Palestinian uprisings spurred by anger at Israel

The leader in the Gaza Strip of the Islamist group Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, on Friday dubbed unrest shaking Israel, occupied east Jerusalem and the West Bank as a new intifada, or uprising, and urged Palestinians on to further confrontation.

Following are milestones in the two Palestinian intifadas to date:

- The First Intifada (1987-1993) -

On December 8, 1987, four Palestinians from the Gaza Strip's Jabaliya refugee camp are crushed to death by an Israeli lorry, sparking violence the next day in eight camps.

Violence spreads like wildfire throughout the occupied territories and lasts for six years, until Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) agree to mutual recognition.

For the first time since the Arab-Israeli conflict erupted 40 years earlier, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, around one and a half million people, fight an open conflict against Israel.

Israel accuses Syria, Iran and the PLO of fomenting the violence. In fact, the intifada is a popular movement born of Palestinian frustration at two decades of occupation, and PLO leaders exiled in Tunis are among those taken by surprise.

Youths, some of them as young as 10 years old, use their familiarity with the terrain to battle Israeli soldiers in the streets, on terraces and from mosque minarets.
Israeli troops who have not been trained for such conflicts respond to stones and Molotov cocktails with automatic weapons fire.

In six years, 1,258 Palestinians are killed by soldiers or Jewish settlers, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian sources.

Around 150 Israelis die, for the most part in latter stages of the uprising when it gains in intensity under the direction of Islamists from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad organisation.

On September 13, 1993, the Oslo Accords are signed in Washington, granting Palestinians limited autonomy over the territories where they live.

On September 24, the PLO orders militants to stop attacking Israeli troops.

- The Al-Aqsa Intifada (2000-2005) -

On September 28, 2000, two months after a summit at Camp David in the United States failed to reach a final solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, right-wing Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon pays a provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied east Jerusalem.

The next day, Israeli police fire on Palestinians throwing stones at Jewish worshippers praying at the adjacent Western Wall, killing five people. Two others are killed elsewhere in the city.

A day after that, 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durra is filmed dying in his wounded father's arms after they are caught in the midst of a gun battle. The video inflames Palestinian tempers and becomes an icon of the "Al-Aqsa intifada," named after the main mosque on the esplanade.

This uprising is much deadlier than the first one. Around 4,700 people are killed in almost five years, some 80 percent of them Palestinians.
It is punctuated by suicide attacks on civilian targets in Israel, and armed violence against Israeli troops and settlers in the occupied territories. More than 2,000 Palestinian homes are destroyed by the Israeli army.

Israel confines PLO chief Yasser Arafat to his headquarters in Ramallah in December 2001, and he only leaves in October 2004 for medical treatment in France, where he dies the following month.

The army launches large-scale operations and reoccupies almost all of the West Bank, using combat aircraft for the first time since 1967 in airstrikes against the Palestinians. The head of Hamas in Gaza, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor, Abdelaziz al-Rantissi, are both assassinated.

Ariel Sharon, who becomes prime minister, begins to build a security barrier in the West Bank in June 2002, and withdraws from Gaza in 2005.

On February 8, 2005, Sharon and Mahmud Abbas, who has succeeded Arafat, announce an end to the violence.