Manasheer of the First Palestinian Intifada: Bayan no.1 (UNLI)
Manasheer of the First Palestinian Intifada: Bayan no.1 (UNLI)
Presented by
Archival Sources
Palestinian Museum Digital Archive, Al-Quds University Abu Jihad Museum Archives, Birzeit University Digital Palestinian ArchivesJournal Referenced
Last Updated
This tool is intermittently updated to integrate new information sent to the authors.
16 August 2023
The document below is a scanned image of a Palestinian bayan (sing.), a communique or leaflet, from the first Intifada. It was distributed on 8 January 1988, in the first days of the popular and mass uprising throughout Palestine. To understand the context that this document emerged from, we encourage you to explore the history of the Intifada and the role that the bayanat (pl.) leaflets played in the uprising, as well as how they were distributed and the organization that authored them. It may be helpful to begin with terminology, or to chart your own path in the text below. The imbedded links include translations of referenced phrases. See here for a full translation of this bayan. All translations are by the author.
Intifada, an Enduring Form
To “break free of” or “shake off”, the literal translation of ‘intifada’ describes the dissolution of regimes of rule like the Israeli military and civilian occupation which governed and continue to govern every aspect of life for Palestinians. The “first Intifada” came to be identified as an uprising occurring from 1987 until more or less the start of the Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel in 1993. 1The periodization of the Intifada ranges from December 1987 to 1991, 1992, or 1993, but its enclosure is largely synonymous with the start of the Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords were a series of negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organization from 1993-1995. Many critiqued the Accords and their stated end point of a “two-state solution” with no process for reaching it as instead a capitulation to and extension of Israeli rule over Palestinians, or “an instrument of Palestinian surrender” in Edward Said’s words in 1993. This interpretation has proved accurate. See Edward Said, “The Morning After,” London Review of Books 15(20): 21 October 1993, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n20/edward-said/the-morning-after. The Intifada was a grassroots and broadly participatory anticolonial uprising that included more than half a million Palestinians who took part in civil disobedience as well as direct confrontations, determined to end Israeli military occupation, then 21 years old, as well as to end Israeli oppression more broadly, including in the territories that Israel militarily occupied in 1948. 2At the start of the Intifada, over one million Palestinians lived in the territories that became Israel in 1948. Today, that population has grown to around two million. The Intifada was part of a broader national liberation movement that in this instance recentered Palestinians in Palestine as the mobilizers of political action and vision. Until this moment, the center of political gravity was anchored with the Palestine Liberation Organization that, out of necessity, operated outside of Palestine first in Jordan and then Lebanon until their expulsion to Tunisia in 1982 by Israel’s military invasion. In this recentering of territorial Palestine, however, the Intifada was most active within the Gaza Strip and West Bank including East Jerusalem occupied by Israel in 1967.
Attali’ah Newspaper from 17 December 1987 frontpage reads: “The mass uprising continues in the Occupied Territories, 21 killed and 275 wounded in ten days,” the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.
The term ‘intifada’, while closely associated with the uprisings in Palestine of the late 1980s and the so-called Second Intifada of the early 2000s, has been used to describe many other periods of revolt in Arabic-speaking and adjacent contexts. 3One example is the Western Sahara where the Sahrawi resistance came to refer to the escalation of their demonstrations against Moroccan occupation as their own intifada. See: Jacob Mundy, “Autonomy & Intifadah: New Horizons in Western Saharan Nationalism,” Review of African Political Economy 108 (2006): 255-67. The 2011 uprisings across Arab-majority countries were often dubbed events of ‘intifada’ including in the early months of the uprisings in Libya and Syria. See Khair El-Din Haseeb, (2011) “Libya…hopes and fears”, Contemporary Arab Affairs 4(4): 425-430, and Sadik al-Azm, Transcript of “Arab Nationalism, Islamism and the Arab Uprising,” LSE Middle East Centre, 30 November 2011, where Sadik Jalal al-Azm specifically references Syria among the Arab intifadas. What is consistent is the definition of the term as a shaking off of an oppressive force. In the Palestinian semantic context, the term ‘intifada’ is used to describe an uprising that is larger than a ‘habba’, a revolt, but whose scope is more confined than that of a ‘thawra’, a revolution. Even within the Palestinian context, there are long histories and scales of revolt that can help to unsettle the primacy of the typically termed ‘first’ Intifada. Multiple uprisings within Palestinian history preceded the ‘first Intifada’ and enabled it to emerge. Palestinian anticolonial revolts span a century, from the 1936-1939 Great Rebellion and the 30 March 1976 Land Day demonstrations, to the more recent 2018-2019 Great March of Return and May 2021 Unity Intifada.
In the weeks immediately preceding December 1987, Israeli forces killed two Palestinian students at Birzeit University in the West Bank. In another incident following this one, six members of the Islamic Jihad political party were killed in an Israeli ambush. A 17-year-old Palestinian girl in the Gaza Strip was also killed by a bullet in the back, fired by a Jewish-Israeli settler who was pardoned by an Israeli court the following week. In response, Palestinian militants staged an operation in which they entered Israel from southern Lebanon on hang gliders and killed six Israeli soldiers at an army base.
