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Nationalism is a significant transitional power in the annals of history. Though the concept of loyalty is generally believed to be of a more contemporary vintage, theories as to the actual origins and the development of nationalism as a concept abound. Allegiance in the Arab world and the Palestinians in particular, have remained unexamined not due to lack of significance, but due to deliberate omission. Those who hold that nationalism comes about as a natural sociological process cannot sufficiently expound the segregation of the United States and Britain or the union of the English and French quarters in Canada.
The elitist classes among the Palestinians were strongly supportive of unification with Syria. In the discussions at the Muslim-Christian Association (MCA), also known as the “First Palestinian Congress,” the summit participants released a statement that declared that Palestine was part of Arab Syria as the area was never separated from it. The participants in the convention declared that Palestine and Syria are connected by “nationality, language, natural, economic and regional links.” In this light, it was resolved that Palestine and the southern Syrian region must be incorporated into the “Independent Arab Syrian Government” and must be isolated from the all foreign influences.
Though the Congress would ultimately jettison the pan-Syrian issue, the point prevailed in the debates of the Palestinian political discourses for the first years and was consistently at the center of the political discussions of the younger generation of Palestinian intellectuals in the Mandate era. Even though the factors of family and regional identity held strong through these times, the Arabs who want to be identified as Palestinians would eventually ask to be characterized as Palestinians and would join the call for Palestinian self-rule. Prior to the First World War, majority of the Arab Muslims and Christians in the Palestine region did not believe being part of a distinct Palestinian entity.
Nonetheless, there are literature sets that aver that the populations that are living in present day Israel, the West Bank and Gaza regions all have a collective ‘regional identity.’ By the 13th century, the Muslims in the region pointed to Judea, Sumaria and the immediate coastal areas as Filastin. In the legal opinion (fatwa) on the subject, there is evidence that Muslim scholars recognized that even as early as the 17th century, the Arabs in the region believed that the region where these were living in was “Palestine,” and that this was separate from a “greater Syria.”
Though Palestine was not regarded as a distinct political entity in the time of the Ottomans, the Turkish authorities proffered incorporating the Palestine region into a political entity; these proposals were first seen in 1830, then in 1840 and in 1872. However, the proposals were eventually shelved as the Turk feared that the action would help the occupying European hegemons. The borders of this proposed and unimplemented state closely follow the borders set by the European powers in the Mandate era (Foster 3-4).
The motivation of the Palestinians with regards to the 1916 Arab revolution drew from the manner that the Palestinians saw themselves as components of the Arab ummah and the aspiration that the civil war would result in the development and eventual establishment of the Palestinian state and stop the migration of the Jews to the Palestine region. In contrast to the Palestinians’ as well as those of their fellow Arabs expectations, the British adopted the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement wherein the Arab province was to be separated into the French and British Mandates. In addition, the British adopted the 1917 Balfour Declaration where the British allowed the Israelis to establish a Jewish homeland in the Palestine region.
The British agreement with the Israelis basically reneged on the accord that these forged with the Palestinians for the establishment of the homeland for the former. The British proffered that the Arabs were the ones to be granted the right to self-rule and determination similar to the concessions given to the Al-Hijaz and the rest of the Arab provinces; in this light, there was no agreement with the Palestinians on their aspiration for a political homeland and that the agreement was not offered owing to the support of the British for the Zionist cause. Lastly, the British averred that the only concession to the Palestinians was the integration of the Palestinian region within the Arab political entity (Ayyad 63).
Though the new philosophy was not universally accepted by the Arab populations in the region, the new dogma integrated the doctrine of “super-legitimacy” since it projected the creation of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state. The proponents and supporters of Arab nationalism saw the founding of a “pan-Arab” system with the core of this framework the unified “Greater Syria” inclusive of Lebanon and Palestine. In this light, it can be averred that the Palestinians played a factor in the rise of the Arab national identity; according to a number of historians, that role may have actually been undermined (Muslih 78-79).
