Solidarity is one of the most important features of popular liberation struggles. For the Palestinian revolution, there were five distinct arenas of solidarity: Arab, Islamic, Tricontinental, Eastern bloc, and European-North American. A diversity of approaches to each of these were employed by Palestinian movements. The Arab arena was the most complex, as Palestinian identity was connected to broader Arab identity. Palestinians understood themselves as an Arab people, and therefore the majority of the parties and movements they created expressed Arabist undertones or were explicitly pan-Arabist in character and objectives.
Thus Arab cadres who were not Palestinian were not seen as being ‘in solidarity’ with the struggle, but as internal to it. The nature of this interiority was conceptualised differently, however, by different political movements. Within pan-Arabist Palestinian parties, such as the PFLP, DFLP, al-Sa͑iqa, and the Arab Liberation Front (ALF), no distinction was made between Palestinian and Arab cadres. Even the highest ranking leaders were often not Palestinian, and cadres were recruited from branches of their ‘mother parties’ across the Arab world, most notably the Ba͑ath and the Movement of Arab Nationalists. The idea behind this, as articulated in the founding communiqué of the ALF (1969) for example, was that Palestine could not be liberated as long as it was treated as a primarily Palestinian question. So an emphasis on the Arabness of the cause, and the participation of cadres from all parts of the region, was a requirement for liberation.
In the case of Fateh, different concepts and practices were in operation for Arab solidarity. Whereas Arab cadres joined the movement and achieved prominent positions within it, a distinction was made from the beginning between the Palestinian and Arab spheres. As can be seen in our second source, excerpts from The Structure of Revolutionary Construction (1958), the Movement saw the struggle as requiring a ‘Palestinian National Congress’, an ‘Arab Council for Palestine’, and ‘Palestine Solidarity Committees’. In this and subsequent writings, the special nature and significance of the Arab role were highlighted, but there was also an emphasis on the need to have a ‘Palestinian vanguard’ leading the struggle.
Regardless of their position, the major Palestinian parties and institutions were joined by thousands of Arab revolutionaries. Ma͑an Bashur’s story of entering the revolution reveals the extent to which fighters of his generation saw the Palestinian cause as belonging to the people of the region as a whole. Bashur had extensive exposure to it during his childhood in Tripoli, Lebanon whereas others, such as Doctor Yusri, were inspired by the Palestinian cause at university in Egypt after a period of involvement in domestic radical politics. Their diversity of backgrounds is illustrated by Sheikh Fahad al-Ahmad al-Jabir al-Sabah, a prominent member of the Kuwaiti ruling family. He was not just a volunteer in the armed struggle, but also a keen promoter of Palestinian representation in global sports.
More institutionalised forms of solidarity flourished throughout the revolutionary period. Hundreds of Arab organisations backed the struggle in one way or another. Some, such as the Jordanian Committee for the Support of the Intifada, were popular bodies created in response to a specific event, oriented towards providing material backing for the struggle. Other organisations, such as the regional Israel Boycott Bureaus, were institutions created by the Arab League, aiding the revolution by subjecting Israel and the companies supporting it to economic pressure. A statement by the Commissioner General of the Boycott Bureaus shows the degree to which this boycott was taken seriously during the revolutionary period.
Besides the institutional backing offered by civil society and regional official initiatives, support was also forthcoming at governmental level. In every Arab state numerous officials identified with the revolution. However, this did not always translate into full-fledged state solidarity. Every Arab state expressed official enthusiasm for the Palestinian cause, but not every state was committed in practice to the Palestinian revolution, and support fluctuated with the ebb and flow of regional politics. There were steady backers, most notably President Boumediene of Algeria (from 1965 onwards) and President Abdel Nasser of Egypt (from 1967 onwards). The former was known for his unwavering and practical enthusiasm, offering training, funding, and facilitation for the revolution, as well as for the Arab military reconstruction efforts following the defeat of 1967, as recounted by Yasser Arafat in this video clip. Boumediene’s action was matched by his public discourse, as this very typical statement shows, and after his death in 1979, the following Palestine National Council session was named in his honour.
