What was (and still is) the main purpose behind Zionist efforts in enforcing the fallacy that Palestinians never existed?
1. So that even well-founded Palestinian objections to the Zionist movement’s plans could simply be ignored.
2. Reinforce the Zionist narrative of “land without a people for a people without a land”.
What were the key developments that witnessed in Palestinian society at the turn of the 20th century before Zionist colonisation impacted the region?
There was a notable expansion in the production of export crops, such as wheat and citrus, which integrated Palestine into the global economy. Health conditions were gradually improving, with advances in sanitation and higher rates of live births, contributing to population growth. Technological advancements like the telegraph, steamship, railway, gaslight, electricity, and modern roads were steadily transforming urban centers, towns, and even rural villages, while travel within and beyond the region became faster, safer, cheaper, and more accessible. Education expanded significantly with the growth of a state-run school network and greater access to modern schooling, creating new social mobility opportunities. Alongside this, Palestinian identity was evolving, influenced by emerging ideas around nationhood, social organization, working-class solidarity, and the role of women. The increasing availability of printed materials and a burgeoning press provided new avenues for information and the spread of these modern ideas.
What was the cultural and social status of Jews living in Palestine during the first decade of the twentieth century?
Most Jews in Palestine were culturally similar to city-dwelling Muslims and Christians, living comfortably alongside them as part of the indigenous society. They were primarily ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist Mizrahi or Sephardic urbanites of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean origin, often speaking Arabic or Turkish. Even some European Ashkenazi settlers, including future Israeli leaders like David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, initially integrated into local society by adopting Ottoman nationality and learning Arabic and Turkish.
On what fronts were the Palestinian people impacted by these wars?
Southern Palestine (Gaza-Jerusalem Front):
The British aimed to push north from Egypt into Palestine. The fighting started in the southern region around Gaza, where the British and Ottoman forces engaged in trench warfare. This fighting caused heavy damage to Gaza and nearby towns. After several attempts, the British managed to break through and pushed northwards, capturing Jerusalem in December 1917.
Coastal Battles (Mediterranean Coastline):
As the British advanced, they fought along the coast, capturing important towns like Jaffa. Naval bombardments from the British fleet also hit Ottoman positions along the coast. These battles gradually weakened the Ottoman grip on the region, allowing the British to secure the coast.
Northern Palestine (Galilee Front):
After securing southern and central Palestine, the fighting moved further north into the Galilee and beyond. The British forces, under General Allenby, continued their push against the Ottoman forces, leading to more fighting in areas like Nablus and the northern Jordan Valley. By the end of the war, British forces had taken control of most of Palestine.
When was the Balfour Declaration?
November 2nd, 1917
How is the Balfour Declaration explained?
The Balfour Declaration did not recognize the Palestinians, the indigenous majority, but rather referred to them in terms of what they were not. While it granted Palestinians no political or national rights to them, it supported the Zionist claim to establish a national home for the Jewish minority (6% of the population).
What were the key motivations behind the british backing the Zionist movement through the Balfour declaration?
1. Geopolitical reasons,
2. Philo-semitic desire to “return” the Hebrews to the land of the Bible and
3. An anti-semitic wish to reduce jewish immigration to Britain
What were the practical implications of the Balfour Declaration for Palestinians and the Zionist movement?
The Balfour Declaration, backed by British military support, made Zionist aims of sovereignty and control over Palestine possible. British leaders privately confirmed it meant an eventual Jewish state and opposed representative government in Palestine. For Palestinians, it marked the start of their occupation by means of settler colonisation, threatening their existence.
How did Palestinians react to the Balfour Declaration?
The Balfour Declaration, backed by British military support, made Zionist aims of sovereignty and control over Palestine possible. British leaders privately confirmed it meant an eventual Jewish state and opposed representative government in Palestine. For Palestinians, it marked the start of their occupation by means of settler colonisation, threatening their existence.
Palestinians were frustrated at their leaderships’ ineffective diplomatic response for 15 years after the Balfour Declaration. What were the results of this frustration?
18 new colonies were created to make a total of 52, mainly bought from absentee landlords, causing farmers to lose their land, and resulting in armed encounters with the first paramilitary units formed by the European Jewish settlers.
How did Palestinians react to the Balfour Declaration?
1. Organised politically, most notably with holding a series of congresses planned by a country-wide Muslim-Christian societies.
2. Demonstrations, strikes and riots. Violence flares in 1920, 1921, and 1929.
3. By early 1930s, armed uprising.
How did the developments of European colonisation suppress any attempts at a unified arab national entity?
1. Based on the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and by July 1920 France eliminated Syria and later established itself in Syria and Lebanon (the other parts of what formed the Ottoman state which included Palestine) while other Arab countries – except Saudi Arabia and Yemen – were preoccupied with facing the direct or indirect European control.
2. Within about a decade after World War 1, Turks, Iranians, Syrians, Egyptians, and Iraqis all achieved a measure of independence. The British operated differently in Palestine.
What were the similarities and differences between how the British treated Palestinians than how they treated other peoples they colonised?
Similarities:
a. Excluded the natives from top offices
b. censored the newspapers
c. banned political activity
d. spent as little money as possible on their administration
e. did little to advance education (as colonial conventional wisdom would produce “natives” who did not know their proper place)
Differences:
the Mandate brought an influx of foreign settlers whose mission was to take over the country.
