A student runs past a portrait of Yasser Arafat, then Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, in the Birzeit University campus, January 1988. (Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse)
Although Israel’s violent crackdowns on Palestinians in the early months of the First Intifada were not unprecedented, organized strikes and protests across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and scenes of Palestinian youth countering heavily armed Israeli soldiers captured global attention.
French photojournalist Jean-Claude Coutausse arrived in late 1987 and covered the Palestinian uprising off and on for the next two years, primarily for Western audiences. His photographs are sharply edited and perhaps with less punchy contrast than those of his contemporaries covering the same scenes. In so doing, the drama comes not from competing black and white values juxtaposed against one another but from the subjects themselves: running and shouting, fighting for their cause or even for their lives, or simply staring intently ahead.
Coutausse, who built a reputation covering conflict and political turmoil mainly in the Middle East and Africa, published his coverage of the First Intifada in the 1990 photography book La Danse Des Pierres: Les Territoires Occupés Par l’armée Israélienne, a reference to the iconography of Palestinian stone-throwers.
Visit Coutausse’s website to view the full collection and to view his other work in and out of the Middle East.
A young Palestinian man, wounded during a protest, is taken to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, December 1988. (Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse)
Another injured Palestinian youth is brought to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital for treatment, December 1988. (Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse)
Pictures of Milad, a 10-year-old Palestinian killed by Israeli soldiers, at his funeral in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, June 1989. (Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse)
A young man salutes Milad’s photograph during his funeral in June 1989. Ten-year-old Milad was killed by Israeli soldiers. (Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse)
Stone-throwers pause for a moment at a demonstration in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, December 1988. (Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse)
Young Palestinians await their fates in an Israeli military court in the city of Nablus, December 1987. (Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse)
It is implied that the youth held in Israeli military courts or being rushed to the hospital for emergency medical care were either throwing stones, standing in the vicinity of stone-throwers, or fitting the vague description of what a stone-thrower might look like.
A Palestinian girl carries a tray by Israeli soldiers in Ramallah’s Al-Amari Camp Ramallah, January 1988. (Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse)
A Palestinian family in the vicinity of their home in Bethlehem after it was destroyed by the Israeli military, June 1989. (Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse)
A mother and her injured son look out from a window in Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, December 1988. (Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse)
A Palestinian youth throws stones while everyday life continues in the background, Bethlehem, December 1988. (Photographer: Jean-Claude Coutausse)