“The Intifada,” Ayman Bardawil 1990, The Palestine Poster Archives
Two weeks later, the 8th of December 1987 marks what is generally considered the catalyzing moment for what came to be understood as “the Intifada” across historic Palestine. The catalyst was an incident in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp in the northern Gaza Strip, in which an Israeli army truck rammed into vehicles carrying Palestinian laborers, killing four of them and injuring seven. The incident followed a crescendo of violent events, as described in the previous paragraph, in which Israel killed Palestinians and armed resistance was deployed against Israel. The next day, Wednesday, 9 December 1987, is considered the start of the first Intifada. Yet the 1987 Intifada would not have been possible without a social and political mobilization that had been built over years (See: Ethics of Refusal). 4For more on the social and political development that led to the Intifada, see: Islah Jad, “From Salons to the Popular Committees: Palestinian Women, 1919-1989” in Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, edited by Jamal R. Nassar and Roger Heacock, New York: Praeger, 1990: 125-142.; Samih K. Farsoun and Jean M. Landis (1990), “The Sociology of an Uprising: The Roots of the Intifada” in Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, Jamal R. Nassar and Roger Heacock (eds). Birzeit: Birzeit University and Praeger Publishers.; Joost R. Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.; Iris Jean-Klein, “Into Committees out of the House?: Familiar Forms in the Organization of Palestinian Committee Activism during the First Intifada”, American Ethnologist 30:4 (2003): 556-577.; Salim Tamari, “The Uprising’s Dilemma,” Middle East Report 164-165 (May/June 1990): https://merip.org/1990/05/the-uprisings-dilemma While younger Palestinian generations played a major role in the Intifada and militant Palestinian resistance continued throughout the years, a unique element of the uprising was widespread participation from all demographic groups and sectors of society in various roles, from children to the elderly, to men and women, and across political affiliations.
“Two youth throw stones during the Intifada of 1987,” Birzeit Univeristy Digital Palestinian Archive
- The periodization of the Intifada ranges from December 1987 to 1991, 1992, or 1993, but its enclosure is largely synonymous with the start of the Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords were a series of negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organization from 1993-1995. Many critiqued the Accords and their stated end point of a “two-state solution” with no process for reaching it as instead a capitulation to and extension of Israeli rule over Palestinians, or “an instrument of Palestinian surrender” in Edward Said’s words in 1993. This interpretation has proved accurate. See Edward Said, “The Morning After,” London Review of Books 15(20): 21 October 1993, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n20/edward-said/the-morning-after.→
- At the start of the Intifada, over one million Palestinians lived in the territories that became Israel in 1948. Today, that population has grown to around two million.→
- One example is the Western Sahara where the Sahrawi resistance came to refer to the escalation of their demonstrations against Moroccan occupation as their own intifada. See: Jacob Mundy, “Autonomy & Intifadah: New Horizons in Western Saharan Nationalism,” Review of African Political Economy 108 (2006): 255-67. The 2011 uprisings across Arab-majority countries were often dubbed events of ‘intifada’ including in the early months of the uprisings in Libya and Syria. See Khair El-Din Haseeb, (2011) “Libya…hopes and fears”, Contemporary Arab Affairs 4(4): 425-430, and Sadik al-Azm, Transcript of “Arab Nationalism, Islamism and the Arab Uprising,” LSE Middle East Centre, 30 November 2011, where Sadik Jalal al-Azm specifically references Syria among the Arab intifadas.→
- For more on the social and political development that led to the Intifada, see: Islah Jad, “From Salons to the Popular Committees: Palestinian Women, 1919-1989” in Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, edited by Jamal R. Nassar and Roger Heacock, New York: Praeger, 1990: 125-142.; Samih K. Farsoun and Jean M. Landis (1990), “The Sociology of an Uprising: The Roots of the Intifada” in Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, Jamal R. Nassar and Roger Heacock (eds). Birzeit: Birzeit University and Praeger Publishers.; Joost R. Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.; Iris Jean-Klein, “Into Committees out of the House?: Familiar Forms in the Organization of Palestinian Committee Activism during the First Intifada”, American Ethnologist 30:4 (2003): 556-577.; Salim Tamari, “The Uprising’s Dilemma,” Middle East Report 164-165 (May/June 1990): https://merip.org/1990/05/the-uprisings-dilemma→
On the Role of the Bayanat in the Intifada
The bayanat are one of the key material sources for the first Intifada – a leaflet that was popularly distributed, promoted and acted upon. The participatory role necessary for the bayanat’s successful distribution is an indication that everyday Palestinians felt a degree of representation by and became stakeholders in the messages conveyed in these texts. The leaflets were used to organize the everyday life of a mass popular uprising, and their distribution spanned multiple years, cities, and locales. About one month transpired from the beginning of the Intifada on 9 December 1987 and 8 January 1988 when the first bayan appeared (See: Intifada, an Enduring Form).
The bayanat were distributed by the local underground leadership: the United National Leadership of the Intifada (UNLI), which authored and distributed the bayan presented in the adjacent page (See: The UNLI). The bayanat quickly became a central feature of life during the Intifada. These guerilla communiques announced general strikes (See: General Strike), described when and where a protest would take place and many other daily features of the uprising. They simultaneously enabled the collective organization of the popular and anticolonial revolt and masked the identity of the documents’ authors. Distributed at night, often during curfew, the leaflets would be left at bus stops, put at doorsteps with a rock on top so they would not blow away, pasted onto walls, or passed from person to person by cadre of different political parties participating in the UNLI organizational structure (See: Distribution).
