The Deception of Palestinian Nationalism
Historically, the Palestinian “desire for statehood” and “need for liberation” was invented in large part by the Soviet Union. It is no coincidence that the blueprint for the PLO Charter was drafted in Moscow in 1964 and was approved by 422 Palestinian representative hand selected by the KGB. At that time, the USSR was in the business of creating people’s liberation fronts. The KGB founded the PLO as well as the National Liberation Army of Bolivia (1964) with Ernesto “Che” Guevara at its head and the National Liberation Army of Colombia (1965).
These “liberation fronts” were seen by the USSR as centers of Marxist indoctrination and opposition to democratic and capitalist movements. In the Middle East, the only foothold of the democratic west is Israel; nurturing the PLO to undermine Israel was therefore quite natural for the Soviets, who not only helped fund and establish the PLO but also trained and supplied its terrorist operations.
To understand the PLO’s conception of a Palestinian state, it is instructive to examine Article 24 of the original PLO Charter. It reads: “this Organization [the PLO] does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in the Gaza Strip or the Himmah area.” If not the West Bank and Gaza, then what exactly what did, the PLO claim? The Palestine that the PLO wanted was in fact the State of Israel.
....
It is telling that Zahir Muhse’in, member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee, said the following in a 1977 interview with the Amsterdam-based newspaper Trouw. “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”
Palestinian nationalism is therefore a historical fabrication born out of a communist thirst for expansion and an Arab resentment of the existence of Israel. The “need” and “desire” for Palestinian is a veiled expression of the “need” and “desire” to end Israel’s existence.
Read more:
When speaking about the Middle East, it is common to hear about the “need” and “desire” for Palestinian statehood. But exactly what kind of state do the Palestinians want and what are the roots of Palestinian nationalism? Historically, the Palestinian “desire for statehood” and “need for...
stanfordreview.org