Ahmad Samih Khalidi: Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct
But statehood as such is a relatively recent addition to Palestinian aspirations. The main Palestinian impetus after the disaster of 1948 was that of "return"; it was more about reversing the loss of Arab land and patrimony, than the fulfilment of classical post-colonial self-determination, via statehood.
Driven into national concussion by the catastrophic forced displacement of 1948 and up until the mid-1960s, the sense of a separate "Palestinian" national identity all but disappeared. This "lost consciousness" was only reversed by the emergence of Fatah under Yasser Arafat in the Arab diaspora in the late 1950s.
It was only after the 1967 debacle that a new Palestinian national identity began to take shape. At its core was the notion of the armed struggle as a galvanising force. Armed struggle, according to Fatah, restored Palestinian dignity and gave the Palestinians a say in determining their future.
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