Scanned copies of first Intifada bayanat displayed in the Printed in Jerusalem exhibit, The Palestinian Museum
Over the course of the Intifada and particularly the first two years when the uprising was at its height, the infamous leaflets were crucial to linking mass public participation to an underground leadership. The content of the bayanat centered on issuing practical directives targeted to specific sectors, but they were also intended to be read by as many people as possible (See: Four Sectors). They contained a list of the days designated for collective actions, such as popular strikes and their rationale. The leaflets set achievable goals and practical steps for reaching them, giving coherence to the broader upheavals of the rebellion. In doing so, the bayanat attained an established currency in their widespread recognition and then representation of the Intifada.
The centrality of the bayanat to the uprising and their evocativeness as a genre of writing lead to their proliferation and even imitation. Bayanat were issued by individual political factions including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, known as Hamas). Imitation bayanat were even produced by the Shin Bet – the Israeli national security agency – in attempts to infiltrate the popular resistance movement. An outlier to this list of Palestinian non-state groups, the Shin Bet’s involvement demonstrates the extent of the bayanat’s relevance at the time and its importance as a text requiring state intervention.
The bayanat published by the UNLI called for grassroots action from the public, they were serialized. Their frame of orientation was the local context rather than the international scale that was the domain of the well-established Palestine Liberation Organization leadership operating from exile. Instead, the individual leaders of the UNLI were often young, not always formally educated, from villages and refugee camps, and largely outsiders to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s structures prior to the Intifada. 1Glenn E. Robinson, Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997: 97 The focus of the UNLI’s bayanat was on managing and motivating the rebellion on the practical and daily level. As a result, the widely distributed bayanat became a central document and form of documentation for the uprising. They continue to shape the way Palestinians collectively remember the first Intifada and what it was like. While the form of bayanat has a long and broad history in Arabic political thought, the language of the Intifada bayanat was particularly dense, local, and specific to the moment.
“We Do Not Adopt Revolutionary Sentences Without Actions”, Graffiti of a PFLP Slogan, October 1980-90, the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive
- Glenn E. Robinson, Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997: 97→
Distribution
The bayanat were criminalized. Being caught in possession of even one leaflet could lead to imprisonment. While the bayanat relied on a familiar form resembling the press release, reaching a broad Palestinian population was contingent on successful distribution and evasion of Israeli surveillance. Various party cadre printed and distributed bayanat, wrote graffiti, and protested. 1Iris Jean-Klein, “Into Committees out of the House?: Familiar Forms in the Organization of Palestinian Committee Activism during the First Intifada”, American Ethnologist 30:4 (2003): 564. On the disciplinary violence of the strike forces, see Alex Winder, “Anticolonial Uprising and Communal Justice in Twentieth-Century Palestine,” Radical History Review 137 (2020): 75-95.
Bayan distribution in Nablus. Image from the Palestinian Youth Movement’s Political Education course: 100 Years of Palestinian Popular Resistance held on 27 May 2023, palestinianyouthmovement.com
The bayanat were printed and distributed in Palestine and broadcast by radio stations in Damascus (“al-Quds Palestinian Arab Radio”) and Baghdad (“Voice of the PLO”). 2Appendix II, p. 327, of Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin (eds.), Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation, Boston: South End Press, 1989 The meeting space for the underground leadership (See: The UNLI) and printing production of the bayanat was secret and shifted over the course of the Intifada. For the first month of the Intifada, for example, Abd-al-Rahim al-Baghdadi who was then 32 years-old and a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) produced bayanat at a printing press in the Issawiya neighborhood of East Jerusalem. 3Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising – Israel’s Third Front, translated by Ina Friedman, New York: Touchstone (1989): 194 Eventually and following waves of arrests, the radio became a more significant vehicle for distribution of the bayanat, which were read aloud and broadcast around the region (See: Prison Notebooks). 4Political prisoners in Israeli captivity kept Intifada-era duties of transcribing the radio-read bayanat and distributing paper copies throughout the cells. The Abu Dis-based Abu Jihad Museum archive holds many copies of such transcribed bayanat
The UNLI managed to distribute between 35,000 and 100,000 copies of each bayan without the Israeli security agency (Shin Bet) discovering them. To communicate with the public, the UNLI cadre distributing the bayanat had to evade Israeli surveillance and repression on a regular basis.
Initially, the locally-based and anonymous UNLI was able to evade the Israeli military and police forces as well as replace those arrested from their organic organizational structure. On 3 February 1988, Israeli forces caught and detained a distributor who was carrying 35,000 copies of UNLI’s bayan no. 6 in his van. The whole UNLI command was tracked and arrested from this one interception, but the members of that command were soon replaced from the ranks of its broad network, as well as participating political organizations.
Bayan no. 6 issued on 5 February 1988.