The role of individual leaders was significant, but broader backing was widely available, and as important. In legislative bodies such as the Kuwaiti parliament, it was not unusual for strong decisions to be made in support of the Palestinian revolutionary struggle, especially critical in moments of crisis.
Beyond the Arab world, the issue of solidarity in the Islamic, tricontinental and socialist worlds received special attention in Palestinian thought and practice. As the decisions of the 4th Palestine National Council show, one of the central ideals underlying the Palestinian struggle was its integral place in the ‘global struggle for liberation and the eradication of colonialism’. In this historic document and in countless others, official PLO support was enshrined for peoples struggling against colonialism and imperial intervention across the world, including Vietnam, Rhodesia, South Africa, and Cuba.
The lessons to be taken from these collective struggles were discussed regularly, as can be seen in this round table discussion published in the aftermath of the victory of the Vietnamese revolution. Likewise, support to the Palestinian revolution came from anti-colonial struggles, as well as from independent and newly independent countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This assistance took diplomatic forms, further discussed in Week 12, and were developed with particular countries, a good example being China.
China was the first country outside the Arab world to provide military aid, including the provision of weapons as well as training in its Nanjing military academy. The next source features photographs from an early Palestinian delegation to China headed by Fateh leader Abu Jihad. Moreover, Chinese authorities took a firm position against Israeli policy, and widely celebrated the development of the Palestinian armed struggle, as seen in these articles from Peking Review written in the aftermath of the Karameh battle.
Any discussion of tricontinental solidarity should highlight the role played by individual combatants who volunteered to fight alongside Palestinians in their thousands, animated by the principles of internationalism and global fraternity. For example, the renowned Turkish journalist Candar Cengiz recounted his experience arriving at the Palestinian armed struggle camps in Lebanon, as an idealistic young student escaping repression in his native Turkey. Thousands of fighters from across the world shared similar experiences.
Although governments of western countries were generally supportive of Israel, a flourishing solidarity movement with the Palestinian revolution developed in Europe and North America. This was partly a result of the active engagement of Palestinian organisations that conducted outreach and built alliances. Palestinians’ views were disseminated through lecture tours, posters, and pamphlets that were produced by the revolution. One Fateh publication in French boasts a broadly anti-colonial outlook and language, and other pamphlets, such as PFLP’s We Shall Be Victorious, expressed a more delineated ideological line, framed around Marxist-Leninist principles.
The different bureaus of the PLO were engaged in extensive solidarity work which took numerous forms. For example, international solidarity was facilitated through the work of the Plastic Arts Section of the Unified Information Office, which invited artists worldwide to contribute to the 1978 International Art Exhibition for Palestine. This event, whose catalogue is provided here, featured productions gifted to the PLO as a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinian people, including giants of 20th century art such as the Chilean Roberto Matta. Writing to the curators, he called for establishing a “creative sense of solidarity”, as the “artist is mainly the re-creation of the verb, to SEE. So, in this exhibition, one must see the Palestinian people and the kind of life they are living”.
After the 1967 war, active movements in solidarity with the Palestinian people began to develop in both Europe and North America. The emergence of the New Left in the 1960s created an opening for discussing Palestine amongst radical circles, as can be seen in the 1969 article in the New Left Review. Traditionally, the western left was sympathetic to Zionism, but the emergence of the revolution in the 1960s spurred a reversal of this trend. A strong connection between the Palestinian revolution and the American civil rights movement and black activists was also established, as reflected in “An appeal by Black Americans Against United States Support for the Zionist Government of Israel,” published in the New York Times on November 1, 1970.
By the end of the 1960s, the Palestinian revolution achieved iconic status as one of the great anti-colonial struggles in the post-World War II period, with solidarity being expressed in different ways and styles, and in a wealth of organisational forms across the world. This was a key source of moral and political support for Palestinians in their revolutionary struggle. More broadly, it formed an essential part of a global popular story: the emergence of a modern template for international solidarity with anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles and peoples in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
