ABSTRACT
The Intifada – the Palestinian uprising in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem from 1987 to 1993 – imposed on the IDF and on Israeli society as a whole a new sort of warfare, one which Israel found difficult to cope with. Very different from Israel’s previous wars, the Palestinian uprising, nevertheless, had one common feature with the Six Day War of June 1967, and particularly with the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, and that is the way it surprised the Israelis, catching them off-guard and completely unprepared both mentally and physically for this new challenge. How did the Intifada come about? Who were the rebels and what were their motives? What effect did the uprising have on the Israelis?
