WINTER 2025
ISSUE 1

₁ Anita Vitullo, “Uprising in Gaza,” in Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation, ed. Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin (Boston: South End Press, 1989), 46.

₂ Fayez Sara, “Palestinian Workers and the Intifada,” Shu’un Filastaniyyah, no. 198 (1989), 3.

₃ Sara, “Palestinian Workers,” 5.

₄ Sara, “Palestinian Workers,” 7.

₅ Sara, “Palestinian Workers,” 8.

₆ Sara, “Palestinian Workers,” 13.

₇ Ali Abu Hilal, “Role of the Palestinian Working Class in the Intifada,” Samed al-Iqtisadi, no. 74 (1988), 111.

₈ Abu Hilal, “Role of the Palestinian Working Class,” 112-113.

₉ Abu Hilal, “Role of the Palestinian Working Class,” 113.

₁₀ Abu Hilal, “Role of the Palestinian Working Class,” 114.

₁₁  Abu Hilal, “Role of the Palestinian Working Class,” 119-120.

₁₂ Abu Hilal, “Role of the Palestinian Working Class,” 121-122.

₁₃ Abu Hilal, “Role of the Palestinian Working Class,” 124.

In the aftermath of the June War of 1967, the newly occupied territories quickly became an important source of cheap labor for Israeli capital. These commuting workers, like those martyred in Jabalia, endured deplorable conditions, pay, discrimination, and insecurity. Observing the Intifada in its first months, Ali Abu Hilal would recall that the size of the active workforce from the West Bank and Gaza Strip traveling across the 1948 borders had grown from 146,000 to 253,800 workers between 1967–74 alone. This was, moreover, surely an underestimate, relying on government figures and therefore overlooking the heavy stream of “unofficial” workers, to say nothing of the establishment of workshops directly in the occupied territories by Israeli firms or the employment of Palestinian women as textile workers from their homes. 

“The Arab general strike from work in Israeli firms and institutions,” Hilal wrote of the Intifada, “has inflicted severe and painful blows on the Israeli economy, leading to rising costs for the occupation.” The following fragments are translations from two articles from the late 1980s assessing the role of Palestinian workers in the unfolding of the First Intifada. Fayez Sara, based in Syria, wrote the first for the September 1989 issue of Shu’un Filastaniyyah, the chief organ of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Research Center. The second appeared in 1988 in the pages of Samed al-Iqtidasi, the monthly journal of SAMED: Palestine Martyrs Works Society, an economic institution within the PLO. It was written by prominent Palestinian lawyer and labor organizer, Ali Abu Hilal, during his exile in Jordan. We print these fascinating passages as a broad indication of the significance and range of worker initiative and participation in this famous episode in the long struggle for Palestinian liberation. Together, these fragments furnish a viewpoint typically overlooked in the history and present of this struggle, and particularly for the period after the destruction of the Mandate-era union movement in the Nakba.

—

In 2020, Mo’min Swaitat of the archival record label, Majazz Project, traveled to his hometown of Jenin and purchased tapes from an old music store, recovering a copy of a largely unknown album by Riad Awwad, The Intifada 1987. Awwad had recorded his album one week into the Intifada, alongside his sisters, Hanan, Alia, and Nariman, and the poet, Mahmoud Darwish. He printed three thousand tapes, but most of them were (and remain) seized by the Israeli army. Now readily available, the refrain of its first song, “I’m from Jerusalem,” captures something of the sentiment we have hoped to convey from these obscure articles from the late 1980s:

In the streets, in the farms, in the factories, in the alleys
I will keep struggling (struggling, struggling)
To free the land and the people.

في الشوارع، في المزارع، في المصانع، في الطرقات.
سأبقى أناضل أناضل أناضل 
لتحرير الأرض والإنسان

“These difficult circumstances, resulting fundamentally from the occupation and its policies against workers and the union movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, have pushed workers to plunge with great enthusiasm into the events of the Intifada of December 1987, as an expression of their refusal of how the occupation has left their conditions and lives. Workers participation, among the most prominent faces of the Intifada, has [in turn] introduced significant changes into the structure, particulars, and features of the workers movement and its unions by placing it on the path of struggle within the framework of the Palestinian national movement.”³

“As noted in regard to the nature of developments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the role of workers in challenging the occupation and its policies, the Intifada came as a culmination of the series of mass activities that preceded December 1987, and in which workers and the union movement played a role no less than that of other popular classes.”⁴

