Nasser and post-Nakba Palestinian nationalism

Many Muslims, Christians, Jews and Druze travelled up to Mount Precipice to release hundreds of balloons for peace after breaking bread together in Nazareth in December 2019. Photo: Rashmee Roshan Lall

Gamal Abdel Nasser ranks high in the great man school of history in the sense that he did set the course of events. As a pan-Arab leader committed to solving the Palestinian problem, he was the reason that Arabs and Palestinians realised the need for wakefulness.

What came along after Nasser overthrew the monarchy and became the sum and centre of Egypt’s political life were some “distinctly Palestinian organizations or pan-Arab organizations dominated by Palestinians”, in the words of Haifa University Professor As’ad Ghanem.

In his 2013 paper ‘ Palestinian Nationalism: An Overview ‘, Professor Ghanem lays out the changing course of Palestinian national consciousness, ie its state of being as a nation, even in its own mind.

The organisations that came into being included:

** the Palestinian N…