Palestinians were frustrated at their leaderships’ ineffective diplomatic response for 15 years after the Balfour Declaration. What were the results of this frustration?
A massive grassroots uprising, starting with a 6 month general strike (one of the longest in colonial history), which developed into the great 1936-1939 revolt.
What is the Peel Commission?
The commission, led by the British Lord Peel, proposed to partition the country to create a small Jewish state in nearly 17% of Palestine, from which over two hundred thousand Arabs would be expelled.
What was the Palestinian reaction to the Peel commission and how did the British forces respond?
An armed revolt broke out in 1937, the British forces were able to bring it under control two years later through a massive use of force (with one soldier for every four adult Palestinian men). The war waged against Palestinians left 10% of the adult male population killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled. Methods used included mass executions, tying Palestinian prisoners to the front of armored cars to prevent rebel attacks, demolitions of homes of the imprisoned or executed or presumed rebels or their relatives, detention of thousands without trial, the exile and deportation of Palestinian leadership, and the confinement of many without trial in what the British described as “concentration camps” (such as Sarafand).
What is the “triple bind” Palestinians found themselves in after 1917
1. Britain, claiming to implement the League of Nations Mandate, which obligated it to support Zionism,
2. the Zionist movement, emphasizing that it was acting within the legal framework provided by the British Mandate,
3. The League of Nations, proposed by US President Woodrow Wilson, though the US never joined, and formally established by the Allied powers, treated Palestine as a “special case” rather than a typical colonial possession, absolved itself of direct responsbility as it deflected blame onto local actors.
When is the first time that the Zionist movement openly and publicly called for turning all of Palestine, despite it being a non-Jewish majority, into a Jewish state?
In the Biltmore Conference, 1942
How did the Zionist movement mobilize during the Holocaust?
1. They exerted an unceasing and effective public relation efforts directed at politicians and public opinion to assert the Zionist objective of turning Palestine into a Jewish state.
2. The Zionist project was able to garner US American patronage instead of the declining British empire.
What were the weaknesses of Hajj Amin al-Husayni that undermined his leadership?
1. His presence in Nazi Germany during World War 2 caused lasting damage to his credibility and the Palestinian cause. His ties to Germany alienated potential allies and tarnished his reputation internationally.
2. Despite his leadership position, the mufti did not establish a modern, organized fighting force to resist Zionist advances. He relied on the merit of the Palestinian cause rather than creating a structured and effective means of resistance.
3. The mufti avoided creating or supporting large, decentralized organizations, fearing he would lose control over them. His preference for a small, tightly controlled entourage limited the scope and effectiveness of Palestinian resistance.
4. The mufti was wary of the potential rise of charismatic young leaders within a larger organization who could attract loyalty and diminish his influence. This fear hindered the development of a broader, more dynamic leadership structure.
5. Like many leaders of his generation, born during the late Ottoman era, the mufti adhered to a patriarchal and hierarchical style of leadership. This approach was increasingly out of step with emerging political movements that relied on mass-based participation.
What were the succession of events which led to Britains handover of Palestine to the United Nations?
1. After the 1939 White Paper restricted Jewish immigration, Zionist hostility toward Britain grew.
2. The Zionist militants, the yishuv, had a well-organised military and intelligence, launched militants assassinations’ of British officials, attacks on British troops and administrators in Palestine, and bombed the British headquarters, King David Hotel, in 1946 killing 91 people.
3. Postwar economic crises and the collapse of the Indian Empire weakened Britain’s ability to govern.
4. Eventually, overwhelmed by opposition, Britain handed the Palestine issue to the United Nations in 1947.
What did UN General Assembly Resolution 181 call for?
1. Resolution 181, passed by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947, called for the partition of Palestine into two states, granting over 56% of the land to a Jewish state and a much smaller portion to an Arab state, despite Jews being a minority in the country.
2. Resolution 181 placed Jerusalem under UN administration.
What is Plan Dalet?
1. It is the depopulation campaign implemented by the Zionist paramilitary groups, starting on the first of April, 1948.
2. The campaign targeted the largest Palestinian urban centers; Jaffa, Haifa, West Jerusalem, as well as Tiberies, Safad, Beisan.
What was the fate of Jaffa in terms of Resolution 181, and what was it’s actual fate? How did international actors react?
Jaffa was designated as part of Palestine in Resolution 181. However, Jaffa was besieged, bombarded, and overrun by Zionist forces in May 1948, resulting in the forced depopulation of most of its Palestinian residents. No international actor intervened to stop this violation of the UN resolution.
When was the first phase of the Nakba, and what were the consequences of it?
1. Before May 15, 1948.
2. 300,000 depopulated Palestinians.
3. Mainly from urban centers, dismantling their ability to organize and resist.
When was the second phase of the Nakba, and what were the consequences of it?
1. After May 15, 1948.
2. 400,000 depopulated Palestinians.
3. Mainly suburban and rural areas, destroying agricultural livelihoods and severing generations-long ties to the land.
When did the Nakba end?
The Nakba is an ongoing process, as the erasure and dispossession of Palestinians have persisted over decades.
What are the three processes which made the transformation of Palestine into Israel possible?
