The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU; ) was a coalition of local Palestinian leadership during the First Intifada.
By the late 1980s, the central Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leadership had largely been exiled, imprisoned, or killed by Israeli forces. As a result, when the First Intifada broke out as spontaneous mass demonstrations in 1987, the PLO leadership was caught by surprise, and could only indirectly influence the events.Yasser Arafat obituary , socialistworld.net (Committee for a Worker's International). In its place, the UNLU emerged as a new local leadership, mobilising many grassroots Palestinian groups, including women's committees, labour unions, and student unions, the Palestine Communist Party, as well as local branches of PLO factions, notably of Fatah, the PFLP, and the DFLP.Zachary Lockman, Joel Beinin (1989) Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation South End Press, and 9780896083639 p 39 The UNLU played the leading role in organising the uprising, and was the focus of the social cohesion that sustained the persistent disturbances.Joel Beinin, Joe Stork, Middle East Report (1997) Political Islam: essays from Middle East Report I.B.Tauris, p 194
History Origins
Until the late 1970s, the Palestinian nationalist movement was dominated by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), a coalition of armed Palestinian nationalist groups that focused on guerrilla warfare against Israel based on Palestinian refugees in exile. Through the late 1970s and 1980s, however, a shift in the Palestinian nationalist movement occurred away from guerrilla warfare towards mass civilian organising. During this period, the Israeli government enacted increasingly harsh anti-PLO tactics, including banning the National Guidance Committee and invading Lebanon in 1982, leading to much of the PLO's central leadership being pushed further away in exile to Tunisia, imprisoned, or killed.
At the same time, grassroots Palestinian civil society organisations within the occupied territories significantly increased in number and influence, including student unions, labour unions, women's committees, and volunteer groups. Although many of these organisations were affiliated with and supportive of the PLO, they represented a more decentralised leadership with new tactics. According to historian Wendy Pearlman, "tens of thousands of men, women, and youth became linked in political networks. This grassroots organising represented a radical alternative to traditional, top-down patterns of politics. It schooled a new generation that was raised under occupation, was not afraid to challenge it, and viewed community-based political participation as a way of life."Pearlman, W. (2011). Violence, nonviolence, and the Palestinian national movement (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. Page 100. A member of the UNLU interviewed by The New York Times in early February 1988 stated on the UNLU's formation: "The important thing is that a grassroots infrastructure was already in existence. Unions, women's committees, every faction had its own infrastructure."
An average of 500 protests were held in the occupied territories each year between 1977 and 1982, increasing to an average of over 3000 between 1982 and 1987.Baylouny, Anne Marie. "The Palestinian Intifada." In The International Encyclopedia of Peace. Edited by Nigel Young. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10945/35593 In mid-1987, Glenn Frankel of The Washington Post noted that there was "a shift in the nature of the struggle here," moving away from a conflict between the Israeli military and "professional terrorists imported from outside the West Bank" towards a conflict that centred around incidents that were "initiated locally, most of them by Palestinian youths."
Formation Different Palestinian grassroots organisations began to coalesce into a more structured leadership in the weeks following the outbreak of the Intifada in December 1987. The UNLU issued its first leaflet on 8 January 1988. Sari Nusseibeh recorded the birth of the UNLU in a 1989 article:
For two weeks the fire [of the revolt] in 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 [Fatah 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."
The second leaflet of the UNLU contained a list of political demands, including an end to the Israeli Iron Fist policy, for Ariel Sharon to be evicted from his recently purchased flat in the Old City of Jerusalem, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian cities, the dissolution of municipal councils appointed by the Israeli Civil Administration to replace the elected councils, and closure of several prisons with a notorious reputation among Palestinians.
According to Glenn E. Robinson of the Naval Postgraduate School, "the UNLU consisted of the best and the brightest of local PLO grassroots cadres, not the recognized top political leaders. The factions inside the occupied territories decided that the UNLU representatives should come from among the young, smart, rising stars in each faction. While such people were highly thought of in their respective factions, they would still be relative unknowns to the Shin Bet, therefore unlikely candidates for early arrest."Glenn E. Robinson (1997) Building a Palestinian state: the incomplete revolution Indiana University Press, p 97
Fragmentation In the later stages of the Intifada, the continuing Israeli crackdown on the Intifada had severely impacted Palestinian society, many experienced Palestinian activists had been arrested by Israel, and the Intifada had yet to create an independent Palestinian state. As a result, the different Palestinian political factions increasingly began infighting over the direction of the Intifada, and the UNLU began to lose its authority over the uprising.