By 1991 Israel had imprisoned several layers of the core. Aside from the leadership, average Palestinians also risked imprisonment or worse for being caught with bayanat in their possession. For this reason, most bayanat were destroyed shortly after they were read. On the other hand, they were enlivened by Israeli prohibition of this form of political speech. The bayanat held so much sway and popular legitimacy that Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi evaluated the documents as expressions of the popular political will and a foundation for the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Declaration of Independence issued on 15 November 1988 in the Intifada’s first year. 5Rashid Khalidi, “The Resolutions of the 19th Palestine National Council,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Winter, 1990): 40
The bayanat aimed below the censor of the Israeli military to reach the broad Palestinian populace – a figurative and often literal slipping of the note underneath the door. In this way, the bayan constituted an illicit textual form that leveraged the highly segregated lived space of apartheid Israel and militarily occupied Palestine to evade Israeli detection while maintaining communication among the Palestinian public. 6International Court of Justice, 19 July 2024, “Advisory Opinion: Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-adv-01-00-en.pdf
- Iris Jean-Klein, “Into Committees out of the House?: Familiar Forms in the Organization of Palestinian Committee Activism during the First Intifada”, American Ethnologist 30:4 (2003): 564. On the disciplinary violence of the strike forces, see Alex Winder, “Anticolonial Uprising and Communal Justice in Twentieth-Century Palestine,” Radical History Review 137 (2020): 75-95.→
- Appendix II, p. 327, of Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin (eds.), Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation, Boston: South End Press, 1989→
- Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising – Israel’s Third Front, translated by Ina Friedman, New York: Touchstone (1989): 194→
- Political prisoners in Israeli captivity kept Intifada-era duties of transcribing the radio-read bayanat and distributing paper copies throughout the cells. The Abu Dis-based Abu Jihad Museum archive holds many copies of such transcribed bayanat→
- Rashid Khalidi, “The Resolutions of the 19th Palestine National Council,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Winter, 1990): 40→
- International Court of Justice, 19 July 2024, “Advisory Opinion: Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-adv-01-00-en.pdf→
The UNLI
No single group could claim leadership over the Intifada, but the locally-based and anonymous United National Leadership of the Intifada (al-Qiyada al-Wataniyya al-Muwahada lil-Intifada, the UNLI also the UNLU in English contexts) was the closest to a national-scale representative body in contrast to the localized Popular Committees. The UNLI did so by playing a key role in communicating actions and demands of Palestinian communities, of which the bayanat were a primary medium. Over time, however, the UNLI leadership was arrested in successive waves.
“The Intifada is the Voice,” 1987, The Palestine Poster Archives
The UNLI was typically composed of young male leaders drawn from a coalition of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s four main parties: Fatah (the Palestinian National Liberation Movement), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Palestine Communist Party. A bayan issued in the Gaza Strip in February 1988 defined the UNLI as, “a broad coalition established during the uprising,” and affirms that the, “UNLI is responsible for making tactical decision[s] during the uprising, based on its understanding of concrete local situations.” 1Samir Abed-Rabbo and Doris Safie (eds.), The Palestinian Uprising, FACTS Information Committee, Jerusalem, 1990: 134-136 UNLI membership came from the refugee camps, villages, and the cities – in contrast to the traditional elite of Palestinian society that were firmly established in urban centers. Women, while prominent and even perhaps dominant in carrying out the Intifada project were, however, not permitted prominent roles in the leadership. 2Ted Swedenburg, Memories of Revolt: The 1936-1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past, University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, 2003: 188
Except for the non-representation of women in leadership roles within the UNLI, the young and local cadre represented a noticeable shift from the dominant political figures who composed the Palestine Liberation Organization’s top echelons. Nonetheless, the UNLI was in communication with the Palestine Liberation Organization in Tunis, Tunisia and consulted them about the content of the bayanat (See: Signature).
Establishing Terms
The Arabic term bayan (singular) and bayanat (plural) are variously translated into English as leaflets, pamphlets, communiques, manifestos, and directives. However, the term did not always refer to a leaflet. For example, “Al Bayan” was the name for an Arabic journal in Syria that promoted and discussed the 1925 Syrian revolt. 1Reem Bailony, “Transnationalism and the Syrian Migrant Public: The Case of the 1925 Syrian Revolt,” Mashriq & Mahjar 1(1): 2013. https://lebanesestudies.ojs.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/mashriq/article/view/3/439 Manasheer is another term many Palestinians use to refer to the leaflets of the first Intifada. These two terms show that there is a long and entangled genealogy for the use of the word bayan to refer to a form of printed text that is political or rebellious throughout the regions where Arabic is spoken.
- Reem Bailony, “Transnationalism and the Syrian Migrant Public: The Case of the 1925 Syrian Revolt,” Mashriq & Mahjar 1(1): 2013. https://lebanesestudies.ojs.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/mashriq/article/view/3/439→
A Call to Action
With the simple heading of “a call…a call…a call” (nidaʾ…nidaʾ…nidaʾ), what has become known as the first bayan was published on 8 January 1988 and signed by the “Palestinian National Forces” (See: Signature). Nidaʾ translates as a call, an appeal, or even a summoning, and it is deployed as such by aiming at the Palestinian body politic as a whole and on the collective level. The text of this bayan details what recipients of the leaflet are being called on to do. This format, a calling at the header of the paper repeated thrice, would become one of the key signifiers of what defined a bayan of the first Intifada, and therefore what the Intifada came to mean for Palestinians participating in it. The repetition in the header has also come to shape what the Intifada would look and sound like for Palestinians remembering it.
