{"id":653,"date":"2012-12-29T02:39:57","date_gmt":"2012-12-29T02:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?p=653"},"modified":"2013-06-18T14:21:03","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T21:21:03","slug":"remembering-the-first-intifada-25-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?p=653","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the First Intifada, 25 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s an excerpt from Sandy Tolan’s upcoming book, Children of the Stones<\/a> (working title), as published in Mondoweiss<\/a> as part of its extensive series on the anniversary, Roots of Resistance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Child of the stone: Ramzi Aburedwan, Al Amari refugee camp, 1987.<\/p><\/div>\n

On December 8, 1987, in the Gaza Strip, four Palestinians were killed when an Israeli truck or troop carrier veered into a long line of cars carrying day laborers home from Israel.\u00a0 This was the spark that lit a furious response, and spread quickly from Gaza across the West Bank and into the refugee camps. \u00a0Boys and young men known as the\u00a0shebab<\/em> forged the front lines of what started as a spontaneous eruption against the killing of the four workers, but was fueled by a much deeper anger at decades of foreign rule.\u00a0For more than 20 years, the occupying power had dictated nearly every aspect of\u00a0 public life.\u00a0 Israel ran the criminal and military courts, banned and approved textbooks, erected roadblocks and checkpoints, and levied special\u00a0 taxes so that, in effect, Palestinians were paying to be occupied. Permits were required to dig a well, plant a tree, repair a house, raise chickens, or travel to Jerusalem, the spiritual heart of the Palestinians for Muslim and Christian alike.\u00a0 National flags were banned, schools and universities shut down, protest leaders expelled to Jordan or Lebanon, and young men routinely rounded up and placed in \u201cadministrative detention\u201d for weeks or months without charge.\u00a0 By 1987 the military had built a vast intelligence network, paying local spies, or issuing them coveted travel permits, in exchange for their eyes and ears in the camps.<\/p>\n

The shebab<\/em> were but one element of what became, for a time, an exceptionally unified, clandestine and well-organized campaign of national resistance.\u00a0 The\u00a0atfal al hijara<\/em> –\u00a0 children of the stones – were only the most visible symbol of the firstintifada<\/em>, or uprising: the vanguard of a war of liberation that cut across class, religion, and political affiliation.<\/p>\n

The people\u2019s leaders in the Palestine Liberation Organization were in exile, in Tunis and Algiers, but quickly an anonymous local command emerged.\u00a0 Unambiguous directives \u2014\u00a0\u00a0demonstration Noon today, at Manara; general strike tomorrow, no business may open<\/em> \u2014 appeared overnight, scrawled on the camp walls, scattered in unattributed fliers, or shouted out by Palestinian fruit market vendors amid their cacophonous hawking of watermelons and figs.<\/p>\n

Chicken coops and rabbit dens rose up in the courtyards of the wealthy and the rooftops of the refugee camps.\u00a0 Dozens of rabbits quickly became thousands; secret food committees distributed eggs and fresh meat throughout the cities and villages.\u00a0 Squash and tomatoes sprouted in forbidden \u201cvictory gardens.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Rice, lentils, potatoes and olive oil were hidden in neighborhood caches, then distributed in the small hours to the doorsteps of needy families, breaking the military curfews. Education was improvised:\u00a0 As the authorities shut schools and universities, teachers secretly met their students in parents\u2019\u00a0 living rooms, behind hedges, under olive trees, and even, sometimes, in caves.\u00a0In Al Amari refugee camp beside Ramallah, local leaders formed solidarity committees.\u00a0 Clandestine food deliveries arrived by truck late at night, dropped off quickly in the back of a volunteer\u2019s home and passed along in a house-to house chain by the distribution committee.\u00a0 The neighborhood protection committee included children who shouted jeesh!<\/em> (army!) at the sight of entering jeeps or soldiers, and women who relayed the warnings by banging rocks on a successon of resonating electrical poles.\u00a0 Secret ballots to elect board members to the popular committees traveled from family to family, hidden in the folds of women\u2019s clothing. Local mothers in the social committee organized visits to the families of youths arrested and held under administrative detention.<\/p>\n

