A Tale of 18 Cows
Beit Sahour, Civil Resistance, and the False Dawn of Oslo
The Wanted 18 is a documentary that, through a blend of animation and interviews, retells the inspiring yet comi-tragic story of Palestinian civil resistance during the First Intifada (1987–1993) in Beit Sahour, a small town west of Bethlehem in the illegally occupied West Bank.
This article explores the power of grassroots resistance in Beit Sahour during that period, showing how cooperation within a close-knit community developed a collective spirit of nonviolent defiance. It also critiques the failure of top-down diplomatic processes, particularly the Oslo Accords, and reflects on how Palestinian communities have long relied on their own agency, solidarity, and imagination in the face of occupation, betrayal, and attempted erasure.
The First Intifada (intifada means “uprising” or “rebellion”) was a mass grassroots movement across the West Bank and Gaza against the brutal Israeli occupation. On 8th December 1987 an Israeli truck ploughed into a car, killing four Palestinians in the Jabalia refugee camp. The incident sparked a nationwide uprising characterised by civil disobedience, well-organised strikes, and the creation of communal cooperatives.
Intifada Milk
Beit Sahour was perhaps an unlikely source of rebellion, given its middle-class demographic i.e. highly educated professionals and merchants. Yet committees were quickly formed to facilitate collective decision-making during the intifada and beyond. It was agreed, first and foremost, that they would boycott Israeli products, no mean feat considering they were almost entirely dependent on their goods and services, even for basic necessities like drinking water.
One day, the agricultural committee came up with a novel idea: buying some cows. Until then, their only source of milk had been Tnuva, a major Israeli food company. They contacted a sympathetic Israeli farmer on a kibbutz who agreed to sell them eighteen cows. Jalal Oumsieh, a Beit Sahourian high school teacher, recalls the first time he saw the animals:
“I felt as if we had started to realise our dream of freedom and independence. The minute the cows were in the truck in the kibbutz and we started moving back to Beit Sahour, we were full of joy and happiness. In fact, also, there was some kind of fear.”
Majed Nasser, a local doctor, explained, “Palestinians were not allowed to develop themselves,” while Jad Ishao, a geology professor, lamented that the only thing Israel didn’t control was “the air that we breathe.”
The idea of the dairy farm was born out of a shift in the community’s collective conscience. People had decided to work together, each doing their bit. Importantly, Beit Sahour had no tradition of cattle farming, so they sent a student, Salim Jaber, to the USA to learn how to care for and manage dairy cows. If they were going to do it, they’d do it properly.
Beit Sahour emerged as a central hub in the nonviolent resistance movement, especially in relation to the tax revolt (covered below). Ehud Zrahiya, a former advisor to the Israeli military, later explained:
“We were concerned that Beit Sahour may become a model for other places.”
Ghasan Andor, a local physics professor, said the army feared losing control:
“Occupation without control doesn’t work.”
So once the milk became a symbol of resistance (nicknamed “Intifada Milk”) the Israeli military moved to shut the whole operation down. Jalal Oumsieh recounts how one day the military governor showed up at the farm with a group of soldiers:
“The first thing they did there was to take a photo for each cow with its number on its body. He told us we had to remove the cows and get rid of them. When I asked him why, he said, ‘These cows are dangerous for the security of Israel.’”
The next day, when the military returned, the barn was empty. Enraged, the military governor launched an absurd door-to-door search campaign to find them. Jad Ishao recalls:
“It became a real joke to see the Israeli army looking for the intifada cows!”
With photos in hand, soldiers knocked on doors asking whether residents had seen any of the cows. At one point, two helicopters were deployed. But Beit Sahourians were defiant. Some of the cows were eventually found in a butcher’s house - he was arrested and jailed for a few days - but the rest remained hidden for years, secretly moved from one location to another by a community unwilling to give them up.
The Tax Revolt
The legacy of the cows lives on but it’s only one part of Beit Sahour’s remarkable story from that period. They played a more significant role in the First Intifada by instigating a tax revolt that provoked an unforgiving response from Israel.