The repetition of nida’ is both an invocation and a design component. Serialized across multiple bayanat, the leaflets fit squarely into the genre of political manifesto by centering the performative. The header communicates to the reader that the leaflet’s central purpose is a call to action. This element remained consistent throughout the Intifada bayanat.
Intifada, an Event
The “Intifada” is named explicitly here on January 8th, and a month into the event which came to be known as the first Intifada. The first bayan issued by the underground leadership of the UNLI starts with a lengthy sixty-word preface to announce the call to action (the bayan) and its material appearance that has reached the hands of its intended audience (See: Distribution).
Design elements of the communique came to be identifying markers of the Intifada genre overall. Two key elements contributed to this bayan’s status as the ‘first’. This leaflet was signed “the Palestinian National Forces,” which would quickly be renamed the “Unified National Leadership of the Intifada” establishing an authorial voice and entity that could be continued and built on (See: Signature). It also initiated a design header that was impactful for establishing a formulation and an aesthetic to be followed (See: A Call to Action).
“1000 Days of Intifada,” 1990, the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive
This first bayan was not numbered. As the Intifada developed, so did the bayanat. Future bayanat would become serialized with a number at the top of each leaflet (See: Bayan No.6).
Our cherished martyrs and imprisoned sisters
During the six years of the Intifada, nearly 200 Israeli civilians or military personnel and over 1,300 Palestinian civilians were killed, 106,600 Palestinians were injured and more than half a million Palestinians imprisoned (See: Prison Notebooks). 1Despite the extensive coverage of the first Intifada, not all information or subjects received equal documentary treatment. Injuries of Palestinians during the first Intifada, for example, “are notoriously variable and difficult to obtain” according to John Collins in Occupied by Memory (p.252). In the case of injuries, here I use Julie Peteet’s figure of 106,600 Palestinians injured in the first three years of the uprising and in the context of the ‘break the bones’ campaign. See: Peteet, Julie. 1994. “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence.” American Ethnologist 21(2): 31-49. Collins, John. 2004. Occupied by Memory: The Intifada Generation and the Palestinian State of Emergency, New York: New York University Press. Public commemorations of the martyred became events of collective mourning as well as political gatherings.
“Martyrs of the Intifada,” poster exhibition 1989, the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive
In addition to “our honorable martyrs”, here the text also refers explicitly to women prisoners: “imprisoned sisters.” Women played a large if not outsized role in the popular uprising including distributing bayanat among other acts that risked political imprisonment. While women were well-represented in the cadres of the UNLI, in organizing popular committees (See: Popular Committees), and paid for their actions through political imprisonment and martyrdom, they were largely kept out of the leadership structure of The UNLI. This was reflected in the statements of the UNLI, for example, when the organization remained silent for many months about a sweeping campaign to impose a mandatory headscarf on Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip. In bayan no. 43, the UNLI finally condemned the campaign that included harassing women and which had by then expanded into the West Bank. 2Hammami, Rema. 1990. “Women, the Hijab and the Intifada,” Middle East Research and Information Project 164-165: May/June; https://merip.org/1990/05/women-the-hijab-and-the-intifada
“Federation of Palestinian Women’s Action Committees Honors the Shuhudaa’ of the Intifada,” the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive
- Despite the extensive coverage of the first Intifada, not all information or subjects received equal documentary treatment. Injuries of Palestinians during the first Intifada, for example, “are notoriously variable and difficult to obtain” according to John Collins in Occupied by Memory (p.252). In the case of injuries, here I use Julie Peteet’s figure of 106,600 Palestinians injured in the first three years of the uprising and in the context of the ‘break the bones’ campaign. See: Peteet, Julie. 1994. “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence.” American Ethnologist 21(2): 31-49. Collins, John. 2004. Occupied by Memory: The Intifada Generation and the Palestinian State of Emergency, New York: New York University Press.→
- Hammami, Rema. 1990. “Women, the Hijab and the Intifada,” Middle East Research and Information Project 164-165: May/June; https://merip.org/1990/05/women-the-hijab-and-the-intifada→
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
The UNLI leadership authoring this bayan was composed of members of the four major Palestinian political parties at the time: Fatah (the Palestinian National Liberation Movement), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Palestine Communist Party (See: The UNLI). The UNLI leadership was located on the ground in Palestine as opposed to the exiled Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership in Tunis, Tunisia. The exceptional upheaval that the Intifada produced shifted attention away from the efforts of the leadership in exile and towards the young and previously nationally uninfluential cadre of activists on the ground in Palestine. Here in the first paragraph of the text, you can observe the UNLI’s adherence to the PLO’s overarching leadership position while communicating directives to local Palestinians: “Committed to the PLO, the sole legitimate representative, in the pursuit of sacrifice for the courageous Intifada; We issue this call to action”.