1. The systematic ethnic cleansing of Arab-inhabited areas seized during the war, which created a Jewish majority in the new state.
2. The theft of Palestinian land and property, including that left by refugees and much of what was owned by Arabs who remained in Israel, ensuring domination of the land.
3. The displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, thereby destabilising neighboring countries and further weakening any mass support for the Palestinians.
How did Israel manage to face the 7 Arab Armies once it was created?
1. Israel outnumbered and outgunned its opponents during the 1948 war, contrary to claims that it was dwarfed by Arab forces.
2. Only five regular Arab armies participated, as Saudi Arabia and Yemen lacked modern military capabilities.
3. Of these, just four entered Mandatory Palestine, and Jordan’s Arab Legion and Iraq’s forces were restricted by their British allies from breaching areas allocated to the Jewish state.
4. The Lebanese army did not cross the frontier, limiting its involvement.
5. The Arab countries, struggling with poverty, dependency, and foreign influence, faced additional internal challenges and the threat of an aggressive neighbor in Israel.
How did the relationship between Israel and the US develop after the creation of Israel?
1. The US was seen as a tolerant refuge for Jews fleeing European anti-Semitism, contrasting with Russian tsarist territories.
2. The American Jewish population grew from 250,000 to 4 million, forming a strong base of support for Zionism.
3. Modern Zionism developed deep roots in the US, gaining support from both Jewish communities and many Christians.
4. Hitler’s rise in the 1930s and the Holocaust strengthened US public and political support for the Zionist cause, discomfiting and silencing many of its opponents both within and outside the Jewish community.
5. US leadership, influenced by personal friendships and his closest advisors, saw outright support for Zionism as a domestic political necessity, prioritizing it over concerns about US interests in the Arab world.
6. After Israel’s military victories, US leadership and the oil industry began to recognize the strategic value of Israel for US, interests in the region, particularly given Saudi Arabia’s complaisant stance on Palestine.
How did Saudi Arabia’s stance on the US-Israeli relationship align with its own ties to the US regarding Palestine?
The 1933 oil exploration and exploitation agreement anchored Saudi Arabia’s close relationship with the US, leading it to accept the US-Israeli alliance despite its implications for Palestine.
How did the Nakba shape Palestinian identity while also fracturing the Palestinian people into distinct groups?
1. The Nakba is a collective trauma and defining touchstone of Palestinian identity across generations, bringing all Palestinians together through a shared sense of loss and displacement, whether experienced personally or through family history.
2. The Nakba fractured the Palestinian people, dispersing them into multiple countries and sovereignties, leading to divergent experiences shaped by their host nations and circumstances.
How did the Nakba impact Palestinians based on where they ended up after 1948?
1. Inside Israel, around 160,000 Palestinians remained as citizens under martial law until 1966, facing land confiscation, systemic discrimination, and isolation from other Palestinians.
2. As for occupied territories of Palestine, Palestinians in Gaza lived under Egyptian control, while those in the West Bank and East Jerusalem were governed by Jordan, fragmented by separate laws and governance.
3. The majority became refugees, many in UNRWA camps across Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, while wealthier refugees integrated into cities like Damascus, Beirut, and Amman.
4. Families scattered globally across the Arab world, Europe, and the United States, navigating fragmented connections and diverse social, legal, and cultural realities.
What were the conditions of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon?
1. Palestinians in Lebanon were never considered for citizenship, as granting it would have disrupted the sectarian balance designed by the French mandatory authorities to ensure Maronite Christian dominance.
2. While some Lebanese Sunni, Druze, Shi‘ite, and left-wing politicians supported the Palestinian cause, both Lebanese and Palestinians firmly opposed permanent resettlement (tawtin), as Palestinians held onto the hope of returning to their homeland.
3. Services provided by UNRWA, such as universal education and vocational training, made Palestinians among the most highly educated people in the Arab world, enabling many to emigrate and contribute skilled labor to other Arab countries.
How did the conditions of Palestinian refugees differ in larger more homogeneous countries such as Syria, Iraq and Egypt?
In larger, more homogeneous countries like Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, the smaller groups of Palestinian refugees did not have a destabilizing effect on the host societies.
What were the conditions of Palestinian refugees in Syria?
Refugees benefited from many rights, such as owning land, accessing state education, and government employment, achieving social and economic integration, though they were denied nationality and the right to vote.
What were the conditions of Palestinian refugees in oil-producing countries?
1. Many Palestinians contributed significantly to the economies, government services, and education systems of oil-producing countries such as those in the Arab Gulf, Libya, and Algeria.
2. Despite their contributions, Palestinians faced alienation, isolation, and precarious conditions, as their residency depended on employment, and they were not granted citizenship or permanent residency.
3. Challenges included difficulties navigating borders with refugee papers and the constant uncertainty of their status, as highlighted in Ghassan Kanafani’s novel Men in the Sun.
What were the reasons for Israel’s victory in the 1967 war?
1. Far superior military than all Arab armies combined. Despite common belief spread in the US, Israel was nnever in threat of annihilation, even if Arabs had struck first.
2. Israeli army first struck most Arab warplanes on the ground, giving Israel complete air superiority. Given the geographical and seasonal conditions, this provided them absolute ground advantage.
What were the military gains for Israel in the 1967 war?
