4 Other Palestinians were dispersed among other Arab and non-Arab countries. During the 1950s and 1960s, a major Palestinian center developed in the oil-rich desert emirate of Kuwait, which welcomed skilled and educated young Palestinians, who contributed to its development.
The Arab-Israeli conflict, reinforced by the developing Cold War, took on an international dimension once the surrounding Arab states were drawn in. As a condition for recognition of the Jewish state, the Arab states demanded that Israel withdraw to the 1947 partition-resolution border (which they had previously rejected), and that all Palestinian refugees be returned to their homes. Perceiving these demands as another attempt to annihilate the Jewish state, the Israelis rejected them outright. Israel argued that the Arab countries should absorb the refugees, just as the Jews had absorbed their own refugee brethren. In the meantime, a petite guerre developed along the armistice lines. Palestinian infiltrators from the refugee camps in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank harassed the new border settlements, trying to reappropriate property or just to take revenge by killing Israelis. The Israeli government developed a retaliation policy against the host Arab countries, arguing that they should take responsibility for the infiltrations and killings.
In the years after the war, part of the Arab world was riven by internal turmoil and a series of coups d'etat; while, at the same time, the world witnessed the rise of a pan-Arab ideology, whose spokesman was the young Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. Pan-Arabism urged the unification of the Arab world and its transformation into a military, political, economic, and cultural world power in collaboration with Nehru's India and Tito's Yugoslavia. Pan-Arabism viewed its place to be in the “neutral third world,” which was supposed to emerge as a balancing power between the Western and Eastern blocs. Within this ideological framework, the problem of Palestine was marginalized, its solution being postponed until all the Arab states were united. A group of young Palestinian intellectuals and students, key members of which attended Cairo University and belonged to its student union, challenged this approach. Yasser Arafat, a young engineering student, was elected chairman of this group, which later became the kernel of the Fatah organization.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, the “Palestine First” approach, in opposition to Pan-Arabism, was still a weak and persecuted voice in the Arab world. In semi-underground periodicals such as Filastinuna (Our Palestine), edited by Khalil al-Wazir (better known as “Abu Jihad”) and published in Lebanon, a new Palestinian strategy and identity were developing. The liberation of Palestine was perceived as a precondition for Arab unity, to be implemented by the Palestinians themselves through “armed struggle.” The new Palestinian political thinking was deeply influenced by the Algerian and Vietnamese revolutions, and figures such as Che Guevara, General Vo Nguyen Giap, and Jomo Kenyatta became heroes of the new revolutionary movement. Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth and similar works were translated into Arabic and became standard textbooks in some Palestinian refugee camps.
During the late 1950s, many Palestinian associations, organizations, and groups were established, among them al-Fatah, headed by Yasser Arafat (since 1959) and the Arab Nationalist Movement, which developed into the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, headed by Dr. George Habash. In January 1964, the first Arab summit in Cairo issued a general statement on the need to organize the Palestinian people and enable them to play a role in the liberation of their country and achieve “self-determination.” In May of the same year, following the declaration, the veteran diplomat Ahmad Shukayri succeeded in convening the first Palestinian National Council (the PNC), which adopted the Palestinian National Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). While the convention, which was held in East Jerusalem, was attended by delegations from the entire Palestinian community in exile and the territories occupied by the Jordanians and the Egyptians, it was still dominated by representatives of the old notable families. The PLO's charter adopted a very radical position vis-à-vis the right of the Jewish polity to exist in the Middle East. In January 1965, al-Fatah launched its “armed struggle” for the liberation of Palestine by trying to blow up the main Israeli water pipeline.
THE END OF THE “ALL OR NOTHING” STRATEGY
In 1937, testifying before the Royal Commission, the Palestinian leader Jamal al-Husseini observed, “Every Jew's entrance into Palestine means an Arab leaving Palestine.” This summarized perceptions on both sides of the conflict as a zero-sum game, in which any social, political, material, or cultural gain on the part of one side meant an equivalent loss for the other side. The central resources in the conflict were land and people—both tangible, measurable, and easily quantifiable. From the outset, ideological, religious, and primordial cleavages were secondary issues, and they only entered into the conflict at a later point. The conflict was also total, because it touched every member of both communities, who were all potential victims of and recruits for battle. This totalization of the conflict referred to the immediate relationship between the immigrant Jewish settlers and the native population, and to the intercommunal conflict taking place in the Middle Eastern arena.
In other cases of conflict between immigrant settlers and local populations of settled land, different patterns developed:
In North America, Australia, and New Zealand, settlers brought exclusive orientations and enough power to destroy the local social fabric and political structures and to largely annihilate the indigenous population.
In Central and South America, settlers brought some inclusive orientations, gradually absorbing the local population and being absorbed by them (mainly through intermarriage). Thus, in the newly formed nations, the descendants of settlers formed the upper and ruling classes, while the descendants of the indigenous population constituted the lower classes.
In South Africa, Rhodesia, Algeria, Palestine, and Ireland, settler and indigenous communities developed simultaneously, keeping their social, religious, and racial boundaries intact. In most of these cases, the settlers developed highly advanced and viable societies. However, they were not strong enough to secure hegemonic rule over the overwhelming indigenous majority. French Algeria and Rhodesia disappeared. South Africa is currently in the midst of a unique experiment of transformation into a multiracial state, governed by a black majority. The Irish problem still remains unresolved, and traditional Balkan ethnic clashes have been rekindled by the disintegration of the Yugoslavian federation. Israel has arrived at the conclusion that a territorially small, relatively homogeneous Jewish state will be more secure and defendable than a larger state that includes a large minority of Palestinians who do not want to be ruled by Jews. The Palestinians seem to have arrived at a similar conclusion: that accepting a smaller but autonomous—and later independent— entity is better than bargaining for “all or nothing.”
SETTING AND SETTLING BOUNDARIES
Popular Palestinian historiography usually links the change in the fate of the Palestinian people to the establishment of the PLO and the institutionalization of “armed struggle” against Israeli targets and interests. These events are described as the birth of a new generation of Palestinians—the generation of revolution (as opposed to the generation of the Catastrophe). However, no Palestinian political or guerrilla organization could have had as great an influence on the reappearance of the Palestinian problem on the world agenda as the consequences of the 1967 war. After 1967, “original Palestine” reappeared, this time under total Jewish control. Moreover, three of the abovementioned Palestinian communities found themselves living under a common (Jewish) political system. Palestinian status under “Arab control”—in Jordan and Egypt— had been ambiguous. These Palestinians could not openly declare themselves to be oppressed (by an alien force), even if that was the reality; and, they could not develop or rebuild a separate identity. They were considered “part and parcel of the Arab world,” or were thought of as “Jordanians,” whether they accepted that identity or not. Only under the control of their enemy—the Jewish Zionist state—could they “re-Palestinianize” themselves and build a separate identity and communal institutions.
For Israel, conquering the entire territory of mandatory Palestine, as well as the Sinai Peninsula (prior to its return to Egypt as the first part of the deal for “peace in exchange for territory”) and the Syrian (Golan) Heights, was an opportunity