounded per day. In August 1929 that number had risen to 80 per day. During the 1929 riots, one percent of the Jewish population of Jerusalem were wounded or killed, in Safed 2 percent, and in Hebron 12 percent. 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. 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.
Independence of Israel to establishment of PLO (1949–1964)
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.
Around 400 Palestinian insurgents were killed by Israeli Security Forces each year in 1951, 1952 and 1953; a similar number and probably far more were killed in 1950. In 1949, 1,000 or more Palestinians were killed. At least 100 Palestinians were killed during 1954–1956. In total upward of 2,700 and possibly as many as 5,000 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. 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.
After Israel's Operation Black Arrow in 1955, in response to massacres in the city of Rehovot, the Palestinian fedayeen were incorporated into an Egyptian unit. 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. Between 1951 and 1956, 400 Israelis were killed and 900 wounded by fedayeen attacks.
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". To achieve these goals, a Palestinian army of liberation was thought to be essential; thus, the Palestinian Liberation Army was established with the support of the Arab states. 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".
Six-Day War and aftermath
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 and 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.
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.
Black September
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, 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.
Relocation to Lebanon and Lebanese Civil War
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.
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. 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.
First Intifada (1987–1993)
The First Intifada was characterized more by grassroots and non-violent political actions from among the population in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories. 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. The Intifada lasted five years and ended with the signing of the Oslo Accords. 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.
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. The end of the intifada also saw the first use of suicide bombing as a tactic by Palestinian militants. On April 16, 1993, Hamas carried out the Mehola Junction bombing, in which operative Saher Tamam al-Nabulsi detonated his explosives-laden car between two buses. One person, a Palestinian, other than the attacker was killed, and 21 were wounded.
During this period, the Abu Nidal Organization became subsumed by infighting and mass executed hundreds of its members and their families during 1987–1988. The number of executed is estimated at 600 people, mostly Palestinians, across several separate locations in Syria, Lebanon and Libya.
Oslo Accords to Camp David Summit (1993–2000)
The years between the intifadas were marked by intense diplomatic activity between Israel and Palestinians, who were represented by the PLO. This led to the signing of the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian National Authority. In response, Islamist organizations such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) adopted the tactic of suicide bombings, influenced by Lebanese groups, to derail the peace process, weaken the PLO and polarize Israeli politics.
In this period, suicide bombings of Israeli buses and crowded spaces became a regular tactic, particularly by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Attacks during this period include the Beit Lid massacre, a double-suicide bombing at a crowded junction that killed 21 people and the Dizengoff Center massacre, a suicide bombing outside a Tel Aviv shopping mall that killed 13 people.
Second Intifada (2000–2005)
The Second Intifada (2000–2005) witnessed a significant increase in Palestinian political violence, including many suicide bombings, which predominantly targeted Israeli civilians. According to B'Tselem, as of July 10, 2005, over 400 members of the Israeli Security forces, and 821 Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinians since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, 553 of whom were killed within the 1949 Armistice lines, mainly by suicide bombings. Targets of attacks included buses, Israeli checkpoint, restaurants, discothèques, shopping malls, a university, and civilian homes.
Ramallah lynching
In October 2000, a Palestinian mob lynched two non-combatant Israel Defense Forces reservists, Vadim Nurzhitz (sometimes spelled as Norzhich) and Yossi Avrahami (or Yosef Avrahami), who had accidentally entered the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Ramallah in the West Bank. The brutality of the event, captured in a photo of a Palestinian rioter proudly waving his blood-stained hands to the crowd below, sparked international outrage and further intensified the ongoing conflict between Israeli and Palestinian forces.
Suicide bombings and attacks on civilians
A spate of suicide bombings and attacks, aimed mostly at civilians (such as the Dolphinarium discotheque suicide bombing), was launched against Israel and elicited a military response. A suicide bombing dubbed the Passover Massacre (30 Israeli civilians were killed at Park hotel, Netanya) climaxed a bloody month of March 2002, in which more than 130 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed in attacks. Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield. The operation led to the apprehension of many members of militant groups, as well as their weaponry and equipment. 497 Palestinians and 30 Israelis were killed during Operation Defensive Shield.
In 2004, 31 people were killed and 159 others were wounded in a simultaneous attack against multiple tourist destinations in Egypt. Of the dead, 15 were Egyptians, 12 were from Israel, two from Italy, one from Russia, and one was an Israeli-American. According to the Egyptian government, the bombers were Palestinians led by Iyad Saleh, who had tried to enter Israel to carry out attacks there but were unsuccessful.
2005–2013
In the mid-2000s, Hamas started putting greater emphasis on its political characteristics and strengthened its popularity amongst Palestinians. In 2006 Palestinian legislative elections Hamas won a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council, prompting the United States and many European countries to cut off all funds to Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, insisting that Hamas must recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous peace pacts.
After the Israel's unilateral disengagement plan in 2005 and the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Hamas took control over all the Gaza Strip in June 2007 in a bloody coup. Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza strip increased the firing of Qassam rockets, mortars and Grad missiles on southern Israel. Attacks continued outside the Gaza Strip perimeter, including the attack that resulted in the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit being captured and held in the Gaza Strip for over five years.
Hamas has made use of guerrilla tactics in the Gaza Strip and to a lesser degree the West Bank. Hamas has adapted these techniques over the years since its inception. According to a 2006 report by rival Fatah party, Hamas had smuggled "between several hundred and 1,300 tons" of advanced rockets, along with other weaponry, into Gaza. Some Israelis and some Gazans both noted similarities in Hamas's military buildup to that of Hezbollah in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.