The last major sweep of arrests of UNLU members was carried out by the Israeli military in March 1990. Following those arrests, what remained of the UNLU was completely taken over by more senior prominent Palestinians with more direct links to the PLO leadership-in-exile, such as Faisal Husseini , Zahira Kamal, and Ghassan Khatib.Glenn E. Robinson (1997) Building a Palestinian state: the incomplete revolution Indiana University Press, p 98
The new leadership of the UNLU would go on to form the core of the Palestinian negotiators at the Madrid Conference of 1991.Glenn E. Robinson (1997) Building a Palestinian state: the incomplete revolution Indiana University Press, p 99
Organisation Leadership Four Palestinian factions were represented in the UNLU leadership: Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and the Palestine Communist Party.
According to Wendy Pearlman of Northwestern University, the UNLU "purposely varied protest locations or tasks to give communities time to rest or to distribute burdens across society. It also took measures to aid its own sustainability; when Israel arrested members, their factions replaced them, allowing the body to carry forward." According to Jack McGinn of the London School of Economics, the UNLU "relied on a constantly rotating membership made up of lower-ranking members of the big parties, so as to minimise damage incurred upon their arrest."
Popular committees On a local scale, the Intifada was coordinated by local popular committees under the UNLU, and UNLU communiqués were shaped via consultation with the popular committees. These popular committees also set-up social services for Palestinians in their localities, acting as de facto local governments and forming parallel power structures that could supplant the Israeli Civil Administration.Darweish, Marwan, and Andrew Rigby. Popular Protest in Palestine : The Uncertain Future of Unarmed Resistance, Pluto Press, 2015.
The first popular committees were founded as emergency committees in response to the early Israeli attempts to crackdown on the Intifada, particularly to organise food supplies for the inhabitants of areas placed under curfew by the Israeli military, to provide first aid for those injured in demonstrations, to keep watch for Israeli military patrols, and to organise underground classrooms to continue the education of Palestinian children when the Israeli government ordered Palestinian schools closed. According to Glenn E. Robinson of the Naval Postgraduate School, "the success of the first popular committees in supplying emergency services to communities under siege helped to consolidate the early gains of the uprising."Glenn E. Robinson (1997) Building a Palestinian state: the incomplete revolution Indiana University Press, p 95
As the unrest of the early Intifada coalesced into a popular uprising, the number of popular committees grew significantly. The committees soon took on a wide range of functions, including arbitrating disputes between residents, leading road safety education, helping residents create "victory gardens," assisting the bereavement for family members of those killed by Israeli forces, collecting taxes, and cleaning streets.Glenn E. Robinson (1997) Building a Palestinian state: the incomplete revolution Indiana University Press, p 95
In the first few months of the uprising meetings of popular committee were not specifically illegal, but popular committee leaders were still subject to arrest and deportation by Israeli authorities.New York Times Israelis Call 4 Arrests Blow to Arab Uprising 13 April 1989Glenn E. Robinson (1997) Building a Palestinian state: the incomplete revolution Indiana University Press, p 96 In mid-August 1988, the Israeli government specifically banned the popular committees, stating that the popular committees were "established at the initiative of terror organisation activists" and "have a double aim: violent enforcement of directives from the PLO and uprising leaders; undermining the Israel government apparatus in the territories and establishing an alternative apparatus in its place." Anyone who was a member of a committee, attended a committee meeting, had possession of a committee document (including UNLU communiqués), or gave money to a committee facing up to ten years incarceration. According to Joel Greenberg of The Jerusalem Post, the Israeli government had come to see the popular committees "as the primary threat of the uprising... Palestinian nationalists see the popular committees as kernels of a future independent administration, an embryonic infrastructure of their future state. For precisely this reason, the committees were outlawed."
In later stages of the Intifada, a combination of the Israeli crackdown and an increase in internal factionalism largely led to the abandoning of the popular committees.Glenn E. Robinson (1997) Building a Palestinian state: the incomplete revolution Indiana University Press, p 95
Strike forces