General Strike
The call for a general strike is at the core of this bayan, acting as both the primary subject of the bayan and structuring the way it was written. The first bayan called for a complete general strike from January 11 through the evening of January 13, and was widely acted upon. A form of refusal, it invoked the direct participation of the Palestinian population as a collective, and reads: “All sectors of our heroic people in every locale, commit to the call for a total general strike…” (See: Ethics of Refusal)
Locking up a shop in Ramallah in the central West Bank during a strike. Image from the Palestinian Youth Movement’s Political Education course: 100 Years of Palestinian Popular Resistance held on 27 May 2023, palestinianyouthmovement.com
This call for a strike is inclusive and is directed to all Palestinians. However, the bayan identifies four labor sectors and elaborates on their unique capacities and roles within the general strike (See: Four Sectors). It also threatens consequences for non-compliance. Issued three days ahead of the general strike, the bayan encourages the populace to prepare and “obtain essential supplies and needed resources to last the duration of the days of the strike.”
The Jerusalem-based Attali’ah Newspaper from 14 January 1988 features a frontpage headline confirming: “General Strike, protests and clashes, curfew in 15 refugee camps, 49 victims”. Palestinian Museum Digital Archive
This three-day general strike was widely upheld across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was also punished by the Israeli military government through mass arrests, use of force that resulted in dozens of injuries to protesting Palestinians, and comprehensive curfews imposed on fifteen refugee camps as well as parts of the city of Ramallah.
Four Sectors
In calling for a general strike, the bayan specifically names workers in four sectors of the Palestinian economy central to public life and movement: “The strike includes all commercial facilities, public and private, and the Palestinian labor sector as well as public transportation.” It specifically calls on Palestinian laborers, shop owners, owners of bus and taxi companies, and doctors and pharmacists to abide by the strike, (See: see Strike Forces).
In the next paragraphs of the text, the bayan addresses each sector in order: “Our brothers the laborers… Brothers, owners of the commercial businesses and grocery stores… Brothers, owners of bus and taxi companies… Brothers, doctors and pharmacists”. It calls on these workers to miss their shifts at factories, and it calls on shop owners to reinforce the strike and help implement a “total strike.”
Importantly, it references a preceding and successful strike: “In your previous commitment to strike, you demonstrated magnificent solidarity and sacrifice on our people’s path to success.” It calls on owners of business in the transportation sector to repeat their stoppage of services: “We recognize the honorable position you took when you supported the successful general strike on the day of Palestinian steadfastness. We put all our hope in you for your support in achieving this general strike.”
Finally, and in contrast to the previous three sectors, the bayan calls on doctors and pharmacists to keep their businesses open, to prepare themselves to serve the population, and to “continue practicing their work as usual.” It calls on doctors specifically to, “put up an identifying sign: ‘Doctor’s sign’ clear for the sick to see.”
The bayan issues direct threats to those who might disobey the directives. Notably, the laborers and healthcare workers are exempt. It is specifically the merchants, grocery shop owners, and the owners of bus and taxi companies that receive threats. These are phrased as a promise to “settle accounts with any traitorous businessmen” and “expose [bus company owners] to revolutionary punishment”. The naming of “several” bus company owners and not taxi company owners here suggests that in the previous successful strikes most of the transport sector adhered except for a minority of the bus company owners.
Note, also, the gendered language that addresses all members of these sectors as “our brothers.” The inclusive terms “our people” and “our masses” is more prominent appearing a total of ten times, but the gendered language of ‘brothers’ and ‘sons’ is nearly equivalent appearing a total of nine times. In contrast, the only explicit reference to women throughout this bayan is in the case of “our imprisoned sisters” (See: Our cherished martyrs).
Over the years to follow, the content of the bayanat would center around issuing practical directives, and warnings, targeted to specific sectors as this bayan exemplifies.
The Slogan
“No Voice is Higher than the Voice of the Intifada,” 1989, the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive
“The slogan of the strike shall be until the occupation falls, long live Palestine free and Arab,” and this slogan is repeated to conclude the bayan at the bottom of this page. The slogan commits itself to perpetuating the general strike until the fall of Israeli military rule and frames its goals in terms of the language of freedom and an Arab political identity (See: General Strike). This slogan would recur in future bayanat, but the slogan that would be used most consistently across bayanat to come was: “No Voice Will Rise Above the Voice of the Intifada,” which was introduced in the second serialized UNLI bayan.
Bayan no. 2 includes the phrase “No Voice Will Rise Above the Voice of the Intifada,” at the top of the leaflet.
Bayan no. 2 includes the phrase “No Voice Will Rise Above the Voice of the Intifada,” at the top of the leaflet.
Prison Notebooks
Political prisoners are mentioned twice in this bayan: “the demand of freedom for our prisoners,” in this instance. Both times prisoners are invoked alongside praise to the martyrs (al-shuhudāʾ). Prisoners were an important demographic to consider since a massive portion of the population had been imprisoned at one point or another, and more than 100,000 Palestinians were detained during the Intifada itself. Bayanat reached Israeli prison cells throughout the course of the first Intifada by way of smuggling or radio.
Prison notebook bayan, the Abu Jihad Museum on the Abu Dis Campus of Al-Quds University archives.
Prison notebook cover, the Abu Jihad Museum on the Abu Dis Campus of Al-Quds University archives.
