The accident set off disturbances both in the Jabaliyah camp and in the rest of Gaza that rapidly spread to the West Bank. Within days the occupied territories were engulfed in a wave of street demonstrations and commercial strikes on an unprecedented scale. Equally unprecedented was the extent of mass participation in these disturbances: tens of thousands of ordinary civilians, including women and children. Demonstrators burned tyres, threw stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli cars, brandished iron bars and waved the Palestinian flag. The standard of revolt against Israeli rule had been raised. The security forces used the full panoply of crowd-control measures to quell the disturbances – cudgels, night sticks, tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets and live ammunition – but they only gathered momentum. The eruption of the intifada was completely spontaneous. There was no preparation or planning by the local Palestinian elite or the PLO, but the PLO was quick to jump on the bandwagon of popular discontent against Israeli rule and to play a leading role alongside a newly formed body, the Unified National Command (UNC).
