Palestinians have thrown stones as a tactic with both a symbolic and military dimension when used against heavily armed troops.
It has also been described variously as a form of traditional,Mary Elizabeth King, A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance, Nation Books, 2009 pp. 257-264:'Residents of the West Bank and Gaza say that the use of stones is traditional . . Most Palestinians interviewed here see the practice as hard evidence they were not using weapons.'(p.259). popular protestYitzhak Reiter, Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution: National Minority, Regional Majority: Palestinian Arabs Verses Jews In Israel,, Syracuse University Press, 2009 pp. 60, 141. guerrilla tactic or action,Gilbert Achcar, Eastern Cauldron: Islam, Afghanistan and Palestine in the Mirror of Marxism, Pluto Press, 2004 p. 124:'The First Intifada is a guerrilla war in which the fighters have no weapons but stones.'Anne Marie Oliver and Paul F. Steinberg p. 57. or a tactic of civil disobedienceBelén Fernández, The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, Verso Books, 2011 p. 112 for 'non-lethal civil disobedience' :'What the Palestinians under occupation were saying by using primarily stones instead of firearms was that the most powerful weapon against the Israelis was not terrorism or guerrilla warfare. The most powerful weapon, they proclaimed, was massive non-lethal civil disobedience. That is what the stones symbolized".Brian K. Barber, Joseph A. Olsen, 'Adolescents' Willingness to Engage in Political Conflict: Lessons from the Gaza Strip,' in J. Victoroff (ed.) Tangled Roots: Social and Psychological Factors in the Genesis of Terrorism, IOS Press 2006 pp. 203-225 p. 206. 'Youthful activism during the first intifada was restricted mostly to relatively low-level, non-dramatic forms of violent activism (e.g. demonstrating, throwing stones, erecting barricades, etc: the first Palestinian suicide bombing did not occur until 1993 as the first intifada was ending'. which came to prominence during the First Intifada.Gilles Kepel, Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East, Harvard University Press 2009 pp. 85-86.:'the first intifada, a Palestinian uprising that began in December 1987. This protest entailed strikes, boycotts, barricades, and acts of civil disobedience, but what caught the attention of news media around the world was stone-throwing by Palestinian youths against the tanks and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. These guerrilla tactics . . .Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge University Press, 2014 pp. 603-4:' demonstrations, riots, and stone throwing in protest against Israeli occupation, the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, taxation, and administrative harassment.'. At least 14 Israelis have been killed by Palestinian stone throwing. Israeli soldiers responded to stone-throwing children with live gunfire, killing 215 children in the First Intifada. Stone-throwing has occasionally been imitated by activists among the Arab citizens of Israel. In many occasions IDF uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, including children, against Palestinian protesters throwing rocks.
Proponents, sympathizers, as well as some analysts have characterized stone throwing by Palestinians as a form of "limited", "restrained", "non-lethal" violence.:'we have nothing to defend ourselves with.” Stone-throwing must suffice, he said. “We can’t take an M-16 and go kill every settler. All we have are those stones. A bullet can kill you instantly. A little stone won’t do much. But at least I’m sending a message.”.' David M. Halbfinger, Adam Rasgon, 'Life Under Occupation:The Misery at the Heart of the Conflict,' New York Times 22 May 2021.Edward Kaufman, Manuel Hassassian, 'Understanding Our Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Searching for Its Resolution,' in Judy Carter, George Irani, Vamik D Volkan (eds.) Regional and Ethnic Conflicts: Perspectives from the Front Lines, Routledge, 2015 pp. 87-128 p. 109. Such stone throwing can at times prove lethal: over a dozen Israelis, including women, children, and infants, have died as a result of stones being thrown at cars. Some Palestinians appear to regard it as symbolic and non-violent, given the disparity in power and equipment between the Israeli forces and the Palestinian stone-throwers.Maia Carter Hallward, Transnational Activism and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Palgrave Macmillan 2013 p. 50 The state of Israel has passed laws to sentence throwers convicted of the charge to up to 10 years imprisonment even without proof of intent to harm. In some cases, Israelis have argued that it should be treated as a form of terrorism, or that, in terms of the psychology of those who hurl stones, even in defense or in protest, it is intrinsically aggressive.Chibli Mallat, Philosophy of Nonviolence: Revolution, Constitutionalism, and Justice Beyond the Middle East, Oxford University Press, 2015 pp. 52-53.Maia Carter Hallward,Transnational Activism and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013 p. 50.