Israel was able to conquer the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights in six days.
What were the factors leading to the 1967 war?
1. The Israeli government diverting the waters of the Jordan River, despite great Arab popular distress and greater Arab regimes’ impotence, learing to a rise of militant Palestinian groups.
2. Taking advantage of Egypt’s weakened military position as they were tied in the Yemeni civil war.
3. Given the upsurge of Palestinian raids on Israel, to which Israel had reacted by attacking Syria, Egypt felt obliged to maintain its prestige in the Arab world.
4. Egypt’s provocation of Israel by moving troops into the Sinai Peninsula and requesting the removal of UN peacekeeping forces.
What was the main defining result of the 1967 war?
Security Council Resolution 242 was the result of the new tolerance for Israel’s expansive borders. Crafted by the US and approved on November 22nd, 1967, UNSC Resolution 242 represented the third declaration of war on the Palestinian people.
What were the main implications of UNSC Resolution 242 as a result of US-backed Israeli exploitative interpretation of the text’s technicalities?
1. It linked any Israeli withdrawal to peace treaties with the Arab states and the establishment of secure frontiers. This meant that any withdrawals would be conditional and delayed, given the Arab states’ reluctance to engage in direct negotiations with Israel.
2. Linking Israel’s withdrawal to the creation of secure and recognized boundaries, UNSC 242 allowed for the possibility of enlarged Israeli border to meet the criterion of security, as determined by Israel. This nuclear-armed regional superpower had subsequently deployed an extraordinarily expansive and flexible interpretation of the term “security”.
3. The retention of military occupation of the Palestinian and Syrian territories.
4. UN condemnations without a hint of sanctions or any genuine pressure on Israel, amounting to international acceptance of these exploitations.
What is the analysis of UNSC Resolution 242?
1. Eliminated the presence of Palestinians; does not refer to the Palestinians or most elements of the original Palestine question, treating the entire issue as a state-to-state matter between the Arab countries and Israel, and Palestinians were not a recognized party to the conflict, considered at best as a humanitarian issue.
2. By its omissions, UNSC Resolution 242 reserved the Israeli narrative of negating Palestinian existence, and elevating the settler-colonial narrative to its highest level: the indigenous people were nothing but a lie.
3. The failure to refer to core issues extending to the right of return, the UN was retreating from its original commitments of the Partition Plan; legitimizing Israel’s borders which expanded beyond the agreed upon partition.
4. Focusing solely on the aftermath of the 1967 war, the resolution added another layer to the induced amnesia and obscured the colonial origins of the conflict, which became the framework for future peace talks.
5. Framing the conflict as a series of seaprate state-to-state disputes, rather than addressing the collective rights of the Palestinian people, allowed Israel and the US to engage in more manageable negotiations with individual Arab countries. By dividing and dealing with Arab countries separately, without being forced to confront the more complex and uncomfortable issues related to Palestinian self-determination, Israel had an easier task.
What is the geopolitical factor that coordinated Arab states’ normalisation with Israel?
The impact of Egypt’s defeat in 1967 and its subsequent withdrawal from Yemen, both of which marked the end of its attempt to assert regional hegemony, leaving Saudi Arabia as the dominant actor in the Arab world.
How did the Palestinian political agency exist in global and Arab populations in the wake of the 1967 war?
1. The Zionist narrative enjoyed complete dominance among global populations.
2. In the Arab countries, the Palestinian diaspora ignited a cultural and political renaissance through the works of several poets and artists. They reshaped a sense of Palestinian identity and gave a voice to a shared national experience of loss, exile, and alienation. At the same time, showing a stubborn insistence on the continuity of Palestinian identity in the face of daunting odds.
What has the Palestinian representation manage to achieve in the 1960s, and what overlooked factor helped them in acheiving that?
1. They succeeded in reacquiring the “permission to narrate”; their right to tell their story themselves, instead of having to rely on Arab states’ weak narration.
2. Their effectiveness in communicating with Arab countries, in the developing world, and to a lesser extent in western countries.
3. Third World countries had a much bigger presence in the 1960s, translating into a more favorable environment for the Palestinians.
What were the factors that helped the PLO achieve its 1970s success?
1. The wave of national liberation movements, including the Palestinian, Algerian, southeran African and Southeast Asia, were resonating with China, the Soviet Union, and with Third World countries, gaining global support.
2. These anticolonial movements were also resonating with European and US youth, including the Arab diaspora in western countries.
What were the shifts in US-PLO communications preceding the Camp David process?
1. Communications that were first limited to ensuring the security of US citizens during the Lebanese civil war, later expanded to include the general political situation in Lebanon, against the agreement between Israel and the US. Once Israel came to know, they assassinated the key PLO figure involved in these communications “to give Americans a hint that this was no way to behave towards friends”.
2. The communications became more secret and expanded to include topics such as the terms for PLO acceptance of UNSC 242, for US recognition of the PLO, inclusion of the PLO in peace negotiations, the Iranian Islamic revolution, and freeing US hostages in Iran. Israel then targeted the US figure involved in these communications.
3. Agreement was never reached, however, President Carter’s administration was arranging a conference which included Palestinian participation, after having made a statement regarding a homeland for Palestinians.