In the face of this the military authorities intensified their crackdown.\u00a0 Commanders seized a four-story stone building at the entrance to Al Amari, affording a view of the entire camp.\u00a0 Snipers perched on the roof as jeeps and armored trucks entered the camp and soldiers spilled out for foot patrols through the veins of Al Amari.<\/p>\n

Soldiers of the day recall three basic tasks ordered from on high:\u00a0 remove all Palestinian flags and obliterate graffiti; find and detain suspected organizers and militants; chase the children and young men throwing stones.<\/p>\n

Job one was obliterating any expression of nationalist sentiment, especially the banners of green, black, and white, with a red triangle pointing left to right: The Palestinian flag.\u00a0 Each morning soldiers would find the flags flapping from telephone or electrical poles.\u00a0\u00a0 They\u2019d pound on a few doors, order the men out, and command them to select a volunteer to climb up and take down the banned national colors.\u00a0 They ordered the women to remove the slogans and directives splashed nightly on the camp walls.\u00a0 Graffiti removal was so common that some families had a bucket of white paint by the door. At night, the women would sew more flags \u2014 sometimes stitching the banner of Palestine right into their clothing \u2014 and the next day the ritual would begin again.<\/p>\n

The night raids in search of suspected troublemakers were more aggressive.\u00a0 Thirty soldiers would surround a house, covering all the windows and possible exits; another thirty, in a wider ring, formed a second line of detention. \u201cYou\u2019d probably knock with your rifle,\u201d\u00a0remembered a soldier who patrolled Ramallah back then.\u00a0 \u201cTwo o\u2019clock in the morning, you would round the whole family up. Women, children, grown ups, try and identify the person you are looking for. About 80% of the time he wasn’t there. And then you’d search the house. Opening up all the cupboards, looking between the clothes, going through the pantry.\u00a0 Basically, we\u2019d just trash the place.\u00a0 That would happen most of the time.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Soldiers rummaged through stores of grain, searching for weapons:\u00a0 \u201cMore often then not you wouldn’t find anything. Or at the most you would find a kitchen knife.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Palestinians rarely used firearms,\u201d acknowledged an Israeli brigadier general of the day, \u201cpartly because they hardly had any.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the searches became legendary in the camp.\u00a0 Ramzi Aburedwan, who grew up in Al Amari and became one of the children of the stones, remembers the time soldiers burst into his grandfather\u2019s house, dumped out the family\u2019s storres of flour, sugar, olive oil and rice, and, with the butt of a rifle,\u00a0 mixed them together on the floor.\u00a0 \u201cThey destroyed everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

A soldier of the day recalled: \u201cIt would basically depend on the whim of the commander on that night.\u00a0 If he was unhappy with his life, or his girlfriend, or he just wanted to go back, or he’s just angry at something, he can take it out.\u00a0 And it wasn’t just the commander.\u00a0 I mean, soldiers would take out their personal grief on whoever was around, because they were in a position of power.\u00a0 Because they could.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israeli authorities had initially dismissed the Intifada as a series of temporary local disturbances.\u00a0 \u201cOur goal is to put down the uprising, to reinstate law and order, and to return life to normal,\u201d\u00a0 Israeli commander Amram Mitzna wrote to his soldiers in the Central Command in 1988.<\/p>\n

When normal life did not return, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin instituted a policy of \u201cforce, might, and beatings,\u201d\u00a0which included, it was revealed later, permission granted to IDF soldiers to break the bones of stone throwers.\u00a0 But the military\u2019s belief that the iron fist would quell the demonstrations proved unfounded.\u00a0 Instead, it sparked more.<\/p>\n

At Al Amari, women gathered rocks from nearby hillsides and ferried them onto waiting vehicles. Clandestine search parties scoured the dumps and hillsides for discarded tires.\u00a0 Volunteers filled plastic jugs with petrol, carrying them swiftly and secretly back to the camp. Sometimes the\u00a0shebab<\/em> hurled stones, or, far less frequently, a Molotov cocktail, at a settler driving through town.\u00a0 But the soldiers were the main targets.<\/p>\n

