#History #timeline

Arab Politics and the Rise of Palestinian Nationalism

Key takeaways

content: "@muslihArabPoliticsRise1987" -file:@muslihArabPoliticsRise1987

Reading notes

• Past works have placed too much emphasis on Zionism and not enough on internal works that saw the rise of national Palestinian consciousness

• Palestinian national consciousness saw two strands; its local (wataniyyah) or pan-Arab (qawmiyyah) variety

• Regarded the political forces that emerged in the Arab lands east of Suez after the dismemberment of the ottoman empire as the result of a struggle with an alien power or movement

• Local nationalisms began to take root in Palestine etc, and gradually came to prevail

• The Ideological Framework

• The ottoman empire encompassed a focus on loyalty- not in terms of national, but a dynastical loyalty

• Western influence of the nation gave rise to attempts of concepts of the ottoman nation

• Ottomanism was the ideology that emerged to win the loyalty of the subjects of the empire

• Two variants; one conservative, the other modernist

• Conservative saw moral and cultural superiority of Islam

• Modernist saw true Islam being corrupted that left the lands is a sad state

• Arabs did possess an awareness of their distinct ethnic and cultural identity within Islam

• The rise of Turkish nationalism eroded this pan-ottoman identity and saw the rise of pan-Arab nationalism in the form of Arabism

• Palestinians played a role in the growth of Arab nationalism that is greater than traditionally thought

• Key Palestinians worked within the short lived Arab government in Syria (1918-20)

• On the basis of populations estimates for 1915, Palestinian national leaders excessed that of Lebanon and is slightly lower than Syria

• Nablus played a disproportion role of Palestinian leaders- partly due to its Islamic homogeneity

• Arab nationalism was not fully developed after the war- it was still very much a response to young Turk nationalism

• The Palestinian ''the Arab club'' was set up in 1918 and centred on Palestine- withdrew support from Faysal following the Faysal-Weizmann draft in January 1919

• Arab leaders were confronted with the rush of Arab nationalism and the pull of local nationalism

• This failure of pan-Arab nationalism played a critical role in Palestinian nationalism

• There were threads against Zionism in ottoman times expressed in; ottoman loyalism, Palestinian patriotism, and Arab nationalism

• From 1910 onward Madel rightly suggest that when seeing Zionists as a threat to Palestine, they increasingly spoke of themselves as ''Palestinians''

• The Institutional Framework

• Few relatively older Palestinians were involved in the cause for Arab nationalism before the collapse of the ottoman empire

• Leads credence to the view that intellectuals were more important among the Arab nationalists than they were among the Ottomanists

• Not all intellectuals were nationalists however

• The younger politicians emerged out of the 1920's as the dominant group in Palestinian Arab society

• Defending pan-Arabism whilst emphasising needs of Palestinians