Palestinian Stone Throwing

Stone throwing has targeted Israeli soldiers and police, Jewish worshippers, civilian motorists, and public transport, in settings ranging from demonstrations to roadside attacks.[1][2][6] The objects used during the First Intifada included stones, rocks, bricks, and steel balls launched with slingshots; petrol bombs and other weapons also appeared in the disturbances.[7] These methods were not interchangeable in their consequences: some incidents caused no casualties, while others produced injuries, property damage, or deaths.[2]

The First Intifada placed stone throwing within a wider mobilization that included demonstrations, labor strikes, tax refusal, boycotts of Israeli products, roadblocks, and attempts to develop local economic alternatives.[1] Widespread nonviolent civilian participation coexisted with violent confrontations involving rocks and Molotov cocktails.[1] During the Second Intifada, stones and firebombs again featured in early confrontations, while armed attacks and Palestinian terrorism against Israeli targets subsequently increased.[4]

Children and teenagers were especially prominent in the imagery surrounding stone throwing, but participation was not confined to boys or young men.[1][7] Women took part in First Intifada disturbances on a large scale, including throwing stones and petrol bombs, and some riots were led by women or consisted entirely of women.[7] The combination of mass participation, highly visible street confrontations, and attacks against road users gave the practice both political symbolism and direct security consequences.[1][7]

The First Intifada emerged after two decades of Israeli rule following the 1967 war, amid tensions over Israeli occupation, settlement activity, and Palestinian political and economic conditions in Gaza and the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[1][8] The uprising opposed Israeli control while also expressing frustration with the veteran Palestine Liberation Organization leadership and the growing importance of local activists.[1] Its early development combined rallies and strikes with clashes in which protesters attacked Israeli soldiers and vehicles.[9]

On December 8, 1987, a traffic collision near the Erez area killed four Palestinian workers; one account also records seven injured.[10] Rumors spread that the collision had been deliberate retaliation for the earlier killing of an Israeli, helping fuel protests in Jabaliya and then across Gaza and the West Bank.[8][10] Thousands demonstrated in Jabaliya the following day, and soldiers were attacked with stones and Molotov cocktails.[10] Stone throwing at cars near Qalandiya also formed part of the early unrest.[10]

Leaflets called for a protest in Jabaliya, mourners threw stones at a neighboring Israeli military base, and demonstrators subsequently attacked Israeli patrols with stones and Molotov cocktails.[11] Fifteen-year-old Hatem al-Sissi was killed when Israeli patrols fired live ammunition into crowds; an infant also died after her mother went into premature labor following tear-gas inhalation.[11] Other accounts describe an early fatal shooting of a youth who had thrown a Molotov cocktail at an army patrol, followed by a widening wave of unrest in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.[12]

Roadblocks, burning tires, and rock throwing appeared across the territories during the uprising’s first week.[12] In its first year, 5,385 demonstrations, labor strikes, and other protests were documented, averaging 103 each week.[11] Troops confronting crowds were pelted not only with stones but also with iron bars, while strikes, boycotts, and the withholding of labor extended the uprising beyond street clashes.[7] Israeli responses included live fire, tear gas, beatings, arrests, administrative detention, curfews, and the closure of educational institutions.[1]

The early confrontations had immediate human consequences: more than 15 Palestinians died in the first weeks following soldiers’ use of live fire against stone throwers.[8] As mass demonstrations and civilian participation declined, armed attacks increased and the uprising changed form.[1] Violence came to include stabbing attacks, firearms, and explosives as well as stones and Molotov cocktails.[9] During the first four years, military figures recorded more than 3,600 Molotov-cocktail attacks, 100 hand-grenade attacks, and 600 assaults involving guns or explosives; these totals concern weapons other than stones.[12]

The uprising ended in 1993 with the Oslo Accords.[9] One retrospective gives defense-establishment totals of 66 Israeli military and 157 Israeli civilian fatalities, 808 Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli security forces, and 985 Palestinians killed by other Palestinians.[9] These are totals for the wider uprising, not deaths attributable specifically to stone throwing.[9] A separate retrospective gives broader estimates of over 100 Israelis killed by Palestinians, over 1,000 Palestinians killed by Israel, and hundreds more Palestinians killed in internal violence.[8]

Jerusalem’s holy sites also became locations of stone-throwing confrontations.[6] On October 12, 1990, a Palestinian-Muslim demonstration opposed a plan by Jewish extremists to lay a cornerstone for a new Temple on the Temple Mount.[6] Stones were thrown from the compound toward Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall below; police entered to restore order, and 21 Palestinians were killed and 150 wounded.[6] Those casualties occurred during the police intervention and were not a tally of people struck by stones.[6]

Stone throwing again featured prominently at the beginning of the Second Intifada after Ariel Sharon’s September 28, 2000, visit to the Temple Mount.[11] Palestinians threw stones toward security forces from the compound, and police responded with batons, tear gas, and rubber bullets; more than 30 police officers and 20 demonstrators were injured.[11] Demonstrations and stone- and firebomb-throwing spread to other locations, and live police fire into crowds the next day killed Palestinians.[11] Contemporary accounts give differing immediate casualty totals, including seven deaths in one account and six deaths with 220 injuries in another.[7][11]