Taken in the Abu Jihad Museum on the Abu Dis Campus of Al-Quds University Archives, the photograph above depicts a page from a prison notebook that contained transcribed bayanat of the Intifada. In most cases, bayanat were read aloud on radio stations from Amman, Jordan to Damascus, Syria. Palestinian political prisoners transcribed these for distribution internally within the Israeli prisons. As can be seen at the top of this transcribed bayan, it opens with the iconic nidaʾ …nidaʾ …nidaʾ, (See: A Call to Action). The tightly wound script suggests a premium on writing materials in the prison.
The Abu Jihad Museum on the Abu Dis Campus of Al-Quds University
An Adhesive Material
In this section, the bayan authors issue what they refer to as a general warning for people to stay off the roads which will be made unsafe because: “an adhesive material will be poured onto the main and the side streets in all areas, in addition to the checkpoints.” The authors are careful to write that this action is a possibility which may be utilized “to reinforce the general strike.” This warning resembles ones issued in the section above specifically to businessmen and bus and taxi company owners (See: Four Sectors), but it is distinctly not a threat and rather framed as a general notice.
This bayan shows multiple layers of mobilization from the rhetorical call to participation in a collective project of shaking off oppressive rule, to reinforcing specific actions like the general strike with road blocks and units of strike forces (See: Strike Forces).
Street barricade during the first Intifada
Strike Forces
“Groups of strike forces are dispersed throughout the occupied homeland,” reads the conclusion of this sentence. The ‘strike forces’ (quwwat al-ḍarb) were typically composed of groups of male youths affiliated with the UNLI. These were a specific segment of the cadre that compelled adherence to directives contained in the leaflets, including by force. 1Jean-Klein, Iris. 2003. “Into Committees out of the House?: Familiar Forms in the Organization of Palestinian Committee Activism during the First Intifada”, American Ethnologist 30:4: 564. On the disciplinary violence of the strike forces, see Winder, Alex. 2020. “Anticolonial Uprising and Communal Justice in Twentieth-Century Palestine,” Radical History Review 137: 75-95
- Jean-Klein, Iris. 2003. “Into Committees out of the House?: Familiar Forms in the Organization of Palestinian Committee Activism during the First Intifada”, American Ethnologist 30:4: 564. On the disciplinary violence of the strike forces, see Winder, Alex. 2020. “Anticolonial Uprising and Communal Justice in Twentieth-Century Palestine,” Radical History Review 137: 75-95→
Popular Committees
The popular committees were grassroots collectives that included broad sectors of the Palestinian population and were widely distributed across Palestinian locales from the rural to the urban. Popular committees formed throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip to organize matters of everyday life such as health, food, neighborhood groups, and implementation of directives such as in the bayanat. Their leadership was hyper-local and in sharp contrast to the culture of elite politics or Palestine Liberation Organization leadership operating from exile.
Work Program
In the final paragraph, the authors refer to the bayan itself in a uniquely self-referential and revealing way: “Incumbent on the strike units and the popular groups of the Intifada is adherence to the work program that is present between your hands.” The rhetorical style emphasizes the materiality of the bayan as an object. It also frames the bayan (and future bayanat) as ‘work programs’ in a collective labor of revolution. This collectivity is reinforced across this document such as in the language of “our cherished martyrs and imprisoned sisters”. The project of revolution is invoked by the very method of the bayan’s clandestine distribution, which required intense cooperation (See: Distribution). Finally, a collective project was contained in the dynamic between the bayan and the Palestinian public: the bayanat were only effective as political documents if widely acted upon through actions like general strikes or ethos like refusal.
“The First Anniversary of the Intifada”,1989, the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive
Signature: The National Palestinian Forces
The signature concluding the first bayan reads: “the Palestinian National Forces.” But by the third bayan published ten days later on 18 January 1988, the underground leadership primarily signed leaflets with “Palestine Liberation Organization – Unified National Leadership of the Intifada in the Occupied Areas”
Or occasionally and more concisely: “the Unified National Leadership of the Intifada.” These naming conventions transitioning from “the Palestinian National Forces” to “the Unified National Leadership of the Intifada” over the course of the first three bayanat and the first days of the Intifada indicate a rapid institutionalization of the underground leadership along with an explicit affiliation with the exiled Palestine Liberation Organization, which was based in Tunis, Tunisia at the time. Overall, this speaks to the importance that the bayanat held as mediums for communication and action between Palestinians, locally and globally, in the context of the Intifada. The bayanat served as a means for declaring unity across Palestinian political actors and scales, like the Palestine Liberation Organization, the UNLI, and the Popular Committees, while also establishing a hierarchy between them.
Ethics of Refusal
“Out of refusal of the Occupation and its array of repressive policies including forced exile, mass arrests, prohibition of movement and house demolitions”
In the Intifada, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians participated in a wide array of civil disobedience tactics including public demonstrations, commercial strikes and general strikes, boycotts of products or shopping centers and grocery stores, refusal to pay taxes, resignation from positions affiliated with the civil service like tax collection, and destruction of Israeli-issued identity cards. Palestinians also created artwork and political posters, grew vegetables, raised chickens and livestock, shared in the care and education of children, engaged in legal and international advocacy, established innumerable cooperatives and committees operating on the scale of the neighborhood, and expanded the intellectual framework of their struggle through writing and knowledge production more broadly. Israel responded harshly to the Intifada with mass arrests, curfews, closures of public institutions and media outlets like radio stations and newspapers, as well as schools. Israel also repressed demonstrations through a brutal policy that came to be known as ‘break the bones,’ referencing Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s orders to his soldiers during their raids and arrests. 1UNLI bayan no. 11 dated 31 March 1988 refers to “Rabin the butcher” [al-Saffaḥ Rabin]
[VIDEO] Israel’s ‘Break the Bones’ Policy, click to watch.
