Intifada

Intifada (انتفاضة intifāḍah) is an Arabic word literally meaning, as a noun, "tremor", "shivering", "shuddering". It is derived from an Arabic term nafada meaning "to shake", "shake off", "get rid of", as a dog might shrug off water, or as one might shake off sleep, or dirt from one's sandals, and is a key concept in contemporary Arabic usage referring to a legitimate uprising against oppression. It is often rendered into English as "uprising", "resistance", or "rebellion". In the Palestinian context, with which it is particularly associated, the word refers to attempts to "shake off" the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories in the First and Second Intifadas, where it was originally chosen to connote "aggressive nonviolent resistance", a meaning it bore among Palestinian students in struggles in the 1980s and which they adopted as less confrontational than terms in earlier militant rhetoric since it bore no nuance of violence.