The revolt was based on the slogan “no taxation without representation”, a phrase first coined in the American colonies under British rule. In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act without approval from the colonial legislatures. This was a direct tax on all printed materials, introduced to raise funds after the costly French and Indian War (1754–1763). Naturally, the colonies protested. Though the Stamp Act was eventually repealed, the resistance it sparked served as a catalyst for unity and dialogue between the colonies, laying the groundwork for the American Revolution and independence. There is something ironic about the fact that a settler-colonial state established by Britain and now heavily-funded by the USA faced the same grievances that the American colonies once did.
So the people of Beit Sahour decided that they too would reject taxation using the same slogan and based on the same principle. Of course, they understood the grave consequences that might follow. In The Wanted 18, Makram Saad describes how his pharmacy was threatened with closure, his professional license with revocation, and his home with seizure. Still, he stood his ground. He wasn’t the only one. Many had their homes raided and some were even tortured. Ghasan Andor summed it up simply: “They made life hell.”
Beit Sahour was placed under complete lockdown and put under siege. Journalists and diplomats were denied entry, and telephone lines were cut. In fact, there were two sieges: a shorter one in July 1988, which lasted a few days, and a second, longer one in September 1989, which lasted 42 days.
On 15th July 1988, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) received a report on the first day of the first siege from Al-Haq, an independent Palestinian human rights organisation. The report outlines the reasons behind the tax revolt:
“There is no financial accountability, no services are provided in return for them, and they refuse to pay the value-added tax (VAT) because it was introduced after the beginning of the Israeli occupation and is thus in clear contravention of international law. The tax revolt is seen as an integral part of the campaign of civil disobedience/disengagement being waged by Palestinians under occupation, and has by all accounts found near-unanimous support in Beit Sahour.”
The report goes on to describe how homes were broken into by soldiers who confiscated “identification cards, as well as unknown quantities of gold, money, and private cars. All without legal proceedings or a court order.”
In a bold act of defiance, hundreds of residents marched to a municipal building and handed in their Israeli-issued ID cards. The military responded with mass arrests, beatings, and the imposition of a 24-hour curfew.
The second, longer siege in September 1989 garnered greater international attention due to it’s severity and it led to the proposal of UN Security Council draft resolution 20945/Rev.1 on 7th November 1989, which condemned Israeli violence and practices and called for the lifting of the siege.
It was, of course, vetoed by the United States.
The United Nations doing what it does best: being absolutely useless in anything meaningful.
On the day prior to the UNSC vote, a meeting was held to discuss the situation in Beit Sahour and wider Palestine. Kuwait’s Ambassador to the UN, Muhammad Abdulhasan, made reference to the “ransacking of the houses of defenceless civilians, the closure of roads leading to [Beit Sahour⦐, its designation as a closed military area and the confiscation of Palestinian property, including furniture and personal effects valued at approximately $2 million, according to the Israeli press, all expropriated to be auctioned off.”
Following him, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the UN, Ambassador Zuhdi Labib Terzi, described how tax collectors “seized food stored by families for the approaching winter and dumped it in the streets.” He added that, on the same day, “Israeli army bulldozers were used in order to destroy the water pipes of the city. The city has been left with no water.” Terzi also alleged that Israeli forces broke into a house while a woman was giving birth. They confiscated everything except the mattress and reportedly said, “You must be thankful that we have decided to let you keep that mattress.”
The extent and absurdity of the raids is perhaps best captured by resident Abu Ayta, who told the Los Angeles Times in October 1988, “They even took a washer while the rinse cycle was on.”
Neighbourhood Harmony / Mujawara
“All of a sudden, as if you open a new page in the book. You decide what you want and it comes from your heart. No matter if you are 60 years old or 20 years old or even 10 years old. A man or a woman. So the whole society was in total harmony. In total combination. In a magic formula that brings you to a new era.” - Elias Rishmawi, The Wanted 18
In The Wanted 18, the Intifada is portrayed as the awakening of a collective conscience. It was a period full of hope. Hope for a better future, free from oppression, and a path toward self-determination. Nasim Hilal reflects: “As soon as the Intifada started there was a widespread, well-organised popular movement. We came up with the neighbourhood committee idea to help us feel the pulse of the neighbourhoods.”
As Ghassan Andor explains:
“It wasn’t only the cows and the milk. There were victory gardens, planting tomatoes and potatoes, and raising chickens and rabbits, etc. So, in a way, it was also part of a package in the community that was working. Everybody is giving the little that they can give and nobody is staying at home.”
