My paper will return to the first Intifada- the popular, unarmed national uprising that erupted in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) in December 1987 and persisted through the early 1990s – and to the political resolutions of the Palestinian National Council (PNC) that concurred with it, in an attempt to explain why a highly coordinated Palestinian endeavor, which gained world-wide moral and political support of the international community, nevertheless failed to deliver the anticipated concrete outcome. Readdressing this question, which, at the time engaged observers and researchers intensively but has ceased to attract much scholarly work in recent decades, appears to me to be of much validity in today’s circumstances. Looking back at the history of the Palestinian national movement since the 1967 War, the first Intifada looms large as the time when the joint effort on the part of the OPT-based unified leadership of the uprising (the UNLU) and the exile-based leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) culminated in a political move that possessed a considerable potential to advance Palestinian independence. I am referring to the resolutions that were adopted by the PNC in its 19 th session in Algiers, which took place in November 1988, at the height of the uprising; namely, the PLO’s political program and the Palestinian declaration of independence, both of which were anchored in the acceptance of UN resolutions 181, 242, and 338. In terms of timing, these decisions came in the wake of mounting pressures that were exerted by the UNLU on the PLO’s leadership to proceed in this direction. In terms of content, their adoption signified the convergence of two processes; the political moderation of the PLO, which began in 1974, and the structuring of the Palestinian national struggle in the OPT around mass-based resistance to the Israeli occupation. The strength that inhered in this convergence was subsequently reflected in the warm embrace that the PNC’s resolutions received at the United Nations General Assembly. In fact, UNGA resolutions 43/176 and 43/177, which enjoyed the support of all member states with the exception of the US (and Israel), called not only for the withdrawal of Israel from the OPT and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, but also for the implementation of the proposed PLO peace initiative. Within approximately two years, however, the Bush administration was able to overturn this unprecedented political achievement of the PLO. I will try to explain why.