4. Under pressure from the Israeli and Egyptian governments, Carter’s administration abandoned its push for including Palestinians and adopted the Camp David process instead.
What and when was the peace treaty reached between Egypt and Israel, what did it mean for Palestine, and how did it benefit Egypt, Israel, and the US?
1. It was the result of the Camp David process, reached in 1979.
2. It froze out the PLO, allowed colonization of the territories occuped in 1967, and put the Palestine issue on hold.
3. Egypt restored the Sinai Peninsula, Israel removed Egypt from the Arab conflict, and the US guaranteed Egypts shift from the USSR towards it.
What was Beiruts role in the Palestinian cause up until the 1982 war?
Being the journalistic nerve center which covered the Arab-Israeli conflicts, they were immune to prepaganda whether it is the PLO, Maronite Lebanese Front (LF), the Syrian regime, or Israeli hasbara.
How did the 1982 Beirut war develop after Israel’s initial attack?
Under intense pressure from Israel, the US, and their Lebanese allies, and in the absence of meaningful support from any Arab government, the PLO was forced to agree to evacuate Beirut.
What were Israel’s arguments to convince the US to support them in their fight against the PLO in the 1982 Beirut war?
Israel presented the PLO as a proxy for Soviet influence in the Middle East, playing on the US’s Cold War fears. By portraying the PLO as part of the communist bloc, Israel sought to gain US support as part of the broader fight against Soviet expansion.
How was the PLO’s evacuation plan arranged, agreed upon, and implemented?
1. The arrangement was for establishing a buffer zone and a limited withdrawal of the Israeli army, the deployment of international forces and safeguards for Palestinian and Lebanese populations.
2. This proposal was provided by US officials on plain paper without letterhead, signatures, or identification. Within these unidentifiable memos, pledges of the US’s assurance to protect the remaining, non-combatant, Palestinian poplations in Beirut. The PLO took that as a binding commitment, and evacuated their militants between August 21 and September 1 to unknown destinies.
3. Once the PLO evacuated, international forces left, disregarding US former pledges, based on a US-Israeli agreement, and the siege on Beirut was lifted. Two weeks later, the LF’s President was assassinated [by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party – a PLO ally], which triggered Israels reoccupation of western Beirut. The following day, the LF forces, supported by the Israeli army, committed the Sabra and Shatila massacres (September 16-18).
What were the political impacts of the 1982 Beirut war?
1. The rise of Hezbollah
2. The first direct US deployment in the Middle East since 1958,
3. The growth of the Israeli Peace Now movement,
4. Provoked intense reactions in US and European causing negative perceptions of Israel,
What were the events leading to the First Intifada?
1. It was ignited by an event where the Israeli army struck a truck in Jabalya camp, killing 4 Palestinians.
2. For the past decade, the alienation of Palestinians had intensified. Any expression of nationalism was severely repressed, along with increased expansion of settlements. Deportations of leadership, collective punishment, house demolitions, “administrative detention” – imprisonment without trial that would last for years, all of which resulted in an accumulation of frustration among the people.
3. The paradoxical invasion of Lebanon to suppress Palestinian resistance backfiring by intensifying the resistance inside of the occupied territories as it moved away from Lebanon.
How did the Intifada develop organizationally, and who eventually led it?
The First Intifada generated extensive local organization in villages, towns, cities, and refugee camps, and remained locally driven but developed a coordinated structure and it came to be led by a secret Unified National Leadership. The flexible and clandestine grassroots networks formed during the Intifada proved impossible for the military occupation authorities to suppress.
How did Israel respond to the First Intifada, and what internal and external challenges did that response create?
Israel suppressed the First Intifada through systematic brutality, following Rabin’s orders to “break their bones”; a deterrence strategy enforced by soldiers shaped by deep societal indoctrination which portrayed Palestinians as an irrational, hostile population whose resistance could only be controlled through violence, rooted in the belief that Arab antisemitic hostility was uncontrollable and threatened Israel’s existence. Although it was clear that a political solution was inevitable, Israel continued to rely on inhumane force: over a span of nine years, Palestinians were killed at a rate of nearly one every other day, over 20% of them were children under the age of sixteen.
These scenes inverted the image of Israel as the victim internationally, and caused reputational losses for Israel. Internally, the pressure on its security forces to control this new and complex widespread uprising was challenging, and the narrative of Palestinians were content and fully under control of an “enlightened occupation” was destroyed.
What were the key characteristics of the First Intifada, and how did it differ from previous resistance movements in terms of leadership, tactics, and its impact on both Palestinian society and international perceptions?
1. A spontaneous, grassroots uprising with no initial ties to formal political leadership, later developing coordinated but locally controlled structures. It was a broad societal participation, including strong leadership by women, especially as many men were imprisoned. Most of those who revolted saw the PLO as their representative and after watching from a distance the sacrifices of the PLO in Jordan and Lebanon, they felt they were now shouldering part of the national burden. They were proud that Palestinians under occupation were taking the lead in the struggle for liberation.
2. Relied mainly on nonviolent tactics like strikes, boycotts, and tax resistance, avoiding firearms and explosives. This was combined with a deliberate strategy to influence global opinion, using clear messaging and articulate Palestinian voices inside and outside Palestine.
