Period of unrest in the Palestinian West Bank
The Spring 1987 West Bank unrest was a period of heightened unrest in the Palestinian West Bank from mid-March to mid-April 1987. The period was marked by a series of interconnected events, including a hunger strike by Palestinians in Israeli custody, the killing of Israeli settler Ofra Moses by Palestinian militants, anti-Palestinian riots by Israeli settlers, and the forced closure of the Palestinian Birzeit University.
Background.
After Israel's victory in the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has occupied the Palestinian territories, including the West Bank. The occupation has been controversial, with Israel accused of violating international law, as well as committing human rights abuses and apartheid against Palestinians. The Israeli government has also actively promoted the creation and growth of Israeli settlements in Palestine. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), an umbrella group representing the most prominent armed Palestinian nationalist paramilitaries in the second half of the 20th century, mostly left-wing and secular, has also been accused of a number of human rights violations and of waging a terrorist campaign against Israelis.
Events.
Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike.
On 25 March 1987, 3000 Palestinians in Israeli custody in several different Israeli prisons launched a hunger strike in protest over the conditions they were being held in. Among the complaints listed by the prisoners were overcrowding, lack of sunlight, lack of ventilation, and abuse by Israeli prison officials. Another major complaint was an alleged refusal by newly appointed Israel Prison Service head David Maimon to recognise and negotiate with prisoners' self-formed committees. Israeli Minister of Police Haim Bar-Lev denied the allegations against Maimon, saying that "the prison commissioner does not set policy - not the incumbent one, not the previous one nor the one who preceded him," and claimed that the strike had been sparked by prisoners upset over not being released in exchange for IDF soldiers captured in Lebanon.
The outbreak of the hunger strike led to a number of protests across Palestine in support of the prisoners, including commercial strikes, student strikes, sit-ins, and marches, which in turn led to several protesting Palestinians being arrested as Israeli police dispersed demonstrations. Some protesting Palestinians clashed with Israeli forces, including throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and Israeli military vehicles, and one incident of a man on 7 April who was shot and injured after trying to grab a soldier's gun. As a result of the demonstrations, Israeli authorities also imposed curfews on several Palestinian cities.
The prisoners ultimately agreed to end the hunger strike on 13 April, following negotiations with Maimon.
Land Day.
Land Day is an annual day of demonstrations in Palestine on 30 March held to mark the anniversary of a significant wave of protests that broke out in 1976 over a move by the Israeli government to confiscate Palestinian land. Ahead of the day, the Civil Administration ordered three Palestinian universities, An-Najah National University, Bethlehem University, and Birzeit University, to be temporarily shut down as a measure to prevent Land Day protests from being held on the three campuses.
The demonstrations were marked by a handful of clashes with Israeli soldiers. One Palestinian youth was injured in Jenin, after Israeli shot with live ammunition at a group of youth that threw stones at them. A curfew was placed on the Balata Camp after Israeli soldiers dispersed a protest using tear gas. One Israeli was injured near Al-Bireh by a stone that hit his vehicle.
Killing of Ofra Moses.
On the evening of 11 April 1987, Palestinian man Muhammad Daoud threw a Molotov cocktail at a car driven by a family of Israeli settlers from Alfei Menashe, killing 35-year-old Ofra Moses and severely burning Moses' husband, her three children, and a family friend, requiring hospitalisation at the Sheba Medical Center. One of Moses' children, a five-year-old boy named Tal, would subsequently die from his injuries. The family had been driving to Petah Tikva so that they could buy food to celebrate Passover.
In the hours following the killing, around 600 settlers from Alfei Menashe attacked the nearby Palestinian town of Qalqilya. The settlers burned down orchards, threw stones at houses in the town, and vandalised cars. The settlers accused the Israeli military of failing to protect them, with Shlomo Katan, the mayor of Alfei Menashe, stating that "the local residents would not have had to take the law into their hands if the security forces had done their job." In response to the attack and subsequent riot, the Israeli military decalred the Palestinian towns of Qalqilya and Hableh to be a "closed military area," imposing a curfew. One notable leader of the riot was Gush Emunim figure Daniella Weiss. The next day, groups of armed settlers patrolled several Palestinian cities, including Ramallah.
On 12 April, as a result of the killing, the Israeli military enacted a significant crackdown on Palestinians, arresting over 80 prominent Palestinian figures and holding them in administrative detention, as well as raiding a UNRWA training institute in Ramallah, arresting over 140 of the institute's students and injuring 17. The Israeli military stated that the figures placed in administrative detention were "organizers, planners and leaders of the disturbances." Among the figures placed in administrative detention were Faisal Husseini, a former editor-in-chief of the "Al Fajr" newspaper, and a leader of the joint Israeli-Palestinian Alternative Information Center. The Israeli military also moved to bulldoze the orange trees alongside the road where Moses had been killed, saying that they had been frequently used for ambushes. Israeli Minister of Defence Yitzhak Rabin released a statement saying that the Israeli government would use "whatever measures that are allowed by the law to ensure to everybody the right to drive freely and securely along the roads; to cope with those who try to instigate terror acts, those who organise and those who carry them out."