The confrontations at Al Amari began in the afternoons, often after Friday prayer.\u00a0 Young men and boys would drag heavy stones or concrete blocks across the road, to keep the jeeps from entering the camps.\u00a0 They\u2019d adjust their homemade leather rock launchers and slingshots \u2014\u00a0eight-year-old Ramzi made one from the laces and tongue of an old shoe \u2014 or rotate their arms like baseball pitchers warming up in the bullpen.\u00a0 To protect their identity, the older\u00a0shebab<\/em> wrapped their faces in checkered keffiyas. They eyed the soldiers, perhaps 80 or 100 yards away, at the ground floor of the four-story stone building.\u00a0 Then they poured the gasoline and lit the match.\u00a0 From the blazing tires, twisting black colums rose above the camp, signaling the start of another day of battle.<\/p>\n

\u201cTelevisions screens throughout the world presented the Israeli military occupation in the most ugly light,\u201d observed Gazit, the Israeli brigadier general, \u201cwith Israel\u2019s armed, well-protected and clumsy soldiers trying in vain to deal with agile Palestinian kids throwing stones at them and making fools out of them.\u00a0 It was a David and Goliath battle of sorts, this time with the Palestinians in the role of David and receiving the world\u2019s sympathy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Playing the role of David was Ramzi himself.\u00a0 During a clash on a cold winter day in 1988, the eight-year-old became a visual symbol of the uprising.\u00a0 \u00a0He wore blue jeans and tennis shoes; his red jacket with the faux-fur collar was flying open.\u00a0 He faced an Israeli jeep.\u00a0 In his left hand he clutched a rock nearly half the size of his head.\u00a0 His raised right arm was drawn behind him, the hand wrapped around a stone.<\/p>\n

Ramzi’s eyes conveyed a mixture of anger, fear, and resolve.\u00a0 His arched eyebrows seemed to say,\u00a0Here we are<\/em>.\u00a0 His left foot was planted, and he was stepping forward with his right.\u00a0 In one more second, the stone would fly.<\/p>\n

In that instant, a photojournalist \u2013\u00a0it\u2019s still unclear who snapped a picture.\u00a0 At first, it ran in the local papers in Israel; a day later it ran in the Arabic-language papers, delivered across town by Ramzi and his fellow newsboys; soon it would transmitted to newspapers around the world.\u00a0 The image was later reproduced on posters across Europe, depicting the rage and apparent fearlessness of the children of the stones.\u00a0 It would become perhaps the single most recognized image of the Palestinian intifada.<\/p>\n

Ramzi had suddenly become a child legend of his people\u2019s uprising.<\/p>\n

There were times, in full flight from the soldiers, when a strange sense of protection would settle over Ramzi.\u00a0 He could feel his sneakers grabbing the dimples of the tin roof; he could watch his limbs pumping in a perfect rhythm with his panting breath.\u00a0 In moments like these, there wasn\u2019t time to put words to a prayer, but he put out the energy of a fragmented offering:\u00a0\u00a0God, I love you, I need you.\u00a0 I need to be alive<\/em>.\u00a0 There was nothing more in the world that could help him; a bullet would whiz past, and he\u2019d understand his life in terms of centimeters.\u00a0 Oddly, in times like these, he often felt protected: buoyed, lifted, and cared for as he ran and ran, sprinting from rooftop to rooftop, leaping toward an imagined freedom.<\/a><\/p>\n

This is excerpted from \u00a0“Uprising,” a chapter in “Children of the Stones” (working title), the <\/em>new book<\/em><\/a> by Sandy Tolan exploring music, hope, and occupation in Palestine. \u00a0Publication by Bloomsbury is expected in early 2014. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an excerpt from Sandy Tolan’s upcoming book, Children of the Stones (working title), as published in Mondoweiss as part of its extensive series on the anniversary, Roots of Resistance. On December 8, 1987, in the Gaza Strip, four Palestinians were killed when an Israeli truck or troop carrier veered into a long line of more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":658,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions\/658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}