The confrontation developed amid Palestinian frustration with the Oslo process, economic conditions, movement restrictions, and the continuing Israeli military presence.[13] Its early phase involved stone throwing and demonstrations, followed by reduced civilian participation, increased terrorist activity, and a transformation into armed conflict.[13] One contemporary account reports 3,209 violent disturbances during October 2000, including 1,397 stone-throwing incidents.[14] Its accompanying totals of six Israeli civilians and seven soldiers killed, and 51 civilians and 139 soldiers injured, cover the disturbances as a whole rather than stone throwing alone.[14]

Jerusalem experienced further waves of street violence in 2014 and 2015.[2][15] One retrospective account puts the summer 2014 total at approximately 13,000 incidents of rock throwing and firebombing, as well as fireworks aimed at people—a combined figure, not a stone-throwing count.[15] In September 2015, young Muslims barricaded themselves inside al-Aqsa Mosque and stockpiled stones to disrupt Jewish holiday visits to the Temple Mount; they understood their actions as defending the pre-2000 status quo and preventing division of the compound between Muslims and Jews.[16] Masked Palestinians also collected firecrackers and erected barricades, while clashes involving stones and Molotov cocktails spread into East Jerusalem and other areas.[2]

Attacks on moving vehicles have produced some of the clearest examples of stone throwing’s lethal potential.[3][4] On June 5, 2001, a five-month-old Israeli boy was struck in the head by a stone thrown at his family’s car near Shilo Junction.[4] He was taken to Hadassah’s intensive care unit and died on June 10.[4] In another reported incident during the October 2000 disturbances, an Israeli motorist was struck in the chest by a large rock near Jisr e-Zarka.[14]

In 2011, a rock thrown at a car carrying Asher Palmer and his one-year-old son Yehonatan broke the windshield and knocked Palmer unconscious.[3] The vehicle left the road, killing both occupants.[3] A military court found Wa’al al-Araji guilty of murder, concluding that the evidence—including similar earlier attacks—demonstrated intent to kill.[3] The murder finding was unusual among fatal stone-throwing cases.[3]

Alexander Levlowitz died after stones struck his car in south Jerusalem in September 2015, and two women were wounded in the incident.[17] Four Palestinians aged 16–19 from Sur Baher were detained on suspicion of carrying out the attack.[17] The investigation account included reported admissions that the group planned an attack for the eve of Rosh Hashanah, selected cars by their license plates, and agreed beforehand on what to say if caught.[17] These were investigative allegations and reported interrogation statements, rather than a court outcome supplied by that account.[17]

Public transport has also been repeatedly targeted.[2][7] During the first nine months of the First Intifada, bus-company figures recorded 188 passengers and 24 drivers wounded by stones.[7] Some 1,650 buses had been attacked during that period, including 39 set on fire; by June 8, 1989, the reported cumulative totals reached 3,136 buses attacked and 337 passengers wounded.[7] On September 17, 2015, a bus driver was stoned in Ras al-Amud in East Jerusalem, abandoned the vehicle, and sustained minor injuries; the bus was then set on fire and burned.[2]

Some confrontations involved preparation and differentiated roles rather than an entirely spontaneous crowd.[14] One contemporary account reproduces journalist Daoud Kuttab’s description of neighborhood groups divided into lookouts, defensive teams, and offensive teams.[14] In that description, the offensive group advanced to throw stones, while a defensive group covered its retreat with another barrage.[14] This is an account of particular organized activity, not a description of every demonstration.[14]

Israeli responses have included arrest, imprisonment, financial penalties, and rules governing soldiers’ use of force.[1][5] During the First Intifada, parents could be required to pay steep fines to secure the release of children arrested for throwing stones.[1] In October 1990, the Ministry of Defense approved opening fire at stone throwers when soldiers’ lives appeared to be in danger.[1] Regulations described for the Second Intifada required graduated responses to violent demonstrations and permitted live fire where life was imminently threatened; stone throwing could fall within that definition in some circumstances.[4][18]

The regulations also restricted firing toward children or women unless a soldier faced immediate and obvious danger.[18] Directives reported in 2012 emphasized caution and allowed static or single shots to stop stone attacks posing a clear and present danger to Israeli vehicles without endangering other vehicles.[19] Where stones physically endangered soldiers on a substantial scale, the directives called for suspect-engagement procedures; without a genuine physical threat, soldiers were to make arrests using reasonable force.[19]

A 2015 legislative amendment established maximum prison terms of 10 years for throwing stones at civilian vehicles without proof of intent to harm and 20 years where intent to harm was proven.[5] Throwing stones at police officers or police vehicles to obstruct police activity could carry a maximum of five years.[5] That bill passed by 69 votes to 17.[5] Following Levlowitz’s death, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also announced measures addressing rules of engagement, minimum sentences, and fines for minors and their parents.[2]

