The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) (al-Qiyada al Muwhhada) is a coalition of the Local
Palestinian
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
leadership. During the
First Intifada
The First Intifada, or First Palestinian Intifada (also known simply as the intifada or intifadah),The word ''intifada'' () is an Arabic word meaning "uprising". Its strict Arabic transliteration is '. was a sustained series of Palestinian ...
it played an important role in mobilizing grassroots support for the uprising. In 1987 The Intifada caught the
Palestine Liberation Organisation
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; ar, منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية, ') is a Palestinian nationalist political and militant organization founded in 1964 with the initial purpose of establishing Arab unity and s ...
(PLO) by surprise, the leadership abroad could only indirectly influence the events. A new local leadership emerged, the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), comprising many leading Palestinian factions. The disturbances, initially spontaneous, soon came under local leadership from groups and organizations loyal to the PLO that operated within the West Bank and Gaza Strip;
Fatah
Fatah ( ar, فتح '), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist social democratic political party and the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...
, the
Popular Front
A popular front is "any coalition of working-class and middle-class parties", including liberal and social democratic ones, "united for the defense of democratic forms" against "a presumed Fascist assault".
More generally, it is "a coalition ...
, the
Democratic Front and the
Palestine Communist Party
The Palestine Communist Party ( yi, פאלעסטינישע קומוניסטישע פארטיי, ''Palestinische Komunistische Partei'', abbreviated PKP; ar, الحزب الشيوعي الفلسطيني) was a political party in British Mandate ...
.
[Zachary Lockman, Joel Beinin (1989) Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation South End Press, and 9780896083639 p 39] The UNLU was the focus of the social cohesion that sustained the persistent disturbances. After
King Hussein
Hussein bin Talal ( ar, الحسين بن طلال, ''Al-Ḥusayn ibn Ṭalāl''; 14 November 1935 – 7 February 1999) was King of Jordan from 11 August 1952 until his death in 1999. As a member of the Hashemite dynasty, the royal family of ...
of Jordan proclaimed the administrative and legal separation of the West Bank from Jordan in 1988, the UNLU organised to fill the political vacuum.
Birth
Sari Nusseibeh
Sari Nusseibeh ( ar, سري نسيبة) (born in 1949) is a Palestinian professor of philosophy and former president of the Al-Quds University in Jerusalem. Until December 2002, he was the representative of the Palestinian National Authority in t ...
recorded the birth of the UNLU in a 1989 article:
For two weeks the fire f the revoltin almost unfathomable proportions. Even the local grassroots committees, activists and leaders were caught off guard. ... The first underground leaflets of the intifada made a shy appearance. ... The Communiqués No. 2 of the Intifada appeared. Rumours have it that it was at this stage, through consultations with, and with the aid and blessing of Abu Jihad atah second in command Khalil Wazir that the Unified Command was conceived and created. ... Communiqués No. 3 enshrining the birth of the Unified Command appeared. The uprising leaflets suddenly took on a special format, which continues to exist till this day."
Organisation
The PLO's rivals in this activity were the Islamic organizations,
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Bri ...
and
Islamic Jihad. The PLO viewed other organisations as a threat to its premier political position as well as local leadership in cities such as
Beit Sahour
Beit Sahour or Beit Sahur ( ar, بيت ساحور pronounced ; Palestine grid 170/123) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian town east of Bethlehem, in the Bethlehem Governorate of the State of Palestine. The city is under the administration of the ...
and
Bethlehem
Bethlehem (; ar, بيت لحم ; he, בֵּית לֶחֶם '' '') is a city in the central West Bank, Palestine, about south of Jerusalem. Its population is approximately 25,000,Amara, 1999p. 18.Brynen, 2000p. 202. and it is the capital o ...
. However, the uprising was predominantly led by community councils led by
Hanan Ashrawi
Hanan Daoud Mikhael Ashrawi ( ar, حنان داوود مخايل عشراوي ; born 8 October 1946) is a Palestinian politician, legislator, activist, and scholar who served as a member of the Leadership Committee and as an official spokesperson ...
