April, 2004

THE BIRTH OF THE PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANISATION

Abdel-Qader Yassin

For 16 years after the 1948 defeat of the Arabs at the hands of the Israelis, the weakness of the Palestinians’ political, economic, cultural and other structures prevented them from establishing a national entity. From 1948 to early 1955, Palestinians lived a difficult life, with little hope for liberation or the return of refugees.
In mid-1955 with Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s adoption of a progressive nationalist policy, the situation began to change for the Palestinians. Nasser took this stance following the US administration’s refusal, under the leadership of Dwight Eisenhower, to supply Egypt with weapons to allow it to counter Israeli military attacks against the Gaza Strip and Egyptian borders. Tension increased after the killing in Bir Al-Safa in the Gaza Strip in early 1955 of around 40 Egyptian, Palestinian and Sudanese soldiers.
These incidents triggered a major Palestinian uprising, in March 1955, which urged Nasser to respond to Palestinian demands for fortification of the Gaza Strip, weapons, and the cancellation of a promise he had made to Washington to give Palestinian refugees living in Egypt and the Gaza Strip a place to live in northwest Sinai. Nasser responded to the Palestinian demands and established guerrilla resistance groups which all together formed a resistance unit under Egyptian leadership in the Gaza Strip, Unit 141. This unit caused severe human losses to Israel in a period of several weeks, but its activities were halted after the assassination of its leader on 1 July 1956.
Nasser’s attention was then diverted towards the implementation of a nationalisation project, which he began in July 1956. This decision came as a response to the withdrawal of an offer from the US administration and the World Bank to finance the Aswan High Dam, after Nasser had refused to cancel a weapons deal with Czechoslovakia the year before. In the autumn of 1956, Israel, Britain and France launched a tripartite war on Egypt in response to the plan to nationalise the Suez Canal, which roused Arab nationalist feelings that expressed themselves through the revolutions in Lebanon and then Iraq, and the emergence of the United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria.
Although the Palestinian economy was now recovering, the strong Arab nationalist current prevented the growing Palestinian middle class from taking control over the issue of establishing a Palestinian entity. The disunity of the Arab system following the collapse of the United Arab Republic on 28 September 1961 caused the Arab nationalist wave to ebb, and the Palestinians became aware that they must play a greater role in the liberation of their land, realising that liberation was the way to unity, and not the other way round.
Several variables – Palestinian, Arab and international – combined to allow the emergence of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the first structured embodiment of Palestinian national identity after 1948:
- The Palestinian variable:
The Palestinians, who were suffering from extreme poverty, responded to the call for labour in all fields in the oil-rich Gulf states, and the remittances enhanced the Palestinian economy. This new prosperity led to the emergence of a middle class, which sought political authority commensurate with its economic strength.
A number of student unions and associations soon formed, operating from Cairo, Damascus and Beirut. These developed, in the 1960s, into the International Union for the Students of Palestine, which served as the “school” in which leaders and members of most Palestinian organisations received their early training. The importance of these associations can be seen from the fact that the Fatah leaders Yasser Arafat, Salah Khalaf and Farouq Qaddoumi were all at one time presidents of the Palestinian Students’ Association in Cairo.
The Palestinians also sought to get involved in Arab politics, joining various Arab political organisations, such as the Arab National Movement, the Baath Party, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Liberation Organisation.
On the military level, the Syrian military academy accepted 60 Palestinian students in 1948 and recruited them after graduation into the Syrian army. Nasser’s regime in Egypt, meanwhile, formed a Palestinian national guard unit in the Gaza Strip in 1952, in addition to the above-mentioned Unit 141. The number of soldiers was doubled in 1958 to form the army of Palestine. In the same year, the Iraqi regime formed the “Fouj Al-Tahrir” liberation movement, which included Palestinians from different regions. All these trained military groups formed the base of the Palestinian liberation army, which was formed alongside the PLO.

- The Arab variable:
The wave of Arab nationalism from 1956 to 1961 boosted the Palestinian cause while at the same time impeding the formation of a Palestinian entity. With the middle classes assuming power in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, the Palestinian middle classes were motivated to follow suit, and most of the founders of the Palestinian groups at the time were engineers, doctors, lawyers and teachers.
Nasser encouraged the emergence of the first resistance group when he told a visiting Palestinian delegation on 26 July 1962 that neither he nor any other Arab leader had a definite plan for the liberation of Palestine. The Palestinians understood that they would have to fight their own battle.
The first Palestinian resistance group was formed in Kuwait, and not without good reason. Kuwait was home to more than 250,000 Palestinians at the time and Palestinian academics held influential positions there, which helped enhance the position of the Palestinian middle class. Kuwait, at that time, enjoyed a broader margin of self-expression than most Arab countries, and it was also not one of those Arab countries that was “benefiting” from the Palestinian issue, which allowed middle class Palestinians to move freely without fear of government reprisal.

- The international variable:
The communist camp, which encompassed a third of the world’s population, was playing a growing role in global political decision-making processes, enhanced by the Soviet nuclear balance with the US. Increasing Soviet-Chinese tension, meanwhile, provided fertile ground for the Palestinian entity to grow. The Soviets sought to live peacefully alongside the capitalist camp and were for the most part keen to avoid flare-ups. A Palestinian entity was for them a possible source of tension with the US, and they thus ignored the emergence of the PLO – though they did not overtly oppose it for the sake of Nasser, who shouldered the responsibility for its foundation. China, however, hailed the emergence of the PLO on both the political and military levels. It was the first to acknowledge the organisation and inaugurated an office for it in its capital.
International conflict between the capitalist and communist camps increased with the involvement of the US in the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, industrial competition and conflict increased between the countries of the West. The US had helped western Europe to overcome its economic problems after the second world war though it at the same time wished to consolidate its position in the British and French colonies.
The western countries and Japan had soon doubled their industrial production and were able to recapture some of their international markets, thus increasing competition with the US. Yet disagreement soon arose over the European common market, currency unification processes, customs duties and European security, which encouraged the old colonial powers to distance themselves from the US and to form independent policies, such as that of Charles de Gaulle.
At the same time, national liberation movements around the world were achieving independence for their countries. The long-term strategy of a popular war, as proved successful in Korea, Cuba and Vietnam, urged Palestinian resistance groups to endorse a similar strategy.
By the time Israel started to divert the course of the River Jordan in 1963, the Arab world was divided into two camps: one that considered that the Palestinians alone should shoulder the responsibility for confronting the Israelis, and the other that perceived that a Palestinian entity should be formed under the auspices of the Arab system. In 1963, Nasser endorsed the recognition of Ahmed Shukeri as representative for Palestine in the Arab League and called for the convention of the first Arab summit in 1963, where Shukeri was asked to present the opinions of the various Palestinian groups.

The PLO came into being during the first Palestinian national conference, held in Jerusalem from 28 May to 1 June 1964, before the holding of the second Arab summit later the same year.