The International Dimensions of Palestinian Independence: the All-Palestine Government

I believe in Arab nationalism, but I also believe in privatizing the Palestinian decision-making to Palestinians. How similar today is to yesterday..!

Arab intervention in the management of Palestine in the last century was hurtful, oscillating between backing one Palestinian faction and not recognizing or withholding support from another..!

●      The Arabs' intervention to end the famous 1936 Palestinian strike was only the beginning of an Arab political intervention to manage Palestine according to the interests of some parties. The deep wound of the Palestinian division is merely one of the fruits of this Arab intervention, and despite that, those factions united with determination and cast their disagreements and divisions behind them when the Deal of the Century was announced... the 1947 partition project, and the declaration of Britain's exit as a colonial and mandatory state from the United Nations' administration of Palestine. In 1948, the Palestinian factions established, but too late, the "All-Palestine Government" which was the fruit of effort and responsibility by the Palestinian factions in Palestine, and before the Arab League, to market the idea and to mobilize Arab support, and then international support for it, given the gravity of the situation and the necessity of diplomatic action to create such a government at that time in order to take over what was called in the aforementioned deal "areas of the Arab state"... However, some Arab states strongly opposed such an idea, and some supported it, and Count Bernadotte, the international envoy on this matter in his 1947 report, pointed to the lack of enthusiasm of most Arab states secretly for the idea of establishing a Palestinian government, and some Arab armies entered Palestine to try to preserve lands of Palestine that the Palestinians were still defending, despite the paucity of resources, and the Arabs' intervention in dividing Palestinian activities, and convening conferences at times to support and at other times to condemn, by all available means... This Arab party has his group (his faction)... among the Palestinians—leaders and representatives—and the other likewise had its own... During this period the Arab League sometimes received Palestine's representative to the Arab League, whom it had appointed by its decision, and many other times it dampened its zeal and did not receive that representative, or rather did not invite him to attend Arab League conferences concerning the Palestine issue. The League tried to allocate Arab financial support to this government to enable it to conduct its affairs, but some members did not pay a single mill... The matters of tugging and pulling among the Arab parties in their management of the issue lasted... and the support funds ended at the amount of 5,700 Egyptian pounds, spent annually on a modest, ceremonial office for the All-Palestine Government in Cairo, then matters came down to a small monthly sum paid to the late Ahmad Hilmi Pasha, head of the government, who in turn was personally the representative specifically for Palestine in the Arab League... and the Arab Higher Committee, and individuals from the Arab peoples, tried as much as possible to provide financial assistance to the All-Palestine Government, and this government collected the amount of one Palestinian pound as fees for each Palestinian passport at that time, and it used it to disburse funds to needy Palestinian families whether in Palestine or in the diaspora. The Palestinian passport did not entitle its holder to enter the Arab countries except after he had obtained a re-entry visa to the Arab country concerned!

The Government of All Palestine was established in 1948—September—and was frozen shortly after its declaration by decision of the Arab League, which was torn by divisions over the Palestinian government and the handling of the Palestinian issue, and the Government of All Palestine was not allowed to operate properly except by issuing a limited number of passports and documents. In addition, some opponents of the idea blocked the government's staff from accessing funding, its various departments... or even the principle of borrowing from the Arab League...! Sometimes there were no available funds because some members of the League had not paid their share of subscriptions to the League, and at other times there was a liquidity crisis in the corridors of the Arab League.

Ahmed Hilmi Pasha died in June 1963, and in the period between the government's declaration in September 1948 and the death of its founder, the Palestinians' dreams of internal concord died—not only because of some Arab brothers, but because of the susceptibility of some Palestinians to division.....

The late famous journalist Mohammed Hassanein Heikal wrote a foreword to the book "Government of All Palestine" on its fiftieth anniversary—by the author Mohammed Khaled al-Az‘ar—warning of the loss of time: "Negligence is an element of timing, and trying to catch up with the caravans after their last shadows have disappeared behind the horizon".... adding, "On the land of the Middle East there is a crowding of crises that can all be seen through a single cell, which is the story of the experience (Government of All Palestine), and although it is a story that appears at first glance to be a scene from the past.... what is latent in it is present, subsequent in the future, recurrent and repeatable forever, by reincarnation.... As long as the signs, codes, and directives stored in the cell remain as they are, incapable, and perhaps not exposed to, the miracle of a new creation.!

All respect and bows before the greatness of the Arab sacrifices—peoples and armies—in holy Palestine... yet some regimes in the distant past, and in the present before us.... see in Palestinian independence nothing but a terror that could reach them if realized; therefore efforts are made to liquidate the issue and erase the glorious past and the sacred name ""Palestine"" forever.... To the Palestinians I say... enough division... it is time for internal unity, because Palestine, with the factor of time and the deals on offer, may not appear on the geographic atlas by the end of the century!.. Learn from the previous experience of the Deal of the Century prior to aligning against the current Deal of the Century.... with a new mode of thinking, so that it remains in our subconscious and declared thought, and deeply rooted... that we are an essential part of one Arab nation... and part of an Islamic ummah that unites us.!