The Emergence of Palestine as a Global Cause

Abstract

In the late 1960s, Palestine became an iconic signifier of solidarity and support for the Left, but also a transgressive tool that shaped and re-situated ideological positions at domestic levels. In this article, we attempt to answer why, how, and when this happened. Most research to date has stressed the global diplomatic offensive by the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization). Palestinian revolutionary thought and action are obviously the primary explanatory factors for the emergence of their cause internationally. However, a one-sided approach blurs the agency of the global revolutionaries and solidarity activists who helped elevate Palestine to a global cause. This article takes a comparative approach and uses Denmark and Norway as two illustrative examples of Palestine’s transformation into a global leftist cause. Denmark and Norway are central cases because solidarity movements in Scandinavia developed early on, and because they exemplify how Fatah, in Norway, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in Denmark, advanced different models of solidarity and cultural diplomacy. We compare these two cases with new evidence from other countries in order to summarize how a cultural transfer of symbols, interpretations, experiences, and ideological positioning took place in the 1960s and 1970s through meetings, translations, and organizational links.