When the Palestinian uprising exploded on December 8, 1987, it shocked everybody. The Israelis initially didn't think it was anything unusual. Three days into the confrontation, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin flew off to the United States; on his return, he briefed reporters that Syria and Iran were behind it. The intifada, or “shaking off,” as the Palestinians call it, reconfigured what was politically imaginable. None of Israel's intelligence services had anticipated a civil uprising. There weren't even any contingency plans for such an event. Routinely drilled for military confrontation with Syria or Iraq, Israeli soldiers had neither the training nor the materiel to do daily battle with young men and teenagers who, en masse and, unlike their parents, were willing to risk beatings, gunshot wounds, arrest, destruction of their homes, ruination of their family's businesses, deportation, and death to liberate at least some part of Palestine.

It was not just the Israelis who were stunned. The intifada also caught the PLO completely off guard. When it broke, top PLO United Nations officials were jetting abroad for the Christmas holidays. It took ten days for the PLO to get its first handbill into Gaza's streets. The intifada also stunned Jordan's King Hussein. In its first months, King Hussein's supporters in Jerusalem privately complained to the Israelis that insufficient force was being used to put down a revolt that further threatened their already dwindling influence.