Stone throwing is not considered a deadly force in most countries: in the West firearms are generally not used in crowd or riot dispersals and proportionality of force is the norm, except where immediate danger to life exists.Pete van Reenben in 'Children as Victims in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Policing Realities and Police Training,' Charles W. Greenbaum, Philip E. Veerman, Naomi Bacon-Shnoor (eds.), Protection of Children During Armed Political Conflict: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Intersentia Antwerp/Oxford 2006 pp371-393 p. 384:'Stone throwing is not considered a deadly force in most countries, and the reaction of the police is protection by shields and protective clothing, out-manoeuvering the stone-throwers, water cannons and occasional tear-gas. In Western countries, fire-arms are not used, apart from cases of immediate danger to life. The open fire regulation used by Israeli forces, as far as is clear what it contains, seems to allow for a much faster use of fire arms and for heavier arms than is usual in demonstrations elsewhere. The requirement of proportionality of force, . . does not appear to apply here.'. Stone-throwers also employ catapults, slings and slingshotsRobert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2007 p. 578. armed with readily available materials at hand: stones, bricks, bottles, pebbles or ball bearings, and sometimes ratsBeverley Milton-Edwards,The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A People's War, Routledge 2008 p. 144. or cement blocks. Slingshots are often loaded with large ball bearings instead of stones.Oded Haklai, Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israel, University of Pennsylvania Press 2011 p. 122. Since the 1987 uprising, the technique is favoured as one which, to foreign eyes, will invert the association of modern Israel with David, and her enemies with Goliath, by casting the Palestinians as David to Israel's Goliath.Benny Morris Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1998, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011 p. 580 Despite there having been frequent acts of protest all over the Palestinian territories, the number of shooting incidents has been less than 3%.Wendy Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 105-106 Nonetheless, the international press and media focused on the aspect of Palestinian stone throwing, which garnered more headline attention than other violent conflicts in the world,David Newman, 'Citizenship, identity and location: the changing discourse of Israeli geopolitics,' in David Atkinson, Klaus Dodds (eds.). Geopolitical Traditions: Critical Histories of a Century of Geopolitical Thought, Routledge, 2002 pp. 302-331 p. 326.Erica Chenoweth, Maria J. Stephan, Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, Columbia University Press, 2013 p. 119 so that it became iconic for characterizing the uprising. According to Edward Said, a total cultural and social form of anti-colonial resistance by the Palestinian people is commodified for outside consumption simply as delinquent stone throwing or mindless terroristic bombings.Peter Childs, Patrick Williams, Introduction To Post-Colonial Theory, Routledge, 2014 p. 109.
Israeli law treats stone throwing as a felony, with a maximum penalty of up to 20 years, depending on the circumstances and intentions: a maximum of 10 years for stoning cars, regardless of intent to endanger passengers, and 20 years for throwing stones at people, without proof of intent to cause bodily harm. A three-year temporary measure was enacted in November 2015, mandating minimum sentences and creating a legal equivalence between rocks and other weapons.The Kenesset grants Final Approval: Minimal Sentences for Rock Throwers, Cancellation of Stipends of Rock Throwers' Parents (Hebrew), Haaretz, Nov 2015 Israeli undercover forces have been observed infiltrating protests on numerous occasions, inciting demonstrators and themselves throwing stones at Israeli troops. According to Israel's statistics, no IDF soldier has died as a result of Palestinian stone throwing, only civilians (but see Binyamin Meisner, killed by a dropped concrete block).
History
Cultural context and historical precedents The practice of stone throwing has deep religious, cultural and historical resonance, and is grounded in the age-old use of slinging stones among young rural herders whose task it was both to keep watch on livestock, and ward off predators of family flocks, and to hunt birds.McDonald p. 133. A Palestinian legend has it that after the creation God sent the angel Gabriel to distribute rocks all over the world, but he tripped on entering Palestine and spilled most of his load over that country. Children learn to use the same kind of sling employed by David to kill Goliath,Swedenburg p. 174. and stone throwing has been, according to Jonathan Cook, an 'enduring symbol' of how the weak can challenge the strong.Jonathan Cook, 'Netanyahu seeks to impose a new reality at Al Aqsa', The National, 5 October 2015 From the verse of Ecclesiasticus, 'a time to gather stones and a time to scatter',Ecclesiasticus 3:5 stones themselves evoke different traditions, from Jewish mourning and the rite of tashlikh to strictly Orthodox Jewish stone throwing to protest violations of the Sabbath or Palestinians in protests or to defend the Haram-al-Sharif.Andrew Mayes. Holy Land?: Challenging questions from the biblical landscape, SPCK, 2012 pp. 43-45. In Jerusalem, whose first king, David, slew Goliath with a single stone, and where the practice of stoning prophets, or those condemned to death, was frequent, religious dissensions in the city repeatedly exploded into vicious stone throwing matches.Trevor H.J.Marchand, 'Place-making in the "Holy of Holies":The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem,' Michael Bull, Jon P. Mitchell (eds.) Ritual, Performance and the Senses, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015 pp. 63-84, p. 73. It was a shared Muslim and Jewish tradition in Palestine, noted by travelers, to hurl stones at the Tomb of Absalom for rebelling against David.Gerald MacLean, Nabil Matar, Britain and the Islamic World, 1558-1713, Oxford University Press, 2011 p. 150. Meron Benvenisti likened the very way Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities use their traditions to stone throwing:
'The chronicles of Jerusalem are a gigantic quarry from which each side has mined stones for the construction of its myths-and for throwing at each other.'Meron Benvenisti, City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem, University of California Press, 1996 pp. 3-4.