The Spring 1987 West Bank unrest was a period of heightened unrest in the Palestinian West Bank from mid-March to mid-April 1987. The period was marked by a series of intertwined events, including a hunger strike by Palestinians in Israeli custody, riots by Palestinians in support of the hunger strike, the murder of Israeli settlers Ofra Moses and her five-year-old son Tal by Palestinian militants, anti-Palestinian rioting by Israeli settlers, and the temporary closure of the Palestinian Birzeit University.
In the Middle East Contemporary Survey, Volume XI, 1987, Itamar Rabinovich and Haim Shaked identified the unrest as the second significant wave of disturbances in the occupied Palestinian territories in 1987, following the February 1987 Palestinian unrest, sparked by Palestinian protests over the War of the Camps in Syria.Rabinovich, Itamar & Haim Shaked. Middle East Contemporary Survey, Volume XI, 1987. Avalon Publishing, 1989. In the American Jewish Year Book, Ralph Mandel identified the unrest that followed the hunger strike as "some of the worst violence of the year prior to the December uprising."
Background Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967 and had occupied it for nearly twenty years by 1987. Contemporary reporting described growing confrontations involving a generation of Palestinians who had been born or had come of age during the occupation, alongside a West Bank settler population that had nearly doubled since 1983. Events Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike On 25 March 1987, 3,000 Palestinians in Israeli custody in several different Israeli prisons launched a hunger strike in protest over the conditions they were being held in. Among the complaints listed by the prisoners were overcrowding, lack of sunlight, lack of ventilation, and abuse by Israeli prison officials. The re-opening of the Ansar II prison, which had been shut down in 1986 after reports of physical abuse of prisoners, to handle the increasingly growing Palestinian prisoner population, was another factor. Another major complaint was an alleged refusal by newly appointed Israel Prison Service head David Maimon to recognise and negotiate with prisoners' self-formed committees. Israeli Minister of Police Haim Bar-Lev denied the allegations against Maimon, saying that "the prison commissioner does not set policy – not the incumbent one, not the previous one nor the one who preceded him," and claimed that the strike had been sparked by prisoners upset over not being released in exchange for IDF soldiers captured in Lebanon. Maimon told Kol Yisrael that he hadn't changed prison conditions, but did wish to "to put an end to the situation where prisoners' leaders were running the prisons."
The outbreak of the hunger strike led to a number of protests across Palestine in support of the prisoners, including commercial strikes, student strikes, sit-ins, marches, and in some cities, general strikes. The protests were largely led by Palestinian women and students. According to Mary Curtius of The Christian Science Monitor, "the hunger strike seems to have captured the imagination of Palestinian youth on the West Bank. Busloads of high school students now travel each day to the Arab East Jerusalem offices of the International Red Cross, where the mothers of hunger striking prisoners await daily reports on the condition of the strikers.... Observers say the actions in support of the fasting prisoners are the most sustained and widespread since a wave of unrest swept the West Bank in 1982."
Some protesting Palestinians were arrested as Israeli police dispersed demonstrations. Other protests developed into riots, with protestors clashing with Israeli forces, including throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and Israeli military vehicles. On 6 April, there was an incident where two Palestinian men were shot and injured in East Jerusalem by a Shin Bet agent after they threw stones at the agent's car, shattering the windshield. On 7 April, there was an incident where one Palestinian was shot and injured after trying to grab a soldier's gun. As a result of the demonstrations, Israeli authorities also imposed curfews on several Palestinian cities.
The prisoners ultimately agreed to end the hunger strike on 13 April, following negotiations with Maimon. The strike had been the longest and most extensive Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike since the 1980 Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike.
Land Day Land Day is an annual day of demonstrations in Palestine on 30 March held to mark the anniversary of a significant wave of protests that broke out in 1976 over a move by the Israeli government to confiscate Palestinian land. Ahead of the day, the Civil Administration ordered three Palestinian universities, An-Najah National University, Bethlehem University, and Birzeit University, to be temporarily shut down as a measure to prevent Land Day protests from being held on the three campuses.
The demonstrations were on the whole calm. Commercial strikes and school strikes were successfully held in some Palestinian cities, particularly in Ramallah and East Jerusalem, while commercial strikes in other cities, such as Gaza City and Nablus were met with more limited observance.
A handful of the demonstrations saw protestors clash with Israeli soldiers. One Palestinian youth was injured in Jenin, after Israeli shot with live ammunition at a group of youth that threw stones at them. A curfew was placed on the Balata Camp after Israeli soldiers dispersed a stone-throwers using tear gas. One Israeli was injured near Al-Bireh by a stone that hit his vehicle. In Ramallah, eight youth were arrested for incitment.