Geographically and spatially multi-centered, the Intifada began in the Gaza Strip, took root in Palestinian Jerusalem, and unfolded repeatedly in towns like Beit Sahour, in refugee camps like Jabalia, or the campus of Birzeit University in the central West Bank.
Among the litany of offenses motivating Palestinian participation in the Intifada, some of the most pressing were the requirement for Palestinians in the occupied territory to pay taxes to a non-representative military government, repressive means of collective punishment, individual violence and assassinations, politically-motivated detentions and imprisonment (See: Prison Notebooks), raids on homes, schools and places of worship, denial of basic liberties like free speech, expropriation of land, and the denial of refugee return. Oppressive measures such as those mentioned were underwritten by a host of legal codes and institutions, and the judges that upheld them in parallel with the violence of military and police enforcement.
More significant than the rejection of violent forms of oppression was the ethic of collectivity that is widely understood amongst Palestinians as a prerequisite to an uprising on the scale of the first Intifada. 1987 and the following months represented a moment of pouring over supported by social networks that had formed over the course of years, culminating in spontaneous organizations like the Popular Committees (See: Popular Committees).
- UNLI bayan no. 11 dated 31 March 1988 refers to “Rabin the butcher” [al-Saffaḥ Rabin]→
Translation of the First UNLI Bayan of the First Palestinian Intifada
Issued on 8 January 1988 1The Birzeit University archive website is mistakenly labeled with the date of 11 January 1988. This bayan was issued on 8 January 1988 by the United National Leadership of the Intifada. Online source from the Birzeit University Archives: http://awraq.birzeit.edu/ar/node/8777
“In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate”
A call…a call…a call
————————–
Building on our glorious nation’s uprising, the spirit of resistance and solidarity with our people everywhere; Out of loyalty to the sacrifice of our honorable martyrs and imprisoned sisters; Out of refusal of the Occupation and its array of repressive policies including forced exile, mass arrests, prohibition of movement and house demolitions; In cohesion with our revolution and our fearless masses; Committed to the PLO, the sole legitimate representative, in the pursuit of sacrifice for the courageous Intifada; We issue this call to action:
All sectors of our heroic people in every locale, commit to the call for a total general strike from 11 January 1988 through the evening of Wednesday 13 January 1988. The strike includes all commercial facilities, public and private, and the Palestinian labor sector as well as public transportation. The general strike requires complete commitment. The slogan of the strike shall be until the Occupation falls, long live Palestine free and Arab.
Our brothers the laborers:
Your commitment to striking from work and going to the factories constitutes dedication to the glorious uprising. Your cooperation supports our people and demonstrates loyalty to the blood of our precious martyrs. It supports the demand of freedom for our prisoners and reinforces the resilience of our deported brothers.
Brothers, owners of the commercial businesses and grocery stores, your duty is to observe a total strike during the days called for. In your previous commitment to strike, you demonstrated magnificent solidarity and sacrifice on our people’s path to success. All our efforts are directed towards defending the interests of our honorable merchants and from what the occupation forces insinuate they will do against you. We also warn you of the consequence for trailing the coattails of the occupying force by opening your places of commerce. We promise you that we will settle accounts with any traitorous businessmen in the immediate future. Together and united we will forge victory.
Brothers, owners of bus and taxi companies: We recognize the honorable position you took when you supported the successful general strike on the day of Palestinian steadfastness. We put all our hope in you for your support in achieving this general strike. We warn several of the bus company owners of the consequences for non-support, which will expose them to revolutionary punishment.
Brothers, doctors and pharmacists, it is your duty to remain prepared to offer aid to the sick amongst our people. To the brothers, the pharmacists, it is upon you to continue practicing their work as usual. To the brothers, the doctors, put up an identifying sign: “Doctor’s sign” clear for the sick to see.
A public warning: Beware the roads may be unsafe for travel due to the measures taken to reinforce the general strike. We warn that an adhesive material will be poured onto the main and the side streets in all areas, in addition to the checkpoints. Groups of strike forces are dispersed throughout the occupied homeland.
To our people, and the heroic sons of our people: In the days prior to the strike, it is your responsibility to obtain essential supplies and needed resources to last the duration of the days of the strike.
In general: It is the duty of the fighters and brothers, those members of the popular committees and the Intifada committees to advance the work of distributing aid and support (according to available capacities) to the different sectors of our people and specifically to the families in need amongst us. Adherence to the work program that is present between your hands is incumbent on the strike units and the popular groups of the Intifada. Together hand in hand and in a loud voice we repeat:
“Until the fall of the Occupation, Until the fall of the Occupation”
“Long live Palestine, Arab and free”
The National Palestinian Forces
- The Birzeit University archive website is mistakenly labeled with the date of 11 January 1988. This bayan was issued on 8 January 1988→