The Idea… and the State: The Palestinian Struggle for Existence in the Age of Setbacks
Author: 
Publisher: 
مؤسسة الدراسات الفلسطينية
Publication Year: 
2017
Language: 
Arabic
Number of Pages: 
1088
Keywords: 
حركة المقاومة الفلسطينية
النكسة
العلاقات الفلسطينية العربية
لبنان
العراق
الانتفاضة
الحكم الذاتي
الحل النهائي
الفلسطينيون
تاريخ
TABLE OF CONTENT
Abstract

This book focuses on the rise of the Palestinian resistance movement since the 1967 war – referred to as the Naksa, or “Setback” – and how it affected the Palestinian people’s national standing and national cause during the following years. The resistance movement enhanced the Palestinians’ national standing despite the great obstacles and “setbacks” it suffered from, whether in Jordan (1970-1971) or in Egypt with the regime’s exit from the standoff with Israel during the mid-Seventies of the past century. Both of these “setbacks” in turn greatly impacted the breakout of internal and regional wars among Arab Eastern countries such as the “civil” war in Lebanon; the Iraqi-Iranian war and the strife among the parties of the Front for Steadfastness and Endurance.

Following sweeping international recognition of the Palestinian resistance movement and the national rights of the Palestinian people, attacks against Palestinians multiplied from the mid Seventies on, especially in Lebanon and the occupied territories – with the aim of politically strangling the movement’s gain. These attempts continued to escalate even after the eruption of the 1987 Intifada in the occupied territories, an occurrence that, along with other internal and foreign developments, led to the signing of the Oslo Accords. Meanwhile, the Israeli governments worked to strangle Palestinian ambitions and reduce them to fit its aim of prolonging “autonomy” as a final solution, thereby crushing any possibility of achieving the small “State” for which the Palestinian people had always longed.

Regardless of hardships, the dream of statehood remains alive in the minds and hearts of successive generations of Palestinians who refuse to submit to the continuation of horrible suffering inflicted upon them since the first Nakba. These Palestinian generations are determined to continue the struggle until the cruel oppression against them is overturned and the full rights and dignity of Palestinians – on their own land – are finally achieved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daoud Talhami, is a Palestinian writer living in Ramallah. He had worked at the Palestinian Research Center in Beirut in the early seventies, and later published numerous writings in progressive venues, first from exile, and since 1996, from within the Palestinian territories.

Volumes