How the IDF Popularized the First Intifada

Abstract

For the first 20 years of IDF occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that began in June 1967, no major confrontation occurred between the army and the Palestinian population. There was no rebellion or general uprising. Palestinian nationalist activities were quickly thwarted. Militants did not enjoy sufficient support among the Palestinian population. Groups that attempted to form were quickly identified and their members arrested thanks to a network of agents and informants that Shin Bet had had no trouble setting up at the time. This security organization was thus able to foil a considerable number of planned attacks.¹ Economic prosperity in the wake of the Six-Day War had created a sense of well-being among the population, at least during the first decade, and enabled the Israelis to maintain a “liberal” occupation using a relatively small military and police staff. A brigade of a few hundred soldiers was enough to keep order. But the population’s attitude toward the occupation changed gradually without the main Israeli government officials realizing it. After finishing his mandate as first Coordinator of Government Operations in the Occupied Territories in 1987, General Shlomo Gazit published an essay in 1988 in which he prided himself in the “twenty years of relative calm” that these territories experienced during his time.² In January 1988 his successor, Schmuel Goren, even more optimistic, presented the occupation as a “brilliant success.”³