Palestinian National Identity

The Emergence of Palestinian National Identity

Palestinian national identity did not spring into existence fully formed at a single moment — like most national identities, it evolved over decades. Under Ottoman rule, the Arab inhabitants of Palestine identified primarily by family, village, religious community, and broader Arab identity. But the encounter with Zionist immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — and the British Mandate's explicit favoritism toward the Zionist project — catalyzed a specifically Palestinian consciousness.

The 1948 war and the Nakba ('catastrophe') were the defining crucible. Approximately 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes. Palestinian society was shattered: the urban middle class scattered to Beirut, Amman, and Cairo; villagers crowded into refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. For the next two decades, Palestinian political life was largely subsumed under broader Arab nationalism. Egypt administered Gaza; Jordan annexed the West Bank. The Palestinian cause was championed by Arab states, but Palestinians themselves had little political agency.

This began to change in the late 1950s and 1960s. A generation of educated, politically active Palestinians — many from refugee camps — decided that they could not wait for Arab governments to liberate their homeland. They would do it themselves.

The PLO and Fatah

The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in 1964 at an Arab League summit in Cairo, initially as a body controlled by Egypt's Nasser. Its founding charter called for the liberation of all of Palestine and the establishment of a secular democratic state. But the PLO's early years were marked by dysfunction and Arab state manipulation.

The real energy came from Fatah, founded in 1959 by a group of Palestinian professionals in Kuwait, including Yasser Arafat, Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), and Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad). Fatah's philosophy was straightforward: armed struggle against Israel, led by Palestinians rather than Arab states. After the devastating Arab defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War shattered faith in conventional Arab armies, Fatah's approach gained enormous prestige. The Battle of Karameh in March 1968 — in which Palestinian fighters and Jordanian forces inflicted unexpected casualties on an Israeli raiding force — became a founding myth, attracting thousands of recruits.

By 1969, Arafat had taken over the PLO chairmanship and transformed it into an umbrella organization for multiple Palestinian factions. The PLO became a quasi-state-in-exile: it ran schools, hospitals, and a welfare system for refugees; it maintained diplomatic missions in over 100 countries; and in 1974, the UN General Assembly recognized it as 'the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.' Arafat addressed the General Assembly that year with the famous line: 'I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.'

The PLO's journey was not smooth. It was expelled from Jordan after Black September (1970), fought a devastating war in Lebanon (1982), and engaged in hijackings and attacks that horrified the international community while galvanizing Palestinian supporters. Over time, the mainstream PLO leadership — particularly Fatah — moved toward accepting a two-state solution, culminating in Arafat's 1988 declaration recognizing Israel and renouncing terrorism, which paved the way for the Oslo process.

Hamas: The Islamist Alternative

Hamas (an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement) was founded in December 1987, shortly after the First Intifada began. Its origins lay in the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had operated in Gaza since the 1940s. For decades, the Brotherhood had focused on social work, education, and religious revival rather than armed resistance. Israel actually tolerated and in some accounts quietly encouraged the Brotherhood as a counterweight to the secular PLO — a policy that would prove deeply ironic.

Hamas's founding charter (1988) was a maximalist document that called for the liberation of all of historic Palestine, rejected negotiation with Israel, and contained deeply antisemitic passages drawn from European conspiracy theories. The organization presented itself as an Islamic alternative to the PLO's secular nationalism, arguing that Palestine was an Islamic endowment (waqf) that could not be surrendered.

Hamas built its popularity on two pillars. First, an extensive social welfare network: clinics, schools, orphanages, and food distribution that provided services the Palestinian Authority often could not. Second, armed resistance, including suicide bombings during the Second Intifada that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians. These attacks were celebrated by many Palestinians as resistance against occupation and condemned internationally as terrorism.

In 2006, Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in a result that shocked Israel, the United States, and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. The election reflected both genuine support for Hamas's platform and widespread frustration with Fatah's corruption and the failure of the Oslo peace process to deliver a state. The subsequent power struggle led to Hamas seizing control of Gaza in 2007, creating the political split between a Hamas-governed Gaza and a Fatah-governed West Bank that persists today.

In 2017, Hamas issued an updated political document that accepted the idea of a Palestinian state on 1967 borders without formally recognizing Israel — a shift that some analysts saw as pragmatic evolution and others dismissed as tactical repositioning.