Summary: Reading Time: 9 minutesIt might be going too far to call the post<a href="https://wp.me/p2iDfo-1d8"> 1967 Six Days War</a> era as the peak of Israeli dominance in the Middle East. That was still to come. But it was definitely the lowest of lows for the Palestinians. Out of this despair would arise the first man who would truly represent the Palestinians – Yasser Arafat.<br> <br> Consider what this small people group had experienced in the course of 20 years. First they had lost Palestine to the partition plan of the United Nations. Then they lost even their part in that as the Israelis took a portion of what was to have gone to the Palestinians after the 1948 Arab Israeli War. Their patrons, the Arab state took even more than the Israelis though as after 1948 the West Bank was considered part of Jordan and Gaza was considered part of Egypt. Then, even those territories where the Palestinians had lived under the oversight of the Arab states was taken by the Israelis in the 1967 Six Days War. There was little to hope for or expect any longer for the Palestinians.<br> <br> There was no Palestine!<br> <br> In fact, it was during this time period that the Israeli politician and leader Golda Meier made the famous statement that there was no such thing in history as a Palestinian people. This was a famous myth that many still believe today. It’s a historical perspective painted by politics instead of facts. (<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-what-israelis-call-palestinians-and-why-it-matters-1.5424214">Check out this interesting article from the Israeli publication Haaretz</a>.)<br> <br> By the end of the Six Days War however there was reason to believe that while there certainly had been a people known as Palestinians in local history, there might not be such a people much longer. They were without homes, without lands, without a voice. The Arab states that had previously supported them had been thoroughly defeated in the recent fighting.<br> <br> The Palestinians of 1968 had zero leverage or negotiating power. We could add to this list that by the end of the 1960s, the Palestinians were finally running out of hope.<br> <br> The PLO Before Arafat and the Six Days War<br> <br> We saw the creation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in an earlier post in this series. At its inception it was a far cry from what it would one day become. It was more a mouthpiece for Nasser’s dreams of pan Arabism.<br> <br> Its ranks were made up mostly of the Palestinian elite and upper middle class. This in itself separated it from any true representation of the Palestinians. Most of the Palestinian people were poor.<br> <br> The original design of the PLO allowed it to present a constant voice of outrage, anger and cries of injustice towards the Israelis on behalf of the Arab states but it did little for the Palestinians themselves who the PLO claimed to represent. Therefore the PLO had the strange status of representing the Arab states in the name of the Palestinians but not the Palestinians.<br> <br> In the early years most of the politics presented by the PLO were cries that Israel had no right to exist or Israel should be wiped off the map. It was highly focused on Israel – not the Palestinians. For the rest of the world, the PLO represented the Palestinians. For the Palestinians themselves, this was not a living reality.<br> <br> The 1967 Six Days War changed all of this.<br> <br> Yasser Arafat<br> <br> In yesterday’s post, when we looked at the buildup to the Six Days War I mentioned the “war of attrition” that was taking place throughout the early 1960s between Palestinian guerillas and Israel. These small Palestinian fighter units would creep across borders and into Israel, usually at night. They would carry out bombing or sabotage missions and then creep back across the border leaving Israel to counte...
