Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T23:58:04.190Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - The Uprising and its Political Consequences (1987–1996)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Ilan Pappe
Affiliation:
University of Haifa, Israel
Get access

Summary

After twenty years of occupation, life in the occupied territories consisted of a familiar, but almost intolerable, routine for most of the Palestinians there. By the beginning of 1987, it was clear that no outside factors would help extricate the people from their harsh situation. The Palestinian issue was the last on the list of priorities at Arab summits. Palestinians could not fail to notice that, even when these leaders treated Palestine as a priority, they had very little to offer in the way of solutions or deliverance to the people living either under occupation or in the refugee camps. The PLO political strategy, conducted from Tunis and based on the construction of a Cairo–Amman diplomatic safety net for Arafat, produced no solutions, either to the occupation or the refugee problem. The PLO appeared resigned to the loss of its homeland and to the Palestinians' failure to achieve self-determination. The Israeli political situation remained mired in inflexibility and intransigence, as it had been since 1967.

The only vibrant political arena was that of local politics in the occupied territories. It had a young national leadership, consisting of professionals and middle-class urbanites, each affiliated loosely to one of the many PLO groups in Tunis. But this leadership also lacked any clear strategy for ending the occupation, a frustrating failing that was accentuated in the 1980s by the liberation of oppressed people in East Asia, Eastern Europe and South Africa.

Type
Chapter
Information
A History of Modern Palestine
One Land, Two Peoples
, pp. 230 - 252
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×