Abstract:
In five essays written by Salim Tamari during the first Palestinian intifada, 1987–91, he examined the role of urban merchants, the strategies of Israel’s intelligence services, and the dilemmas of the intifada’s leadership and Palestinian civil society’s “limited rebellion” in the ongoing intifada. Penny Johnson – writing in the context of the Palestinian habbat al-Shaykh Jarrah of 2021, often referred to as the Unity Intifada – draws on Tamari’s essays to consider the legacy left by the first intifada on more recent Palestinian politics. She also uses Tamari’s first intifada essays to suggest several aspects of the first intifada worth revisiting by scholars after three decades.