Murder of Ofra Moses On the evening of 11 April 1987, Palestinian man Muhammad Daoud threw a Molotov cocktail at a car driven by a family of Israeli settlers from Alfei Menashe, killing 35-year-old Ofra Moses and severely burning Moses' husband, her three children, and a family friend, requiring hospitalisation at the Sheba Medical Center. One of Moses' children, a five-year-old boy named Tal, would subsequently die from his injuries. The family had been driving to Petah Tikva so that they could buy food to celebrate Passover.
In the hours following the killing, around 600 settlers from Alfei Menashe attacked the nearby Palestinian town of Qalqilya. The settlers burned down orchards, threw stones at houses in the town, and vandalised cars. The settlers accused the Israeli military of failing to protect them, with Shlomo Katan, the mayor of Alfei Menashe, stating that "the local residents would not have had to take the law into their hands if the security forces had done their job." In response to the attack and subsequent riot, the Israeli military declared the Palestinian towns of Qalqilya and Hableh to be a "closed military area," imposing a curfew. The leader of the riot was Gush Emunim figure Daniella Weiss. The next day, groups of armed settlers patrolled several Palestinian cities, including Ramallah.
On 12 April, as a result of the killing, the Israeli military enacted a significant crackdown on Palestinians, arresting over 80 prominent Palestinian figures and holding them in administrative detention, as well as raiding a UNRWA training institute in Ramallah, arresting over 140 of the institute's students and injuring 17. The Israeli military stated that the figures placed in administrative detention were "organizers, planners and leaders of the disturbances." Among the figures placed in administrative detention were Faisal Husseini, a former editor-in-chief of the Al Fajr newspaper, and a leader of the joint Israeli-Palestinian Alternative Information Center. The Israeli military also moved to bulldoze the orange trees alongside the road where Moses had been killed, saying that they had been frequently used for ambushes. Israeli Minister of Defence Yitzhak Rabin released a statement saying that the Israeli government would use "whatever measures that are allowed by the law to ensure to everybody the right to drive freely and securely along the roads; to cope with those who try to instigate terror acts, those who organise and those who carry them out."
12 April also saw a number of clashes between Israeli soldiers and protesting Palestinians, with the Israeli military reporting stone throwing incidents in seven different areas that day and vandalism of cars with Israeli licence plates, and four Palestinian protestors being injured while being arrested for stone throwing.https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/04/12/Arab-Israeli-clashes-break-out-on-West-Bank/7594545198400/
Birzeit University closure Early 1987 also saw a period of heightened unrest at Birzeit University, one of the most prominent Palestinian universities. The university was ordered closed three times by the Israeli authorities, for the first time in late February for four days following a wave of protests across Palestine triggered by the Israeli military's use of live ammunition to disperse a rally held in the Balata Camp. Also in late February, American professor of history at the university Roger Heacock was arrested by the Israeli military and charged with having incited a women's demonstration in Ramallah. Heacock's trial began in late March and concluded in early June, where he was issued a wo-month suspended sentence and a $950 fine. On 19 March, the Israeli military conducted a four-hour search of the university campus, seizing a number of books and student council material, without presenting a warrant or a list of what had been seized to the university administration.
When the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike broke out in late March, the students at Birzeit University a small handful of demonstrations in support of the prisoners, including a two-day solidarity hunger strike and a silent march around the university's new campus. The university was subsequently ordered closed for four days by the Israeli authorities as a measure to prevent Land Day demonstrations from being held on campus, the second forced closure within the last month and a half. Israeli soldiers also carried out several nighttime raids of the university's student dormitories, without arresting any students.
Tensions then spiked as a result of the killing of Ofra Moses and the ensuing anti-Palestinian riots, with students at the university fearing that it would be the target of a settler riot or another crackdown by Israeli forces. On the morning of 13 April, a student rally was held at Birzeit to show support for the hunger strike and to protest against the crackdown. After beginning on the university campus, the rally merged with a secondary school students' rally in the city. In response, the Israeli military deployed soldiers to the city to contain and disperse the protest. After some of the students threw stones at the soldiers, the soldiers opened fire using live ammunition, injuring at least four students and killing one, a 23-year-old history and political student named Musa Hanafi. Students who participated in the protest claimed that the soldiers opened fire without warning and without first using other, less lethal means of protest dispersal like water cannons and tear gas. A Southern Baptist missionary in the city interviewed by The Jerusalem Post claimed that "though only some of the troops wore helmets, they were at a safe distance from the stone throwers." The Israeli military claimed that the soldiers had only opened fire after two soldiers had been trapped by stone-throwing students. The soldiers then pursued fleeing protestors back into the university campus, where students barricaded themselves inside campus buildings.