Emergencia, articulación y declive del Movimiento Nacional Palestino durante el periodo de entreguerras

Abstract

The Palestinian National Movement (PNM) of the interwar period is revisited using a comparative perspective that examines the actors involved and also external actors and that, together with other contributions made by recent studies, sheds new light on the movement's structural weaknesses and limitations in overcoming the colonial challenges it faced. Originating in unison with Arab nationalism in the Ottoman domains of the Middle East in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the PNM confronted the challenges, both material and existential, of the Zionist colonial project endorsed by Great Britain, the Mandate power in Palestine. Never fully consolidated, with a fragmented structure and weak leadership, the PNM opposed Zionist plans using predominantly peaceful resistance for nearly two decades until all of its hopes were dashed. This, along with the gradual de- mographic and political transformation of Palestine, led to the radicalization of its social bases and one of the earliest anti-colonial rebellions of the twentieth century. The repres- sion and dismantling of the PNM in 1939 left Palestinian society extenuated and deprived of a national movement  and political leadership much needed at  a crucial moment in its history, when its territory was subjected to partition.