When Israel shut down all educational institutions, Beit Sahourians responded by creating an underground education network, part of a broader effort to establish a unified system of mutual aid and grassroots support.
Sandi Hilal, a Palestinian architect, writer, and researcher who grew up in Beit Sahour, remembers how the community rallied when the schools were closed. She describes her teenage years during the Intifada, when education became a collective responsibility:
“Every member of the community who had a garage or an empty room in their house cleaned and prepared it to become a classroom. Classrooms of different forms and colours were scattered around the neighbourhood. Mothers and fathers were teachers and worked together with groups of children, teaching them what he or she was best at.”
She describes that time as a form of emancipation. Working together in resistance led her to re-evaluate her previous education, which she realised had never truly liberated her:
“I then understood that education could also be a way to enslave people.”
Hilal later encountered the indigenous practise of Mujawara (or Mujaawarah), taught to her by fellow Palestinian educator Munir Fasheh. He defines it in the most basic terms as:
“A group of people who want and decide to be together, with no authority within the group and no authority from outside.”
Beit Sahour had already been living the principles of mujawaras (from its grassroots organising during the Intifada to its locally-rooted educational practice) long before the term was redefined for a new generation.
Fasheh later reflected on the Intifada as a moment when mujawarahs came into their own:
“Mujaawarahs were again the main factor in energizing and allowing us to do what needed to be done during the first Intifada… When Israel closed all modern institutions (universities, schools, professional societies, social clubs…) it was a blessing in disguise. It helped revitalize rooted social structures Israel could not close: families, neighborhoods, mosques. Most significant was the formation of neighbourhood committee mujaawarahs, especially in relation to learning and communal farming.”
He notes that while Israel tolerated international conferences condemning school closures, it reacted harshly to the neighbourhood committees themselves:
“That awakened me to the difference between ‘free thinking and expression’ and ‘freeing thinking and expression.’ The two freedoms are worlds apart.”
Instead of demanding change, people in Beit Sahour created it together. They didn't wait for permission. They simply got on with the work of building a new way of life.
The Oslo Accords
The Intifada came to an end with the signing of the Oslo Accords on 13th September 1993. In a now iconic political moment, Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands in front of the White House with President Bill Clinton standing behind them with his arms outstretched. For many, this signified the end of hostilities and the beginning of a new era of peace. It was the first time that the PLO and the State of Israel formally recognised each other’s legitimacy. There were scenes of jubilation across occupied Palestine. Saed Andoni remembers how hopeful people were as they “put roses on the guns of the Israelis here in Beit Sahour.” On the front page of the Financial Times, it was reported that Palestinians were dancing in the streets.
But not everyone was pleased with the deal. Saed Andoni says he drove for hours through the desert to get away from the celebratory car horns. He was thinking at the time, “What the hell?! It’s too soon! We’re being fucked and we’re celebrating.” In the same FT article cited above, it is noted that in Gaza there was vocal opposition: people “set tyres ablaze” in protest and “draped black banners of mourning from their homes and mosques.” The reception in Israel was also revealing. Hundreds of pro-peace Israelis were reported to be dancing in celebration while, ominously, “about 50 right-wing opponents of the deal… recited prayers of mourning, burnt the Palestinian flag and called for Mr. Rabin’s head.” Just over two years later, on 4th November 1995, PM Rabin was assassinated at a peace rally by Israeli citizen Yigal Amir, who was vehemently against the Oslo Accords. A few months before, Benjamin Netanyahu had led anti-Rabin protests calling for his death and even holding a mock funeral.
Back in Beit Sahour, the mood soon turned sour. Like Saed, others felt abandoned. One unnamed resident lamented that “outside forces” had brought the Intifada to an end, adding that “the people were abandoned by the leadership.” Jala Oumiseh summed up the general feeling of disappointment: “We were dreaming for more than this. We dreamt that the Intifada would bring freedom and independence to the Palestinian people.”
Over time, the flicker of hope ignited by that September handshake gave way to a growing realisation that Oslo was nothing more than a diplomatic arrangement to institutionalise Palestinian subordination.
In a recent appearance on Danny Haiphong’s YouTube channel, journalist Ali Abunimah (The Electronic Intifada) explains how the Oslo Accords:
“turned the Palestine Liberation Organization from a liberation movement into, essentially, a collaborative force with Israel. And Yasser Arafat… was murdered when he refused to collaborate enough as far as Israel was concerned, and so they replaced him with Mahmoud Abbas, who has been much more willing to collaborate with Israel and is completely an Israeli asset — as is his newly appointed deputy Hussein, which Israeli leaders called, and this is a quote, ‘our man in Ramallah.’”