“Doctors, nurses, and other technical cadres activated collectively to confront the state of emergency that arose from the broadening and escalating campaign of repression and bloody Israeli terror. They were able, despite modest capacities in the medical system, to supply vital services to the sick, injured, and wounded throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. […] In general, the system of medical services achieved steadfastness in the face of successive campaigns of Israeli terror, grounded methodically in the connection of its cadres and workers with the people and their cause.”⁵

“Workers and the union movement were at the forefront of those who initiated and plunged into the Intifada, whether in effective autonomous actions, through the unions, or in general activities side by side with other classes and layers of Palestinian society in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. […] The participation of workers in the Intifada, whether through the general role of workers or their specific role – whose most prominent expression was the strike and boycott of the Israeli labor market in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in the lands occupied in 1948 – inflicted huge losses directly and indirectly on the Israeli economy.”⁶

“The political consciousness of the working class forms on this objective basis [Trans: on the basis of both class and national exploitation]. It pushes the class to seek out forms of resistance to the occupation, and liberation from it, through seizing national independence, national dignity, and the right to self-determination and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state under the leadership of the PLO, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The struggle of workers to defend their interests and their immediate economic rights becomes an opening to fight against the occupation and for national independence. In this way, the colossal army of the working class transforms from an instrument for exploitation and a resource for accumulating capital for the occupation and Israeli bosses into an instrument for destroying the occupation and wresting the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people: the right of return, self-determination, and an independent Palestinian state.”⁸

“The struggle of the working class and the union movement had taken a continually escalating line against the occupation from the time its feet first walked the occupied territories until the present. During this time, its confrontations and battles became manifold, as the working class and its union movement drives against the occupation and its repressive measures. If we, in this short study, are unable to speak on the sum of these battles, then we will indicate their most prominent stages over the period from the existence of the occupation and to the glorious Intifada against the occupation that the occupied territories are now witnessing.”⁹

“Thus, the union movement exited these battles [Trans: of establishing new unions and opposing Camp David] with greater strength and breadth, and accumulated expertise and rich experience in organizing workers and throwing them into national struggle against the occupation and its repressive and terrorist policies, as well as defending the right of organization and union activity.”¹⁰

“Just as the Intifada represented a qualitative turn in the national fight of the Palestinian people against the Israeli occupation on the level of organization and struggle, so too was the role of the working class transformed qualitatively on social, economic, and political levels. // For the first time, the Palestinian working class plunged into the national fight as an organized and unified class, utilizing all forms of organization and all means of struggle on the scale of the nation, the district, and locally. // On the organizational level, representatives of the working class participated in all the bodies and councils that sprung out of the Intifada, from the unified national leadership of the Intifada to the smallest popular council in the neighborhood. Workers also participated in various forms of mass resistance, from ordinances, calls, and statements through to strike forces, the general strike, and the refusal to work in Israeli enterprises and institutions. In this way, the working class had assumed a leading role in the Intifada, and had a huge influence by imparting a democratic character on the leadership of the Intifada and the fighting apparatus connected to it at the district and local level.”¹¹

“This huge number among the working class [Trans: 100,000–150,000 Palestinian workers in Israeli firms] formed a potent weapon in the hands of the overall Intifada of the Palestinian people against the occupation. The leadership of the Intifada has improved the use of this weapon over its course. This massive army of workers has transformed from a source of profit and enrichment for the occupation and Israeli economy into an instrument of struggle to bury the occupation and into the primary force in the national struggle, driven by the Palestinian people toward the destruction of the occupation and the extraction of legitimate national rights: primarily, the right of return, self-determination, and establishment of the independent Palestinian state under the leadership of the PLO, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The specific and important weapon, used in this connection, is the general strike and boycott of labor in Israeli institutions and enterprises. // Work has stopped decisively in Israeli settlements, while certain sources of Palestinian unions estimate that 80 percent of Arab workers in Israeli firms had stopped working as a result of the strike, which causes heavy losses within the Israeli economy. This has harmed most Israeli branches and sectors, and especially construction, services, tourism, agriculture, and industry.”¹²

“The Arab general strike from work in Israeli firms and institutions has inflicted severe and painful blows on the Israeli economy, leading to rising costs for the occupation. Whenever the Intifada escalates and continues, whenever the striking portion in the ranks of Arab workers increases, it hastens the end of the occupation, and contributes to generating new pressure points, paving the way towards the achievement of legitimate national rights for the Palestinian people, and especially the right of return, self-determination, and building the independent Palestinian state under the leadership of the PLO, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”¹³