3. The characteristics and tactics used had a unifying effect within Palestinian society and aimed to shift Israeli and global perceptions of the occupation. This resulted in it being widely viewed as a successful example of popular resistance and a turning point in the Palestinian struggle. Additionally, effective communication made it clear that the occupation was undefendable.
What were the challenges faced by the PLO during the First Intifada?
1. The PLO leadership, based in exile (mainly Tunis), was surprised by the grassroots uprising and tried to control it from afar. They lacked understanding of the daily realities under occupation, unlike local leaders who had lived under Israeli rule and built strong community support.
2. After internal mutinies in the early 1980s and the loss of key leader Abu Jihad in 1988, the PLO was weakened and increasingly insecure about the rise of popular local leaders who were gaining public and media attention.
3. The rise of Hamas during the Intifada posed a serious threat to the PLO’s dominance. Initially supported by Israel to counterbalance the PLO, Hamas quickly gained influence, intensifying the PLO’s fears of being replaced or sidelined.
What were the limitations of the peace negotiations as they began during the First Intifada?
1. No mention of the Palestine question.
2. No reference to the Arab state outlined in UNGA Resolution 181 (1947).
3. No acknowledgment of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return as stated in UNGA Resolution 194 (1948).
4. The language of 242 called for withdrawal from “territories occupied” in 1967, rather than “the territories occupied,” allowing Israel to potentially retain or expand beyond its pre-1967 borders.
5. By accepting 242 as the foundation for negotiations, Palestinian leadership effectively entered talks under terms heavily tilted against them.
What were the geopolitical events that weakened the Palestinian position during the First Intifada?
1. The 1978 Camp David deal and the subsequent 1979 Eypgtian-Israeli peace treaty, in which Menachem Begin had struck a ruinous bargain over Palestine with Anwar Sadat and Jimmy Carter.
2. The decline of the USSR meant that the PLO lost an intermittent and inconsistent patron that had provided military and diplomatic support and had championed its inclusion in negotiations under far less onerous terms than those demanded by the United States and Israel. By the end of 1991, however, the USSR had disappeared, and the United States was left as the sole international guarantor and sponsor of any Palestinian-Israeli process.
3. The profound miscalculation made by Yasser ‘Arafat and most of his colleagues regarding the 1990-91 Gulf War. Almost immediately after Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August 1990, the Gulf states, together with virtually every other major Arab power, including Egypt and Syria, joined the US-led international coalition to forcibly reverse Saddam Hussein’s gross violation of the sovereignty of a member state of the Arab League. This was in keeping with the consistent preference of postcolonial states in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East for the preservation of colonial borders and the states that had grown up within them. Instead of firmly supporting Kuwait against Iraq, ‘Arafat tried to steer a “neutral” course, offering to mediate between the two sides. His suggestion was ignored by all concerned, as were the mediating efforts of more powerful actors such as the USSR, which fruitlessly sent its senior Middle East envoy to Baghdad. Arafat was in some measure carried along by a popular tide, as large segments of Arab public opinion shared this fantasy. Many supported Saddam Hussein’s landgrab as a nationalist blow against “colonially imposed frontiers” (as if most of the frontiers and states in the Arab East had not also been colonially imposed). Saddam was seen by those thus deluded as a great Arab hero, a new Saladin (the original Saladin had come from Tikrit, Hussein’s birthplace), who could surely defeat the United States and its allies.
4. Arafat’s long-standing and fierce antipathy toward Hafez al-Asad’s overbearing Syrian regime (an antipathy that was richly reciprocated) and his reflexive search for a counterweight. One of ‘Arafat’s signature slogans, “al-qarar al-Filastini al-mustaqill”—“the independent Palestinian decision”—was usually brandished in response to Syrian efforts to coerce, constrain, and dominate the PLO. While Egypt had once served to balance the pressures exerted by the Asad regime, that role was no longer possible after Sadat’s separate peace with Israel. The only other plausible counterweight had of necessity been Syria’s rival, Iraq. In the wake of Sadat’s apostasy, the PLO had become increasingly dependent on Iraqi political, military, and financial patronage, especially after the Syrian regime sought to undermine ‘Arafat’s leadership by masterminding the fratricidal rebellion against him in 1982.
5. The dependency on Iraq subjected ‘Arafat and the PLO to intense pressure to conform to Iraqi policies, which were dictated by the vagaries of Saddam Hussein, a thuggish despot who was ignorant, mercurial, and brutal. To keep the PLO in line, the Iraqi regime frequently punished it. Among the many tools for this purpose, Baghdad had at its disposal various nominally Palestinian splinter groups like Abu Nidal’s terrorist network, the Ba‘thist Arab Liberation Front, and the Palestine Liberation Front, headed by Abu al-‘Abbas. All these tiny groups lacked a popular base and were essentially extensions of the fearsome Iraqi intelligence services (although, as we have seen, Abu Nidal’s guns for hire were also at times clandestinely employed by the Libyan and Syrian regimes, and were deeply penetrated by other intelligence services).