Hamas has used IEDs and anti-tank rockets against the IDF in Gaza. The latter include standard RPG-7 warheads and home-made rockets such as the Al-Bana, Al-Batar and Al-Yasin. The IDF has a difficult, if not impossible time trying to find hidden weapons caches in Palestinian areas – this is due to the high local support base Hamas enjoys.
During the Gaza War (2008–09), Palestinian militant groups fired rockets aimed at civilian targets which struck the cities of Ashdod, Beersheba and Gedera. The military wing of Hamas said that after a week from the start, it had managed to fire 302 rockets, at an average of 44 rockets daily. 102 rockets and 35 mortars were fired by Fatah at Israel. Over 750 rockets and mortars were fired from Gaza into Israel during the conflict wounded 182 civilians, killing 3 people, and causing minor suffering to another 584 people suffering from shock and anxiety. Several rockets landed in schools and one fell close to a kindergarten, all located in residential areas. The UN fact finding mission stated that this constituted a deliberate attack against the civilian population and was unjustifiable in international law.
In 2012, terror attacks against Israelis in the West Bank increased compared to 2011. The number of terror attacks in the West Bank increased from 320 in 2011 to 578 in 2012. The attacks mainly involved rock throwing, Molotov cocktails, firearms and explosives.
In 2013, Hamas stated that the "kidnapping of IDF soldiers to trade for Palestinian prisoners is at the heart of Palestinian culture".
Israel-Gaza war
On October 7, 2023, Hamas and other Palestinian factions launched an attack, breaching the Gaza–Israel barrier. For months prior to the attack, Hamas had been leading Israeli intelligence to believe that they were not seeking conflict. Hamas fighters proceeded to massacre hundreds of civilians at a music festival and in kibbutz Be'eri and take hostages in Southern Israel back to the Gaza Strip. In total, 1,139 civilians, IDF soldiers and foreign nationals were killed in Israel, making this the deadliest attack by Hamas militants since the foundation of Israel in 1948. The Hamas-led attack marked the beginning of the ongoing Gaza war.
Government involvement
In 2011, Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu stated that the incitement promulgated by the Palestinian Authority was destroying Israel's confidence, and he condemned what he regarded as the glorification of the murderers of the Fogel family in Itamar on PA television. The perpetrator of the murders had been described as a "hero" and a "legend" by members of his family, during a weekly program.
Isi Leibler wrote in the Jerusalem Post that Mahmoud Abbas and his chief negotiator Saeb Erekat deny Israel's right to exist and promote vicious hatred against Jews, in statements made in Arabic. He claimed that the state-controlled Palestinian media praised the murders committed by Palestinians. Abbas al-Sayed who perpetrated the Passover suicide attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya which killed 30 civilians was described by Abbas as a "hero" and "symbol of the Palestinian Authority".
Following the Itamar massacre and a bombing in Jerusalem, 27 US senators sent a letter requesting the US Secretary of State to identify the administration's steps to end Palestinian incitement to violence against Jews and Israel that they said was occurring within the "Palestinian media, mosques and schools, and even by individuals or institutions affiliated with the Palestinian Authority".
The United Nations body UNESCO stopped funding a children's magazine sponsored by the Palestinian Authority that commended Hitler's killing of Jews. It deplored this publication as contrary to its principles of building tolerance and respect for human rights and human dignity.
Palestinian Media Watch reported that the Palestinian Authority spent more than $5 million a month paying salaries to Palestinians and Israeli Arabs imprisoned in Israel for terror crimes. They also stated that groups in a summer camp for children sponsored by PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad were named after militants: Dalal Mughrabi, who led the Coastal Road Massacre; Salah Khalaf, head of Black September that carried out the Munich massacre; and Abu Ali Mustafa, the general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who perpetrated many attacks. Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, donated $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers, and $10,000 to the families of Palestinian civilians killed by the Israeli military.
After Israel agreed to hand over the bodies of dead Palestinian suicide bombers and other militants as part of what the Israeli Government described as 'a humanitarian gesture' to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas to help the peace process, the Palestinian Authority planned a national rally to honour them and to provide full military funerals. The bodies included the suicide bombers that perpetrated the bus bombing in Jerusalem's Shmuel Hanavi neighborhood which killed twenty-three people, many of them children, and the attacker in the Cafe Hillel bombing. Israel will also return the remains of the bombers that committed the bombings on two buses in Beersheba in 2004 killing 16 people, the Stage night club bombing, the attack on the open-air Hadera market as well as the attackers of the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv who killed eight hostages. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas both planned official ceremonies and PA president Abbas attended a ceremony at his Muqataa compound. Prisoners Affairs Minister Qaraqi called on Palestinians for a day of celebration. The rally in honor of the dead will be attended by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, PLO leaders, and families of the dead militants. The dead are considered martyrs by Palestinians, but viewed as terrorists by Israelis.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been accused of incitement to violence, on the basis of a statement he made concerning youths injured in defending the Haram al Sharif/Temple Mount from what Palestinians have seen as attempts to alter the status quo. He declared in September 2015: "Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every shahid will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God."
Involvement of women and children
In the 1930s, the emergence of organized youth cadres was rooted in the desire to form a youth paramilitary. It was believed that armed youth might bring an end to British hegemony in the Middle East. Youth were cajoled into violence by Palestinian political figures and newspapers that glorified violence and death. The Palestinian Arab Party sponsored the development of storm troops consisting solely of children and youth. A British report from the period stated that "the growing youth and scout movements must be regarded as the most probable factors for the disturbance of the peace".