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= Intifada = Intifada (Arabic: انتفاضة) is an Arabic word. In Arabic, intifada means "shaking off" An intifada can be seen as a way for people to "shake off" a power that is oppressing them, an so called "uprising" against that power. Intifada is mostly used for the two big Palestinian uprisings against Israel in the 1980's and 2000's. The two intifadas are considered part of the Israeli-palestinian conflict.

List of intifadas
The second Intifada began in 2000 and lasted until 2005. This Intifada is sometimes called the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

First Intifada (1987-1993)
The first Intifada started on 9 december 1987 and ended in with the Oslo accords in 1993. This Intifada lasted a total of six years.

Causes of the First Intifada
The Palestinian unrest which led to the outbreak of the first intifada started with the Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, forcing Palestinians to leave their land. Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory were already going on since Israel won the Six-Day War in 1967 but the Israeli government intensified these Jewish settlements and land expropriation in the 1980's. The United Nations considers Israel's settlements in Gaza, the Westbank and East Jerusalem illegal. Other reason for the Palestinian rebellion were the worsening Israeli economy and limited jobs. The widespread dissatisfaction among Palestinians with the more than twenty years of occupation and oppression by Israel and lack of prospects for the future were also big factors that contributed to the outbreak of the first Intifada.

Start of the First Intifada
The first protests against Israel's occupation erupted in Gaza. A car, belonging to the Israeli army drove into a Palestinian car, killing all four occupants. That night, protests broke out in a Palestinian refugee camp during the funeral of the victims. People in the refugee camp believed the accident was set up deliberately by Israel, as payback for the death of an Israeli man who was killed in Gaza a few days earlier. When the Israeli army killed a Palestinian man that during the protests, the Palestinians became furious. The protests spread to other places in the Gaza-strip and eventually made is way to the West bank. It became a Palestinian mass uprising against the occupation, Palestinians came into active resistance. This uprising was different from all Palestinian resistance before, this was a mass rebellion in which almost all domains of Palestinian society became involved. Quickly the resistance became efficiently organized. An party (Unified National Leadership of the Uprising: UNLU) was established which brought together all important Palestinian organizations and parties that already opposed Israel before the Intifada. Other Palestinians set up multiple sorts of "popular committees" who dealt with different parts of the organization such as food supply, medical care and social reform as Rigby describes in his book 'Living the Intifada'.

Course of the First Intifada
The first Intifada is often known for its non-violent nature. The non-violent resistance from Palestinians existed of the boycott of Israeli products, strikes and the refusal to pay taxes or other obligated payments to Israel. However, the idea that the intifada was without violence is not true. The first year of the Intifada was the most violent. Palestinian youth started throwing rocks to the Israeli security forces at the beginning of the uprising. Later, they exchanged rocks for guns, grenades and other weapons against Israeli forces. The more violence Palestinians used the more violent the Israeli responses became.

Often the first period of the Intifada is divided into four phases. The first phase started immediately after the mass demonstrations on 8 December in Gaza and endend more or less three weeks later. This phase consisted of the sudden Palestinian demonstrations and uprisings that spread from Gaza to all of the Palestinian territories. The second phase lasted until march 1988. The Intifada became more organized in this phase, the UNLU was established, even as several of the civil committees discussed above. In the third phases that ran from march to June 1988, the Palestinians effectively started to boycott Israeli products and taxes. During the fourth phase the resistance became even more structured and organized. This phase climaxed with the the declaration of Palestinian statehood (written by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and proclaimed by Yasser Arafat) in November 1988.

In 1989 the Israeli authorities began to more actively banish the committees and tried to crush the resurrection from within by deploying "collaborators". The Israeli security forces switched to extreme violent tactics in this period. The Israeli authorities called for an policy to crush the urprising by 'force, might, beating' in 1988. Israeli soldiers beat up, tortured and smashed the bones of Palestinian demonstrators, especially young people on immense scale. An estimated amount of 57.000 were arrested by Israel authorities during the Intifada, a huge part of them became victim of torture and violence. Israeli forces used teargas, weapons, stones, sticks and bomb explosions against Palestinians. The Israeli tactics from this period led to a peak in Palestinian violence as well.

Casualties
Between 9 December 1987 and 31 December 1993 and estimated number of 1282 Palestinians died and more then 130.472 became injured during the six year period of the Intifada. The houses of 2534 Palestinians got demolished by Israeli security forces. For every 3 Palestinians who died, less than 1 Israeli was killed. Most of the Palestinians who died were killed by Israeli security forces. The Israelis who died were killed by Palestinian civilians. Most Palestinians and Israelis died within the Palestinian occupied territories, including the Gaza strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, some of the victims that fell during this period of violence died within the Green Line.

End of the First Intifada
The Intifada officially ended on 13 september 1993, when the Declaration of principles was signed by the PLO and Israeli government at the White House in the USA. Israel recognized the PLO as Palestinian representative for the first time. The PLO agreed to renounce terrorism as an tactic to reach their goals and both parties decided to establish an Palestinian Authority that would get more responsibility and autonomy in the occupied territories. This declaration was also the start of the Oslo accords, in which Palestine and Israel would start to discuss the many issues on autonomy, borders, refugees and Jerusalem. Oslo accords would last until 1995.

Oslo-accords
On 13 September 1993 the PLO and the Israeli government signed the Declaration of Principles. This marks the start of the Oslo-accords. These accords were held between 1993 and 1995. The signing of the Declaration marks the official end of the first Intifada. However, not all of the Palestinian community agreed with this step of the PLO and it does not necessarily marks the end of the first Intifada, rather the start of the up march to the second Intifada which broke out in 2000.

More general, the Oslo accords consisted of several agreements between the PLO and the Israeli government, among them the division of the Palestinian territories in three zones: A, B and C. The Oslo accords were considered a huge breakthrough in the peace process between Palestine and Israel. However, many criticized or fully renounced the accords from the start.