6. The one exception to the PLO’s consensus of idiocy was its intelligence chief, Abu Iyad, among the brightest and most grounded of its senior leaders. He understood that the chosen course would lead to disaster and fought fiercely against the decision to back Iraq, provoking tempestuous arguments with ‘Arafat. As well as the obvious reasons for his stance, he was concerned with safeguarding the prosperous Palestinian community in Kuwait, which was several hundred thousand strong. Both he and ‘Arafat had lived and worked in Kuwait for years and he had close ties to the community, which furnished one of the PLO’s most solid popular and financial bases anywhere in the world. Moreover, Kuwait itself was supportive toward the PLO and was the only Arab country where Palestinians had relative freedom of expression. They ran their own schools and could organize to help the PLO as long as they took care not to interfere in Kuwaiti politics. Abu Iyad argued that ‘Arafat’s failure to oppose Saddam’s suicidal invasion of Kuwait would weaken the PLO and condemn Palestinians there to the destruction of their community and another forced displacement. It all played out exactly as Abu Iyad had foreseen, but he paid for his temerity (he had reportedly even criticized Saddam Hussein in person). He was assassinated in Tunis on January 14, 1991, three days before the US-led offensive began. The gunman was acting for the Abu Nidal network (and by extension undoubtedly for Iraq), which the PLO intelligence services under Abu Iyad had hunted for years. The loss of Abu Iyad, coming three years after the killing of Abu Jihad, left no one in the top Fatah echelons with the stature or will to stand up to ‘Arafat—a situation that only enhanced his inclination to high-handedness
How did Israel use the US veto to limit negotiations with the Palestinians?
1. The PLO had no independent Palestinian representation at a conference that aimed to determine the fate of Palestine. So I was attached as an advisor to a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.
2. Israel’s veto extended to the choice of Palestinian representatives, and it blocked the participation of anyone connected to the PLO, or from Jerusalem, or from the diaspora (which drastically narrowed the field of available delegates).
3. The Israeli government determined what could be talked about. Every item of essence—Palestinian self-determination, sovereignty, the return of refugees, an end to occupation and colonization, the disposition of Jerusalem, the future of the Jewish settlements, and control of land and water rights—was disallowed. Instead, these issues were postponed, supposedly for four years, but in fact until a future that never came: the fabled “final status” talks that were supposed to be completed by 1997 (this deadline was later extended to 1999 in the Oslo Accords) were never concluded.
What was the Israeli approach to the peace talks?
1. Israel’s vision of autonomy for the people but not the land. This was in keeping with the Israeli right’s view – indeed the core of the Zionist doctrine – that only one people, the Jewish people, had a legitimate right to existence and sovereignty in the entirety of the land, which was called Eretz Israel, the land of Israel, not Palestine.
2. There was a refusal to limit settlement activity in any way. [Israeli Government] was reported as saying that he would have dragged out the talks for ten more years while “vastly increasing the number of Jewish settlers in Israeli-occupied territory.”
3. Running peace negotiations with Syria and Egypt to weaken the Palestinian position.
What were the impacts of Oslo’s Declaration of Principles agreement on the lives of Palestinians?
1. Israel closed-off East Jerusalem from the rest of the Occupied Territories and had begun erecting a series of walls and massive fortified border checkpoints to regulate their entry.
2. Setting draconian restrictions on the entry of West Bankers and Gazans starving the economy of the Arab part of the city, and an acceleration of land seizure, home demolitions, and exile of Jerusalemites whom Israel arbitrarily deemed had lost their residency.
What was agreed upon with Oslo II of 1995 and what are Areas A, B and C?
1. Oslo II carved the West Bank and the Gaza Stip into patwork of areas: A, B, and C.
2. Area C, with over 60% of the territory under complete direct Israeli control, and included all but one of the Jewish settlements.
3. Area B constituted 18% of the territories, with the Palestinian Authority granted administrative and security control.
4. Area A constituted 22% with the Palestinian Authority administrative control while Israeli remained in charge of security.
5. Areas A & B comprisedhoused 87% of the Palestinian population.
6. Israel also kept full power over entering and leaving all parts of Palestine and held exclusive control of the population registers (meaning that it decided who had residency rights and who could live where). Settlement construction was able to continue apace, Jerusalem was further severed from the West Bank, and Palestinians from the Occupied Territories were increasingly barred from entering Israel. Eventually, scores of military checkpoints and hundreds of miles of walls and electrified fences carved the West Bank into a series of isolated islands and scarred the landscape.
What was the Palestinian Authority’s reality after the Oslo Agreements? How did this development change the declarations of war on the Palestinians?
1. It was an unchanged, unequal colonial reality, with hte PA having no sovereignty, no jurisdiction, and no authority except that allowed it by Israel, which even controls a major part of its revenues in the form of customs duties and some taxes. Its primary function, to which much of its budget is devoted, is security, but not for its people: it is mandated by US and Israeli dictates to provide security for Israel’s settlers and occupation forces against the resistance, violent and otherwise, of other Palestinians.
2. The Oslo framework preserved the privileges and prerogatives enjoyed by the state and the settlers while offloading the cost and liability of subjugating the Palestinian population, and simultaneously preventing genuine Palestinian self-determination, statehood, and sovereignty.
3. This framework’s posed a new implication of the declaration of war on the Palestinians by enlisting the Palestinian Authority as a subcontractor for the occupation.
How did the implications of Oslo manifest upon the Palestinians by the 2000s?
1. Only a privileged few influential figures with the PLO or PA were granted VIP passes that allowed them to move through the Israeli checkpoints. Everyone else lost the ability to move freely around Palestine.
