Palestinian political violence

In the 1990s, groups seeking to disrupt the Israeli-Palestinian peace process began adopting suicide bombings, predominantly targeting civilians, which later peaked during the Second Intifada.

[26] In protest against the Balfour Declaration, which proposed Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people, and its implementation under a League of Nations Mandate for Great Britain, Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, from November 1918 onwards, began to organize in opposition to Zionism.

After the passing of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 which called for the establishment of independent Arab and Jewish States, a Palestinian Civil War broke out.

In order to derail the peace process, Islamist organizations such as Hamas and the PIJ adopted the usage of suicide bombings,[31][32] predominantly against Israeli civilians.

[33] Frustration over the perceived failure of the peace talks to yield a Palestinian state[34] led to the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, which ended in 2005, coincident with the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Most of the people in question were refugees attempting to return to their homes, take back possessions that had been left behind during the war and to gather crops from their former fields and orchards inside the new Israeli state.

[38] Meron Benivasti states that the fact that the "infiltrators" were for the most part former inhabitants of the land returning for personal, economic and sentimental reasons was suppressed in Israel as it was feared that this may lead to an understanding of their motives and to the justification of their actions.

[43] Fatah, a Palestinian group founded in the late 1950s to organize the armed resistance against Israel, and headed by Yasser Arafat, soon rose to prominence within the PLO.

Simultaneously, the Palestinians drew lessons from movements and uprisings in Latin America, North Africa and Southeast Asia which led them to move away from guerilla warfare in rural areas towards terrorist attacks in urban environments with an international reach.

By early 1970, at least seven Palestinian guerrilla organizations were active in Jordan, one of the most important being the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) led by George Habash.

The guerrillas initially focused on attacking Israel, but by late 1968, the main fedayeen activities in Jordan appeared to shift to attempts to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy.

A bitterly fought 10-day civil war known as Black September ensued, drawing involvement by Syria and Iraq, and sparking troop movements by Israel and the United States Navy.

In November 1971, members of the Palestinian Black September group, who took their name from the civil war, assassinated Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi al-Tal in Cairo.

Beginning with street fighting in Beirut between Christian Phalangists and Palestinian militiamen, the war quickly deteriorated into a conflict between two loosely defined factions: the side wishing to preserve the status quo, consisting primarily of Maronite militias, and the side seeking change, which included a variety of militias from leftist organizations and guerrillas from rejectionist Palestinian (nonmainstream PLO) organizations.

[51] The strategy of non-violence, though widespread among Palestinians, was not always adhered to, and there were youth who threw molotov cocktails and stones, with such violence generally directed against Israeli soldiers and settlers.

In response, Islamist organizations such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) adopted the tactic of suicide bombings, influenced by Lebanese groups, to derail the peace process, weaken the PLO and polarize Israeli politics.

The IDF has a difficult, if not impossible time trying to find hidden weapons caches in Palestinian areas – this is due to the high local support base Hamas enjoys.

[68] During the Gaza War (2008–09), Palestinian militant groups fired rockets aimed at civilian targets which struck the cities of Ashdod, Beersheba and Gedera.

[74] Hamas fighters proceeded to massacre hundreds of civilians at a music festival and in kibbutz Be'eri and take hostages in Southern Israel back to the Gaza Strip.

In 2011, Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu stated that the incitement promulgated by the Palestinian Authority was destroying Israel's confidence, and he condemned what he regarded as the glorification of the murderers of the Fogel family in Itamar on PA television.

[76][77] Isi Leibler wrote in the Jerusalem Post that Mahmoud Abbas and his chief negotiator Saeb Erekat deny Israel's right to exist and promote vicious hatred against Jews, in statements made in Arabic.

[79] The United Nations body UNESCO stopped funding a children's magazine sponsored by the Palestinian Authority that commended Hitler's killing of Jews.

They also stated that groups in a summer camp for children sponsored by PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad were named after militants: Dalal Mughrabi, who led the Coastal Road Massacre; Salah Khalaf, head of Black September that carried out the Munich massacre; and Abu Ali Mustafa, the general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who perpetrated many attacks.

Children are susceptible to recruitment by manipulation or may be driven to join armed groups for a variety of reasons, including a desire to avenge relatives or friends killed by the Israeli army.

"[92] According to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2015,[93] Hamas launched rockets from inside schools to use the retaliatory child deaths for propaganda and deter Israel from attacking Gaza.

[103] The weapons, often generically referred to as Qassams, were initially crude and short-range, mainly affecting the Israeli city of Sderot and other communities bordering the Gaza Strip.

Iron Dome, a system to intercept short-range rockets, was developed by Israel and first deployed in the spring of 2011 to protect Beersheba and Ashkelon, but officials and experts warned that it would not be completely effective.

Forty-three percent of the boys reported that a family member had been wounded or killed by the IDF, and half lived in households where the father's employment was lost following the outbreak of the Second Intifada.

An overwhelming majority of 84 percent supported the March 2008 Mercaz HaRav massacre, in which a Palestinian gunman killed eight students and wounded eleven in a Jerusalem school.

A series of violent acts, ranging from physical assaults, torture, and executions of Palestinians suspected of collaboration with the Israel Defense Forces, as well as members of the Fatah political party, occurred.