A separate temporary amendment in 2015, approved for three years, provided a four-year minimum sentence for specified offenses, with departures allowed in special circumstances.[20] It added stones to a list of harmful instruments and addressed unlawful injury using a projectile, knife, stone, or other dangerous or harmful weapon.[20] Passed by 51 votes to 17, the measure also provided for withholding certain prisoner benefits and, in specified nationalist-motivated or terror-related cases involving minors, benefits connected to the imprisoned child.[20] Its temporary character is important: the report of enactment does not establish its present legal status.[20]

Subsequent reporting described increased and mandatory minimum adult sentences introduced in late 2015, alongside longer detention and sentences for Palestinian minors in East Jerusalem.[21] One Jerusalem court sentenced seven Palestinian minors to prison terms ranging from 12 to 39 months for stone throwing.[21] Between 2015 and May 2021, 6,796 of 7,213 opened cases were closed without indictment.[22]

Images of children and teenagers throwing stones at armed Israeli soldiers attracted exceptional international attention during the First Intifada.[1] They became a global symbol of the uprising and a Palestinian collective-memory image of participation in a unifying national cause.[1][7] This visual prominence existed alongside a much broader repertoire of civil disobedience, attacks, and political mobilization.[1]

Stone throwers and slingshots displaced the uniformed fighter in some Palestinian nationalist communications during the First Intifada.[11] A protest chant captured the symbolic substitution in the line, “For the stone has become the Kalashnikov.”[11] The imagery helped shape international perceptions of an asymmetrical confrontation between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soldiers.[8] It did not, however, encompass the full range of weapons used or the experiences of civilian motorists and passengers injured in attacks.[7][12]

Available incident figures demonstrate both the persistence of stone throwing and the importance of distinguishing reporting categories.[2][22] An August 2015 total of 168 attacks in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem excluded stone-throwing incidents, while many dozens of stone attacks were recorded separately that month.[2] Consequently, a general attack total for that period cannot be read as a complete count of stone throwing.[2]

For 2020, one human-rights report included an approximately 1,500-incident military count and a separate volunteer-organization count of 1,884 rock-throwing incidents.[23] The latter organization also reported 2,273 Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians, 495 firebombs thrown at vehicles, and 39 improvised explosive devices.[23] These figures came from different reporting bodies and categories and should not be merged into a single equivalent series.[23]

A later military series recorded 1,881 rock-throwing attacks in 2018, 3,805 in 2019, 4,002 in 2020, and 5,532 in 2021.[22] Another series combined Palestinian stone-throwing and Molotov-cocktail attacks, giving 8,633 in 2021, 3,256 in 2023, 1,230 in 2024, and 1,015 in 2025.[24] The combined totals cannot be substituted for stone-throwing-only figures.[24] These differences in coverage are particularly important when interpreting apparent increases or declines.[22][24]

The political classification of stone throwing ranges from civil unrest to potentially lethal violence, depending on the conduct and setting being discussed.[1][25] One legal commentary characterizes the First Intifada as civil unrest rather than terrorism, while distinguishing Molotov-cocktail attacks as terrorist activity.[25] A separate analysis places stones and Molotov cocktails within Palestinian Authority and Fatah “popular resistance,” including incidents organized in advance.[17] David A. McDonald’s interpretation links the stone’s rural and folkloric associations to the mobilization of youth, poor, and rural communities; that is an interpretation of political representation, not evidence of every participant’s intent.[11]

The proportionality of force and equality of enforcement have generated more concrete disputes.[4][26] Evidence described in the 2001 human-rights record included Palestinians killed or injured in situations that did not threaten life, while military data showed no known Israeli soldier on duty killed by stone throwing during the Intifada.[4] A subsequent account described the September 30, 2001, killing of a 10-year-old rock thrower in Balata and assessed lethal force in that and similar cases as excessive.[18] A family account concerning 13-year-old Qays similarly combines an arrest allegation, his denial of throwing a stone at a car, and allegations of mistreatment in detention.[27]

Six-year police statistics recorded 53 Israeli settler youths arrested for stone throwing, with 90 percent released without charge and five indicted, compared with 1,142 Palestinian youths arrested and 528 indicted, all reportedly convicted.[26] The data excluded army arrests of Palestinians and state-prosecutor indictments of settlers in more serious cases.[26] Critics cited unequal treatment; the Justice Ministry maintained that the law was applied impartially and attributed the disparity to more Palestinian stone throwing.[26] Sentencing legislation likewise drew objections about fairness, while supporters argued for deterrence; evidence that weak penalties caused rising incidents remained disputed.[20][22]

Stone attacks are not confined to Palestinian perpetrators.[23][28] A Jewish defendant was convicted by a two-judge majority of the terror-related killing of Palestinian mother Aisha al-Rabi in a 2018 stone attack on her family’s vehicle; the defense denied he threw the stone and announced an appeal.[28] He received 13 years’ imprisonment and a 258,000-shekel compensation order.[29] In 2020, Ahuvia Sandak died when a car overturned during a police pursuit after its occupants reportedly threw stones at Palestinians; subsequent protests included reported attacks on Palestinian cars and homes.[23]