The Palestinian National Movement
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
In January 1964, Arab leaders meeting in Cairo voted to establish the Palestine Liber-
ation Organization (PLO) as the official representative of Palestinian Arabs and to carry
out military operations against Israel. Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser primarily
instigated the organization’s founding. In his self-proclaimed capacity as leader of the
Arab world, he wanted to establish control over the various Palestinian groups that had
evolved since the founding of Israel in 1948; Nasser also wanted to ensure that he, not
the Palestinians, determined the timing and manner of any attacks against Israel.
Ahmad Shuqary, an Arab diplomat and lawyer, became the first chairman of the
PLO, which was based in Cairo. Under his guidance, a group of Palestinian leaders
came together to form the Palestine National Council (PNC) and, in May 1964, drafted
the Palestinian National Charter, or covenant, proclaiming the Palestinian people a dis-
tinct nation. As an umbrella organization, the PLO included a range of factions of var-
ious ideologies. Shuqary had only limited control over the half-dozen or more factions,
some headed by more aggressive leaders intent on using any means of armed “resist-
ance” to topple Israeli control of what they considered to be Palestinian territory.
One PLO faction, Fatah—the Palestine National Liberation Movement—had
been founded in 1959 and was headed by Yasir Arafat, a former leader of Palestinian
students in Cairo and the son of Palestinians from Gaza. Fatah guerrillas carried out
dozens of attacks against Israel beginning in 1965. Although reliant on Arab countries
for weapons and financial support, Arafat and other Palestinian leaders concluded after
the June 1967 War that the Arab armies were incapable of defeating Israel by con-
ventional means, so the Palestinians should take the matter into their own hands.
Operating primarily from Jordan, Fatah stepped up its military operations in August
1967, declaring a “popular rebellion” against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza Strip. Israel quickly suppressed that rebellion, killing hundreds of Palestin-
ian guerrillas in the process.
Following a Palestinian attack on an Israeli school bus in March 1968, the Israeli
army mounted an assault on Arafat’s headquarters in the town of Karameh, in west-
ern Jordan. The Israelis managed to destroy much of the Palestinian camp and kill
dozens of guerrillas after encountering stiff resistance from the Palestinians and the
Jordanian army. They failed, however, to capture or kill Arafat and his top lieutenants.
Arafat and the Jordanians trumpeted a great “victory” over the supposedly invincible
Israelis, encouraging thousands of Palestinians to join Fatah as fighters or supporters.
Several Arab leaders—including Egypt’s Nasser, who at the time also headed the short-
lived United Arab Republic—quickly sought to identify themselves more closely with
the Palestinian cause.
Flush with self-proclaimed success, the Palestinians convened the first Palestine
National Council meeting in Cairo in July 1968. Dominated by Fatah, the PNC
ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS 169