Hassassian (2001) states that two elements contributed heavily to the development of a Palestinian national identity; the “Palestinian diaspora” in the aftermath of the 1948 conflict combined with the Jordanian and Egyptian occupations over the West Bank and in Gaza. The scattering of the substantial part of the Palestinians in the “occupied territories” have resulted in differing conditions relevant to the growth of the identities. In the context of the national identity among the Palestinians, it is important to track the concept of nationalism in within the Arab comprehension, since allegiance is mainly a Western construct. With the entrenching of Western ideologues in the Arab and Middle Eastern nations, Arabs became increasingly aware of their cultural homogeneity; with this realization, no sooner had the 20th century when the Arabs began to “flesh out” their identity from the pages of books and research works to being the subjects of conferences and the members of organizations. The founding of the Al-Arabiyya al-Fatat Society led to the crafting of clear goals in the area of advancing the concept of an Arab national identity.
The growth and establishment of Palestinian national identity can be tracked to the early parts of the 20th century, when the Ottoman Empire was in the process of collapsing and the subsequent rise of events leading to the First World War and the hegemonic policies and practices of the Western powers at the time with regards to their policies with the state of the Middle East. The Palestine region had been controlled by the Ottomans and was the homeland for the Palestinian people for centuries. However, though there were instances such as the Balkan region as well as in other provinces in the crumbling empire that resulted in the founding of new sovereign countries, the regions populated by the Palestinians as well the immediate areas spanning into the Persian Gulf and the Arabian headlands were occupied by the European hegemons who in turn evolved these regions into mandates of either of Britain and France.
The invasion of these territories by the Western hegemons was amplified with the establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine in the middle of the 20th century. With the establishment of Israel, the brutal oppression of the Palestinians in the region by the Zionists in the 1970s through to the 1980s gave rise to a burning zeal for a sense of a Palestinian national identity as well as a long struggle for self-rule that resulted in the “Intifada (Welty).
Withal, there must be a differentiation as to the parameters of Palestinian allegiance compared to Arab nationalism. The latter is a recent concept that begins in the 1930s; after the founding of Israel in 1948, Palestinian allegiance was overshadowed by a number of “pan-Arab” movements where Palestinians played various roles. It was not until the 1960s that Palestinians reasserted their leadership in their war with Israel. With the defeat of the Arab armies during the 1967 war with Israel, the trend towards Palestinian self-rule greatly accelerated. However, though there were some Palestinian organizations who sought to create a sense of nationalism in the Palestinian populace, it was only the Fedayeen, the Palestinian paramilitary groups, who were able to inject some life and vigor into these sentiments.
The national identity of the Palestinians was further forged by the wars in 1948 and in 1967 as well as the current Israeli-Palestinian struggle. In the work of Sanbar (2001), modern Palestinian history is hinged in one year: 1948. According to Sanbar, 1948 saw the disappearance of a nationality from the records. With the disappearance, the Israelis erased the concept of a Palestinian people, and would henceforth be termed as “refugees” or a remnant that would be called as “Israeli Arabs.” The Palestinians were transformed from being the century old residents of their homeland to a “scattered people” and mangled the Palestinian national identity.
Since that time, the identity of the Palestinians has been defined by that event, from the subsequent scattering and uprooting, the ignorance of their plight and their true status by the global community, and their yearning to return to their ancestral land. In this point, Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2002) states that if one were to claim to be Palestinian, it would be connecting to the “intense personal and emotional [revolution] regarding place, location, identity, and desire.” This “right to return,” the claim of the Palestinians on their ancestral homeland, has consistently been rejected by the Israelis as a “figment of imagination (Maas 4-6).
During the 1948 conflict, eight out of ten Palestinians living in the area of the Mandate became exiles; after more than six decades, there are still more than 5 million Palestinians that are still stateless and are refugees in neighboring states. What is surprising is that after a considerable amount of time of displacement and fighting in their homeland, many Palestinians and their descendants, as in the case of their forebears, are fiercely holding on to their Palestinian identity; this identity is a strong reminder of who they are and remind them of their existence.
Their identity is a uniting force and unifying force for the Palestinians given it is also one of their major beliefs that the world has relatively ignored their plight. In the work of Rabinowitz (1994), the identity of the Palestinians are anchored on the ‘experience and dispossession and exile as well as the [ignorance] of the rights and misery of the Palestinians.’ In the work of Anderson (1983) and Hobsbawm and Ranger (1992), the discipline of social science describes “national identity” as a “sense of belonging to an imagined community that is constantly reproduced and reinvented through traditions, history, commemorations, and national symbols.” This definition was expounded on by Connerton (1989) stating that individuals create definitions of themselves that they use in relating to the greater society. These reciprocal actions are at the foundations of the establishment of an identity and the preservation of the same. An identity is either affirmative or in opposition to something; otherwise, there would be no exigency that would merit the creation of that identity (Maas 2-3).