12 April also saw a number of clashes between Israeli soldiers and protesting Palestinians, with the Israeli military reporting stone throwing incidents in seven different areas that day and vandalism of cars with Israeli licence plates, and four Palestinian protestors being injured while being arrested for stone throwing.
Birzeit University closure.
Early 1987 also saw a period of hightened unrest at Birzeit University, one of the most prominent Palestinian universities. The university was ordered closed three times by the Israeli authorities, for the first time in late February for four days following a wave of protests across Palestine triggered by the Israeli military's use of live ammunition to dispere a rally held in the Balata Camp. Also in late February, American professor of history at the university Roger Heacock was arrested by the Israeli military and charged with having incited a women's demonstration in Ramallah. Heacock's trial began in late March and concluded in early June, where he was issued a wo-month suspended sentence and a $950 fine. On 19 March, the Israeli military conducted a four-hour search of the university campus, seizing a number of books and student council material, without presenting a warrant or a list of what had been seized to the university administration.
When the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike broke out in late March, the students at Birzeit University a small handful of demonstrations in support of the prisoners, including a two-day solidarity hunger strike and a silent march around the university's new campus. The university was subsequently ordered closed for four days by the Israeli authorities as a measure to prevent Land Day demonstrations from being held on campus, the second forced closure within the last month and a half. Israeli soldiers also carried out several nighttime raids of the university's student dormitories, without arresting any students.
Tensions then spiked as a result of the killing of Ofra Moses and the ensuing anti-Palestinian riots, with students at the university fearing that it would be the target of a settler riot or another crackdown by Israeli forces. On the morning of 13 April, a student rally was held at Birzeit to show support for the hunger strike and to protest against the crackdown. After beginning on the university campus, the rally merged with a secondary school students' rally in the city. In response, the Israeli military deployed soldiers to the city to contain and disperse the protest. After some of the students threw stones at the soldiers, the soldiers opened fire using live ammunition, injuring at least four students and killing one, a 23-year-old student named Musa Hanafi. Students who participated in the protest claimed that the soldiers opened fire without warning and without first using other, less lethal means of protest dispersal like water cannons and tear gas. A Southern Baptist missionary in the city interviewed by The Jerusalem Post claimed that "though only some of the troops wore helmets, they were at a safe distance from the stone throwers." The Israeli military claimed that the soldiers had only opened fire after two soldiers had been trapped by stone-throwing students. The soldiers then pursued fleeing protestors back into the university campus, where students barricaded themselves inside campus buildings.
Following the clashes, the Israeli Civil Administration ordered the university closed. The order included a ban on faculty members accessing research labs and the university library. Later in April, the Israeli military arrested Marwan Barghouti, the chair of the Birzeit student council, and ordered him exiled from the Palestinian Territories on chargse of "inciting violent demonstrations and widespread disturbances on and off the campus, and organising activities to promote the aims of the Fatah organisation."
Other incidents.
On 14 April 1987, Ibrahimieh College and the Islamic University of Gaza announced that they would temporarily suspend classes to protest against alleged Israeli harassment of Palestinian universities.
On 15 April, the extremist Temple Mount Faithful organised a march on the Temple Mount and the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, escorted by Israeli police. The march resulted in a standoff between the group and Palestinians protestors who blocked their path, with the police eventually ordering the group to withdraw. Later that day, a settler in Kiryat Arba shot and injured a student from Hebron University after an argument broke out between the two and the settler mistook a Quran the student was holding for a grenade.
The following days in April would also see a marked increase in the number of firebombs thrown by Palestinians at Israeli vehicles, includings incidents near Bethlehem and near Gaza City. The Israeli crackdown would also continue, with around one hundred Palestinians in the Gaza Strip being arrested between 21 and 22 April and the erection of a six-metre fence around the Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank.
Ongoing negotiations.
In mid March, former American president Jimmy Carter made a private visit to the Middle East in which he met with the leaders of several countries to press for peace talks in the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts. Among the notable comments Carter made during the visit, he accused the Israeli government of having failed to meet its commitments to allow full Palestinian autonomy and to restrict settlement in the Camp David Accords, signed when Carter was president. He also stated that he saw "a dramatic change in attitude of Arab leaders" in their willingness to formally recognise the State of Israel, and called for negotiations to directly include the PLO as a representative of Palestinians.
The Israeli government, a unity coalition comprising both the right-wing Likud and centre-left Israeli Labor Party, was deeply divided over negotiations. One key issue of disagreement was the participation of the Soviet Union in talks, which Likud opposed but that the Labor Party was willing to accept if the Soviet Union allowed increased Jewish emigration to Israel. Likud also opposed the participation of Arab states that were not friendly with Israel in talks, and opposed any territorial concessions as an outcome of talks, including territory in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Likud also more broadly opposed the idea of an international peace conference, preferring one-on-one negotiations with individual Arab states, while Labor supported the idea of a conference.
On 11 April, King Hussein of Jordan and Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres, of the Israeli Labor Party, signed the Peres–Hussein London Agreement in London, United Kingdom, outlining the framework for an international peace conference aiming at solving the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflicts via the Jordanian option.
The Palestinian Liberation Organisation was also deeply divided. The PLO consisted of seven major factions, with the relatively moderate Fatah representing the single largest faction and mostly controlling PLO policy uner Yasser Arafat.