would compel Israel to abide by the terms of the
West Bank and Gaza withdrawal clauses.
As the terms of the Oslo Accords were never
implemented, the Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza once again rose up in the fall of 2000. Israeli
military forces besieged PLO chairman Arafat’s
headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
They decimated the administrative infrastructure
of the Palestinian Authority, including its police
forces. Israeli leaders called for the expulsion of
Arafat from the West Bank and the PLO diminished
as a significant political force for a negotiated settle-
ment to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that became
increasingly militarized and violent. The PLO
remains as a symbolic shell for Palestinian national
aspirations. It remains to be seen if it can be revived
as a meaningful political structure for implement-
ing a future Palestinian sovereign state.
See also arab-israeli conFlicts; hamas;
reFUgees.
Garay MenicucciFurther reading: Helena Cobban, The Palestinian Lib-
eration Organisation: People, Power and Politics (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); David Hirst,
The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in
the Middle East (New York: Thunder’s Mouth/Nation
Books, 2003); Graham Usher, Palestine in Crisis: The
Struggle for Peace and Political Independence after Oslo
(London: Pluto Press, 1995).
pan-Islamism (pan-Islam)
One of the responses Muslim leaders had to the
colonization of their lands by European powers
in the 19th century was what Europeans called
pan-Islamism. This was an attempt to forge a
modern Islamic political unity (ittihad-i Islam)
based not on nationality, ethnicity, or geography,
but on membership in the umma, the universal
community of Muslims. Although this idea has
its roots in memories of Islamic unity in the
foundational era of mUhammad (d. 632) and
the first caliphs, it was more directly inspired
by 19th-century nationalist movements among
Slavs, Greeks, and others.
The pan-Islamist idea first took hold during
the 1870s in the lands of the Ottoman Empire,
which had been losing territory to the Russian
and Austro-Hungarian empires since the 17th
century. It was promoted by Sultan Abd al-
Hamid II (r. 1876–1909) and supported by the
Islamic reformer/activist Jamal al-din al-aFghani
(1838–97) and later by Said Nursi (1878–1960).
The Ottomans had already initiated extensive
administrative reforms, the tanzimat, aimed at
modernizing the state and limiting the influence
of traditional Islamic authorities and other oppo-
nents. As part of his pan-Islamist program Abd
al-Hamid revived the symbolic importance of the
caliphate in an effort to win the support of Mus-
lims even beyond the boundaries of the Ottoman
Empire, where he sought to convince Muslims
that he was upholding the faith on their behalf.
He also built a new railway that carried pilgrims
to the sacred cities of medina and mecca from
Istanbul, the Ottoman capital, and other locations
along its path. In the 1870s al-Afghani traveled to
Afghanistan and other Muslim lands, including
Iraq, India, Iran, and Russia to promote the pan-
Islamist cause. Al-Afghani returned to Istanbul
from his mission in 1892, where he died a few
years later.
Abd al-Hamid’s efforts on behalf of Muslim
unity enjoyed little success. He encountered strong
opposition from a well-organized coalition of secu-
larist reformers known as the Young Turks, who
succeeded in forcing him to leave the throne in- Pan-Islamism was also undermined by other
nationalist currents that were stirring in Ottoman
lands and India, and it failed to rally non-Sunni
Muslim minorities like the Shia. British support
for the Hashimites in the Arabian Hijaz helped end
Ottoman control and paved the way for Saudi con-
quest in the 1920s. Abd al-Hamid’s own authoritar-
ian character was also detrimental. Pan-Islamism
was used to rally Muslim support for the Ottoman
alliance with Germany against Britain, France, and
pan-Islamism 545 J