,
Faisal Husseini
Faisal Abdel Qader Al-Husseini ( ar, فيصل عبدالقادر الحسيني) (July 17, 1940 – May 31, 2001) was a Palestinian politician.
Al-Husseini was born in Baghdad, Kingdom of Iraq, son of Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, commander of local ...
and
Haidar Abdel-Shafi
Haidar Abdel-Shafi (Heidar Abdul-Shafi) ( ar, حيدر عبد الشافي June 10, 1919 – September 25, 2007), was a Palestinian physician, community leader and political leader who was the head of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid C ...
, that promoted independent networks for education (underground schools as the regular schools were closed by the military as reprisals for the uprising), medical care, and food aid. The UNLU gained credibility where the Palestinian society complied with the issued communiqués.
PLO leaders in Tunisia issued Communiqués for the UNLU, through al-Quds Palestinian Arab Radio operating with Syrian aid.
[Robert Owen Freedman (1991) ''The Intifada: Its Impact on Israel, the Arab World, and the Superpowers'', University Press of Florida, pp. 71–73]
Activities
The UNLU and
Ghassan Andoni
Ghassan Andoni ( ar, غسان أنضوني) (born 1956) is a native of Beit Sahour in the Bethlehem area. He is a professor of physics at Bir Zeit University, and a Palestinian Christian leader who advocates nonviolent resistance in the Israeli-P ...
in Beit Sahour, urged people to stop paying taxes to Israel, which inherited and modified the
previous Jordanian tax-collection regime in the
West Bank
The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
.
[Local Government in the West Bank and Gaza]
(says parenthetically that the ''property tax'' "rate and base" were "unchanged since 1963")
Baxendale, Sidney J. "Taxation of Income in Israel and the West Bank: A Comparative Study" ''Journal of Palestine Studies'', Vol. 18, No. 3 (Spring, 1989), pp. 134–141 "it retained the Jordanian tax law" "
No taxation without representation
"No taxation without representation" is a political slogan that originated in the American Revolution, and which expressed one of the primary grievances of the American colonists for Great Britain. In short, many colonists believed that as they ...
," said a statement from the organizers. "The military authorities do not represent us, and we did not invite them to come to our land. Must we pay for the bullets that kill our children or for the expenses of the occupying army?" The people of Beit Sahour responded to this call with an organized citywide
tax strike that included refusal to pay and file tax returns.
Israeli defence minister
Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin (; he, יִצְחָק רַבִּין, ; 1 March 1922 – 4 November 1995) was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77, and from 1992 until h ...
responded: "We will teach them there is a price for refusing the laws of Israel."
New Guard
In the first few months of the uprising meetings of Popular committee were legal but as the UNLU leaders were subjected to arrests the movement went underground. The older prominent personalities that had previously dominated Palestinian politics were supplanted by new more youthful politicians rising from the cadres of the UNLU.
[Akhil Gupta, James Ferguson (1997) Culture, power, place: explorations in critical anthropology Duke University Press, pp 221-222]
Footnotes
Bibliography
#Zachary Lockman, Joel Beinin (1989) Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation
South End Press
South End Press was a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, Juliet Schor, among others, in Boston's South End. It published books written by political activi ...
,
#Joel Beinin, Joe Stork, Middle East Report (1997) Political Islam: essays from Middle East Report I.B.Tauris,
#Suha Sabbagh (1998) Palestinian women of Gaza and the West Bank Indiana University Press,
#
Robert Freedman (1991) The Intifada: Its Impact on Israel, the Arab World, and the Superpowers University Press of Florida,
#Gilles Kepel, Anthony F. Roberts (2006) Jihad: the trail of political Islam Translated by Anthony F. Roberts I.B.Tauris,
#Glenn E. Robinson (1997) Building a Palestinian state: the incomplete revolution Indiana University Press,
#Akhil Gupta, James Ferguson (1997) Culture, power, place: explorations in critical anthropology Duke University Press,
#(1994) Speaking stones : communiqués from the Intifada underground. Compiled, edited, and translated by Shaul Mishal and Reuben Aharoni Syracuse University Press,
{{Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
1987 establishments in the Palestinian territories
Defunct political party alliances in the Palestinian territories
Palestine Liberation Organization
Palestinian nationalism