Published by
Al-Araby
Al-Araby
On 8 December 1987, an Israeli military vehicle ran over and killed four Palestinians in Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp. The ensuing public anger soon developed into a full-scale rebellion, much to the surprise of Israel’s officials. Israeli prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Shamir, initially shrugged off the protests, while the coordinator of the Israeli government’s activities in the Occupied Territories,Shmuel Goren, downplayed them as “merely the peak in a periodic cycle of unrest.” Little did they know that “Intifada” – an Arabic word meaning “to shake off” – would enter the world’s lexico…