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2 _________________ The PLO, Territorialization, and Palestinian State Formation The Zionist movement successfully forged a state before its formal independence was declared. Such state building, firmly in the hands of territorially based leaders, had a positive effect on subsequent state consolidation. By contrast, Palestinian state building efforts swung in the opposite direction . It began primarily in historic Palestine in Gaza under the Egyptians, then moved to the diaspora, and only in the 1980s focused once more on the territories. The territorialization of the diaspora leadership occurred even later. This chapter examines the emergence and entrenchment of the division between the diaspora and the territorialists before the diaspora leadership realized that state building in diaspora was unfeasible and that the movement had to territorialize in order to achieve statehood. Subsequent chapters will then focus on how such diasporization impacted upon territorial institution building. THE PLO AS A DIASPORA EVENT Egyptian historian Wahid 'Abd ai-Majid has divided the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into three periods: I. The initial years, in which Palestinians put their faith in the Arab states to redress their historical grievances and bring them back to Palestine 2. The years 1967-1982, when Palestinians in the diaspora sought to resolve their own plight by mobilizing militarily through guerrilla action 3. The period from the fall of Beirut through the intifada, in which the local Palestinians began to take their fate into their own hands.I While the third claim (which we will examine in chapter 5) has yet to be substantiated, the first two are useful frameworks for understanding the following two assertions: that the Palestinian national movement emerged as a result of efforts of others, and that, after the Palestinians organized themselves and 15 16 (OU NTDOWN TO STATEHOOD sought independence from their former sponsors, its activities took place mostly outside of Palestine. It was not Palestinians themselves but Arab diplomats who introduced the idea of mobilizing Palestinians around the principle of self-determination. The debate over endorsing the idea of a "Palestinian entity" was fueled by the rivalry between President 1\bd ai-Karim Qasim of Iraq and Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser, each of whom at the time was vying to be the dominant leader in the Arab world. Attempting to undercut Nasser, whose conception of Arab unity was a unified pan-Arab state, Qasim called for the immediate establishment of an independent Palestinian republic in those parts of Palestine held by Arab sovereign states. He vindictively described these territories--Gaza ruled by Egypt since 1948 and the West Bank annexed by Jordan in 1950--as part of the territory that was "usurped by three thieves: one hostile to Arab nationalism, Zionism, and the other two from within the Arab camp: Egypt and Jordan."" Qasim's advocacy of immediate Palestinian statehood within precisely defined territory fit well with his vision of a confederation of states, as opposed to Nasser's vision of pan-Arab unity. To counteract this Iraqi attack on Egyptian hegemony, Nasser came up with his own scheme for establishing elected, representative Palestinian institutions in Gaza, Jordan, and Lebanon collectively called the Palestinian Arab National Union (PNU) whose representatives were to later elect an Executive Committee and represent the Palestinian case in Arab and international forums .J In creating this vehicle to represent the Palestinians, Nasser acknowledged the mobilization of a people and development of their identity as means to achieve self-determination in the future, but he disregarded the concepts of statehood and territoriality. The PNU never amounted to much; it ceased to operate soon after founding elections were held in Syria, in June 1960, and in Gaza, seven months later.~ Pressured, however, to match Iraq's continued support for the immediate establishment of a Palestinian republic, Nasser on March 5, 1962 passed a law bestowing on Gaza a "constitutional order" (al-ni:::am al-dusturi lil-Qitac) that declared Gaza to be "an integral part of Filastin land," and defined the Palestinians there as constituents of a "National Union" (not to be confused with the PNU, which had ceased to exist), which included "all Palestinians, wherever they [may] live."5 This National Union soon became the Legislative Council, presided over by Dr. Haydar 1\bd al-Shafi, who was to later head the Palestinian delegation in the Madrid and Washington peace process. Nasser thus acceded to give the Palestinians a territory but not one that formed the kernel of a state. In 1964, Nasser formally abolished the National Union so that it...

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