December 8: The First Intifadah

Four residents of the Jabalya refugee camp, the largest in Gaza, were killed by a truck driven by an Israeli driver on this date in 1987. The accident sparked rioting, which skyrocketed within two days into the first Palestinian intifadah (“shrugging off”), involving strikes, demonstrations, rioting, boycotts, the withholding of taxes, stone-throwing, and a general mass mobilization of Palestinian society in resistance to the Israeli occupation. The uprising lasted for six years and was met with harsh measures by the armed forces of Israel, which killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, arrested more than 120,000, and administered beatings to thousands more; a Swedish agency estimated that nearly 30,000 children were hospitalized. Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence resulted in an additional 1,100 dead, many of them considered collaborators of the Israeli government.

“We will teach them there is a price for refusing the laws of Israel.” —Yitzhak Rabin