On the road to palestinian state: from intifada to Madrid

Abstract EN

The purpose of this research is to investigate the Intifada as an inevitable political phenomenon which concretized the conception of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in reaction to a colonial Israeli occupation there since 1967.

In specific, to analyze proportional and inverse relationship between Israeli oppression of Palestinians and their level of national consciousness in waging a revolutionary warfare for political independence.

The work defines the meaning of the Palestinian Intifada in psychological and practical terms, and studies human and material conditions created by the Israeli occupation as its cause.

It is shown how the Intifada forced Israel to start reconsidering its occupation policy in favor of Palestinian self-determination; also to step into the direction of PLO which after the separation of Jordan from the West Bank became unrivalled in running the Palestinian affairs.

The Intifada brought a new world attention to Palestinian rights after the end of the Iraq-Kuwait crisis, especially that of the United States and the Soviet Union who under the shadow of the Intifada carried the Palestinian issue to the Madrid conference guided by the principle of exchanging Arab/Palestinian lands for Israeli peace.

The finding of the study is that the Intifada proved that “Palestinianism” as a nationalist movement is irreconcilable with “Israelization” and “Jordanization” of the 1967 occupied territories which experienced Palestinian cultural and political rebirth reaching a climax in 1987.

This national Palestinian consciousness of the Israeli colonial oppression was the reason to produce positive political outcome as represented in the new Israeli and international positions of the necessity to fulfill Palestinian national rights as the basis on which the Madrid conference was to be held.

The conclusion is that returning Palestinian lands was not a given, but it took a conscious Palestinian Intifada to mobilize against Israel in order to establish a Palestinian state in the 1967 occupied territories as the only requirement of permanent peace with Israel.