It’s not a wild claim to suggest that Arafat was assassinated. On the 12th anniversary of his death, his successor and long-time collaborator Mahmoud Abbas publicly stated that he knows who killed him.
Another prominent journalist and activist, Lowkey (Kareem Dennis), argues that the Oslo Accords were part of a broader “psychological warfare that sees us deciding that the limit of what we can do is within international law and is within NGOs.” This fits with the sense many Beit Sahourians (and Palestinians more broadly) had at the time: that Oslo was a betrayal, and the Intifada had been strategically undermined.
History, unfortunately, has proven them right. It was a dream, a fantasy, an oasis used as a political tool by those with nefarious objectives. Lowkey is adamant that the greater Zionist goal was always to eliminate the Palestinian presence by any means necessary:
“It was never meant to be real and it was all a precursor to genocide. The same as you have disarmament, whether it was Sabra and Shatila to now, disarmament has also always been a precursor to massacre. So it's almost as if there's a fork in the road but every direction is leading towards massacre. And if you read Nur Masalha, the fantastic book The Expulsion of the Palestinians, this is in the roots of Zionism from the very, very beginning. It was always the aim. It was either population transfer, displacement or massacre, and so now we've been sort of led to that point.”
Conclusion
“If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears.”
- Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian Poet
In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé details how, after the destruction of more than 500 Palestinian villages during the 1948 Nakba, a campaign was launched to erase any trace of their existence. Arabic place names were replaced with Hebrew ones. Forests were planted over razed villages, but not with native olive, fig, or oak trees but with conifers that are alien to the region. It was ecological colonisation.
Pappé recounts one haunting example that is etched on my mind:
“In the new development town of Migdal Ha-Emek… the JNF [Jewish National Fund] did its utmost to cover the ruins of the Palestinian village of Mujaydil... with rows of pine trees… But this particular species failed to adapt to the local soil... some of the pine trees had literally split in two and, in the middle of their broken trunks, olive trees had popped up in defiance...”
It’s a powerful image, isn’t it?
But the assault on olive trees continues. In the West Bank, violent illegal settlers torch ancient groves. In Gaza, the bombs do the work more quickly. The recent destruction of the al-Baqa Café is only one example. One analyst claimed the tonnage of bombs dropped on Gaza now exceeds that of six Hiroshima bombs.
Meanwhile, the international community flounders. Institutions prove toothless. Legal frameworks work overtime to protect colonial interests. While the bombs fall, international law is paraded as theatre. Protesters are arrested. Journalists harassed or smeared. Palestine Action has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation. Journalists like Asa Winstanley and Richard Medhurst face raids and interrogations. When George Galloway won election on a pro-Gaza platform, the Prime Minister responded with condemnation in a speech outside Downing Street. Fans waving Palestinian flags at a women’s football final in Kent caused the match to be cancelled. At Glastonbury, artist Bob Vylan’s anti-IDF chant “Death, death to the IDF” prompted a chorus of accusations of antisemitism. This list goes on and the same antisemitism card is played over and over again.
And yet, amidst this horror and distortion, The Wanted 18 offers something else: a reminder of what solidarity looks like. The story of Beit Sahour shows how grassroots organising, real community, can create dignity in the face of cruelty. Residents remember not only their cows, but the sense of unity, the creativity, and the hope that came from resistance.
Military powers can crush buildings and bodies, but they cannot easily crush shared purpose. They fear it. They fear how people see them. Which is why media control and narrative warfare go hand in hand with military aggression. But Palestinians, and those who stand with them, are breaking that narrative. Not through think tanks or UN speeches, but through footage, testimony, protest, and presence.
In The Wanted 18, residents of Beit Sahour reflect on how their movement was ultimately undermined and sold out by the false promises of diplomacy. They knew Zionism; they live it daily. They didn’t trust the process, and they were right. Since then, the rot at the heart of Western diplomacy has only deepened. What Palestinians have long known is becoming clear to more and more people around the world: integrity will not come from state actors. It must come from ordinary people, acting in good faith.
“Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” - Nelson Mandela