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Beyond Battlegrounds: Uncovering the Socio-Cultural Impact of the Palestinian Revolution on Jordan in the 1960s and 1970s"
Abstract
In the 1960s, Jordan became a central base of operations for the Palestinian revolutionaries, known as the fidayeen. Particularly in the wake of the 1967 military defeat, and people’s disillusionment with Nasserism and Arab Nationalism, the fidayeen became the new force seen as capable of liberating Palestine. Declaring armed struggle as the path for liberation and conducting operations inside occupied historic Palestine, the fidayeen sparked hope and vigor among the masses. No longer victims nor powerless, the fidayeen imbued a sense of power, dignity, and pride many were desperate for. As such, thousands of people, from Jordan and the region, joined the ranks of various Palestinian factions. The Palestinian Revolution was also felt beyond the Arab world. Filmmakers from France, Italy, and Japan arrived to document the fidayeen’s struggle, journalist-intellectuals came to capture the revolutionary bases, training camps, and schools, all the while doctors from Egypt and Cuba came to provide them vital medical training and support. In such context, Jordan did not only serve as an important military-base for the fidayeen but the Palestinian Revolution had a direct impact on its social, cultural, and gender relations, where a renewed political consciousness resembling that of the 1950 emerged. Despite the significance of the Revolution’s presence in Jordan, this historical era is often reduced to a set of clashes between the armed Palestinian factions and the Jordanian military in 1970—the year the fidayeen were expelled from the country—glossed as “Black September” or crudely categorized as a “civil war” in Jordan. Utilizing oral histories, memoirs, newspapers, photographs, this paper argues that historical attention to the revolutionary actions and network-building taking place in Jordan in the 1960s not only addresses a gap in the historical narrative of the Palestinian revolution; it also allows us to better see the ways that the Palestinian Revolution impacted Jordanian society, the transnational character of the Palestinian struggle, and the silences in our historical narratives.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Jordan
Palestine
Sub Area
None