Today's 10th anniversary of the Palestinian intifada, or rising, against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is viewed quite differently by Palestinians and Israelis.
Palestinians see the six years of the intifada, 1987-1993, as a period of national regeneration during which they reclaimed their right to self-determination and statehood. At the insistence of the Unified Command of the Uprising, the Palestine National Council, the Palestinian parliament-in-exile, proclaimed Palestinian independence on November 15th, 1988, nearly 11 months into the intifada, although the state has still to emerge.
Israelis consider the intifada a dark period in their history during which the native population rose in rebellion and Israeli troops were compelled to act against the democratic principles and humane nature of the Jewish state to brutally suppress the insurrection.
The intifada took a heavy toll among both peoples. More than 1,500 Palestinians and several hundred Israelis died, thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis were injured. One-fourth of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza, then amounting to 1.8 million people, was either imprisoned on a longterm basis or detained for some time without trial.
Although the intifada formally came to an end in September 1993 when the PLO Chairman, Mr Yasser Arafat, signed the Oslo accord with the Israeli prime minister, the late Yitzhak Rabin, the spirit of rebellion lingers in the now not-so-youthful intifada generation and continues to stir the imagination of the frustrated youth of the West Bank and Gaza who feel betrayed by a peace process which has brought them not liberation and prosperity but 50 to 60 per cent unemployment, grinding poverty and continued Israeli occupation.
The spark that ignited the mass movement was a traffic accident in Gaza on the afternoon of December 8th, 1987. An Israeli lorry ploughed into a taxi carrying Palestinian labourers home after a day's work in Israel, killing four and wounding several others. Palestinian mourners at the funerals attacked an Israeli army post.
By six the next morning the vast Jabalya refugee camp at the centre of the strip was on strike and simmering with resentment. People flowed into the streets in protest, starting a revolt which spread to the rest of Gaza and the West Bank. Local leaderships organised demonstrations and a boycott of Israeli goods and encouraged samud or "steadfastness" among the people.
The intifada transformed relations between occupiers and occupied. As the resistance went on month after month, year after year, the Israelis came to realise that they could neither dominate nor expel the Palestinians.
This realisation led Mr Rabin's Labour coalition to negotiate a deal with the Palestinians which involved the re-partition of the land between the Mediterranean and Jordan river, sharing it between Israelis and Palestinians.
But the refusal of the current Likud-dominated coalition to honour Rabin's commitments to the Palestinians has generated a head of frustration and anger like that which precipitated the intifada a decade ago. Dr Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a spokesman for Hamas, said the intifada had merely been "suspended" and another small incident, perhaps even another traffic accident, could revive the intifada and once again transform the situation.