2. The majority of the population could not obtain permits to travel and was now effectively confined to the West Bank or to the Gaza Strip, to the inferior roads dotted with checkpoints intended for the indigenous population, while the settlers rode above them on a network of superb highways and overpasses that was constructed for their exclusive use.
3. The Gaza strip was cut off from the rest of the world in stages, encircled by troops on land and the Israeli navy by sea. Entering and leaving required rarely issued permits and became possible only through massive fortified checkpoints resembling human cattle pens, while arbitrary Israeli closures frequently interrupted the shipment of goods in and out of the strip. The economic results of what was in effect a siege of the Gaza Strip were particularly damaging. Most Gazans depended on work in Israel or on exporting goods. With stringent restrictions on doing both, economic life underwent a slow strangulation
4. In Jerusalem, the largest and most important urban center in Arab Palestine, barriers placed at the entrances to the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem prevented free movement between the city and the West Bank hinterland, on which it depended economically, culturally, and politically. Its markets, schools, businesses, cultural institutions, and professional practices had all thrived primarily on a clientele from across the Occupied Territories, as well as Palestinians from inside Israel and foreign tourists. Suddenly, Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza were required to obtain permits, which were unattainable for most. Even if they managed to procure a permit, routine humiliation and hours of delay awaited them while passing through the Israeli checkpoints that controlled movement into the city from the West Bank. The impact of this closure of Jerusalem on the city’s economy was shattering. According to a 2018 European Union report, the contribution of Arab East Jerusalem to the Palestinian GDP has shrunk by 50% from 15% in 1993 to 7%. The EU report noted that “Due to its physical isolation and the strict Israeli permit policy, the city has largely ceased to be the economic, urban, and commercial center that it once was.”
Describe the factors which contributed to Hamas gaining widespread popularity by the beginning of 2000s?
1. Its rival, PLO, select few enjoyed more economic and political privileges and freedom, overlooking the drastic negative Oslo impacts, while Hamas fully acknowledged them, noting that Oslo was the result of diplomatic efforts (Fatah approach) vs. armed resistance (Hamas approach)
2. Continued support by Israel
3. Regional trend of what many perceived as the bankruptcy of the secular national movements that dominated the middle east for most of the 20th century.
Of what was the Israeli proposal consisting in the Camp David negotiations, leading to the publicized claim that Arafat rejected peace?
1. Permanent israeli control of the jordan river valley (holds significant economic importance due to its agricultural potential & water resources – 75% of the river’s water – and strategic location – buffer zone between palestine and jordan)
2. Control of palestine’s air space
3. Control of palestine’s water resources
4. Dividing the west bank into several isolated blocs through annexation (expansion of occupation)
Among others, there were three major contributors to the Second Intifada. What were they?
1. The worsening economic situation due to Oslo implications,
2. Intensifying rivalry between PLO & Hamas causing instability
3. The Israeli tunnel built beneath Jerusalem causing major damages and an eruption in mass protests
How did Israel exploit the deepened division between Fatah and Hamas?
Israel was able to exploit the deep division among Palestinians and Gaza’s isolation to launch three savage air and ground assaults on the strip that began in 2008 and continued in 2012 and 2014, leaving large swaths of its cities and refugee camps in rubble and struggling with rolling blackouts and contaminated water. The lopsided 43:1 Palestinian to Israeli scale of these casualties is telling, as is the fact that the bulk of the Israelis killed were soldiers while most of the Palestinians were civilians.
What is the Dahiya Doctrine?
The Dahiya Doctorine is a military strategy used by Israel that involves deliberately applying disproportionate force and causing widespread destruction in areas from which attacks are launched, treating them as military bases rather than civilian zones. It was named after the Dahiya neighborhood in southern Beirut, which was heavily bombed in 2006. The doctrine was explicitly articulated by Israeli General Gadi Eizenkot, who stated that any village firing on Israel would face massive destruction. This approach was used in later military operations, such as the 2014 assault on Gaza, where over 13,000 people—mostly civilians—were killed or injured and hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed.
How does international law distinguish between the use of force by an occupying army and that of armed groups among the occupied population, and what role does this play in assessing potential war crimes?
International law recognizes a key difference between the power of an occupying army and that of armed groups under occupation, though both must still follow the rules of war. Armed groups in Gaza often used unguided rockets, which were imprecise and sometimes hit civilians—this can amount to a war crime. But these weapons were limited in scale and impact. In contrast, Israel used highly destructive, advanced weaponry in crowded civilian areas, causing far greater loss of life. The imbalance in power and destruction plays a major role in how war crimes are assessed.
Under what circumstances have U.S. presidents acted against Israeli objections, and what does this reveal about U.S. foreign policy priorities?
American presidents have tended to act independently of Israeli objections when vital U.S. strategic interests are at stake.
Examples include opposing the 1956 Suez War to maintain Cold War balance, imposing a ceasefire during the 1968–1970 war to avoid U.S.-Soviet confrontation, pushing for Israeli withdrawals between 1973 and 1975, approving arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and pursuing the Iran nuclear deal. In contrast, on issues like Palestine and Israeli concessions for peace, where no core U.S. strategic or economic interest is involved, presidents have been far more deferential to Israeli positions.