The Palestinian Arabs have been marginalized in any discussion to determine their status as a homeless people. The deficiency in the position of the Palestinians has been largely due to the fact that their opponents can afford to use a larger amount of resources as well as the internal conflicts of the Palestinians among themselves as to the adoption of the appropriate programs to help them in their struggle for self-rule. Structural and leadership dilemmas have exacerbated societal and economic conflict triggers among the Palestinians.
The founding of the Israeli state in 1948 added to the decay of the Palestinian community with regards to their relevance to the political discussions in the Middle East primarily by spreading their members too thinly in the world. However, for a brief period (1967-1970), the Palestinians were given a pivotal role in the negotiations with Israel. This development came with the overcoming of the perceived weakness in the position of the Palestinians; the organization of structured groups of Palestinians, the Fedayeen, who were zealous in their commitment for the use of force to attain their objectives.
Though the Fedayeen were only able to muster a few recruits prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli struggle, these organizations were active in heightening the tension that spilled over and turned into full blown war. The Arab debacle in the war gave the Fedayeen the chance to be seen as a popular mass initiative that was allied with all the Arab powers. An air of conflict to the Israeli occupying forces soon emerged and surrounded the Fedayeen from 1968-1969 and the leadership in Lebanon as well as in Jordan were subjected to intense diplomatic pressure to accommodate the various Palestinian groups (Quandt iii-iv).
The Palestinian authorities readily acknowledged the deficiencies of the Fedayeen; nonetheless, there was little acknowledgment as to the proper steps to remedy the situation. Renewed debates on the creation of the Palestinian homeland and the unification of the resistance forces were again ensued; members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)’s General Secretariat, Ibrahim Bakr and Kamal Adwan, agreed that the location of the ‘new’ Palestinian homeland in the region of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Withal, the establishment of the Palestinian homeland in the above mentioned region was not a major concern to the Fedayeen compared to their interest in unifying the various groups focused on resisting the Israeli occupation of these territories (Quandt 101-102).
Various international resolutions and judgments that acknowledge the right of the Israelis to the Palestinian homeland, the actions of the Zionists, the Mandate and the brutal policies of the Israelis towards the Palestinians changed the definition of the identity of the Palestinians, from the centuries-long residents of the area to casualties of the Israeli blitzkrieg within their rightful territory. The armed fight for the establishment of the Palestinian homeland that is anchored in the exercise of their rights and the exercise of their identity as a distinct people is an obligation that must be fulfilled by the pan-Arab society in the region (Auerbach 112-114).
Works Cited
Auerbach, Yehudithi, “National narratives in a conflict of identity” <http://www.kas.de/upload/dokumente/2011/03/barriers_to_peace/chapter3.pdf (accessed 30 May 2016)
Ayyad, Abdelazis A., “Arab nationalism and the Palestinians” (1999) <http://www.passia.org/publications/Arab-Nationalism/Arab-Nationalism.pdf (accessed 30 May 2016)
Hassassian, Manuel, “Historical dynamics shaping Palestinian national identity.” Palestine-Israel Journal 8(4), 2002 <http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=793
Foster, Zachary J., “The emergence of a Palestinian national identity: a theory-driven approach” Michigan Journal of History, 2014, pp. 1-22
Maas, Wim, “The survival of Palestinian national identity through commemoration” <https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/upload/8069af1a-96db-4379-af95-9681c09e76bf_WimMaas-TheSurvivalofPalestinianNationalIdentitythroughCommemoration.pdf (accessed 30 May 2016)
Muslih, Muhammad, “Arab politics and the rise of Palestinian nationalism” Journal of Palestine Studies 16(4), 1987, pp. 77-94
Quandt, William, “Palestinian nationalism: its political and military dimensions,” (1971) <https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2011/R782.pdf (accessed 30 May 2016)
Welty, Gordon, Palestinian nationalism and the struggle for national self-determination (ed) Berch Berberoglu, The National Question. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
