MERIP Primer on the UPRISING IN PALESTINE

Occupation Policies During the Uprising

Israel has met the uprising with much greater force than it employed during the first intifada from 1987-1993. Numerous respected human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, conducted studies that showed IDF soldiers employing excessive force in their suppression of Palestinian demonstrators. In their reports, they cited (among other violations): the use of live ammunition against unarmed civilians, attacks on medical personnel and installations, the use of snipers with high-powered rifles and attacks on children. Palestinians repeatedly accused the IDF of implementing a "shoot to kill" policy against the demonstrators, an accusation Israel emphatically denied. But figures compiled by the Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute of Ramallah showed that (as of December 19) 75 percent of intifada-related wounds treated at West Bank health facilities were upper-body wounds, 35.1 percent wounds to the head and neck. In Gaza, 60 percent of wounds treated were in the head, chest or abdomen, 22.4 percent in the head and neck. International reports confirm the preponderance of upper-body wounds.

Ehud Barak periodically closed Israel's borders to the 125,000 Palestinian workers -- especially Gazans -- who rely on jobs inside Israel for their modest income. Israeli forces imposed blockades around Palestinian towns in the West Bank, sometimes causing severe shortages of necessities like flour, sugar and gasoline. The closures -- internal and external -- impeded movement of Palestinian merchants and goods, costing the Palestinian economy an estimated $336 million as of November 2000. In the West Bank town of Hebron, which was split into Israeli- and PA-controlled areas in 1997, the IDF enforces a strict curfew for the 40,000 Palestinians who live in the Israeli-controlled area, relaxing it for a few hours each day so that residents can purchase groceries. Construction of new bypass roads to settlements from Israel proper, and even new settlements, continues during the uprising. Armed settler attacks on Palestinians and Palestinian property have escalated.

The force of Israel's response gradually "militarized" the intifada in the winter of 2000-2001. Fatah militants, and to a lesser degree, members of the Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, targeted soldiers and settlers with shootings and bombings. Palestinian civilian casualties still greatly outnumber Israeli casualties since September 2000, and Israel often answered armed attacks carried out by a few Palestinians with closures, shelling of residential areas and other measures of collective punishment.

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