Today, 62 years ago, on May 28, 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established.
For many around the world, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still presented as a conflict that was born as a result of the Six Day War in 1967. According to this view, had Israel withdrawn from the territories captured in the war, the conflict could have been resolved and peace achieved.
History, however, tells a different story.
The PLO was established three years before the Six Day War. Three years before Israel controlled Judea and Samaria. Three years before it controlled Gaza. Three years before there was an Israeli presence in eastern Jerusalem.
In other words, when the organization intended to lead the Palestinian national struggle was founded, the “occupation” of 1967 did not yet exist.
So what exactly was the PLO seeking to liberate?
The answer lies in the PLO’s own founding documents. The original Palestinian National Charter did not deal with an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria or Gaza, since these territories were not under Israeli control when it was written. Moreover, the charter denied the national rights of most Jews living in the State of Israel and presented Zionism as a project that must be eliminated.
In other words, the debate was not about where the border should pass, but whether Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel had any legitimacy at all. If the conflict had been only about the territories captured in 1967, there would have been no need to establish the PLO in 1964.
The very existence of the organization before the Six Day War demonstrates that the cities considered “occupied” by its leaders were not Nablus and Hebron, but Haifa, Jaffa, and Tel Aviv.
Therefore, for decades, the Palestinian struggle was directed not only against a particular Israeli policy, but against the very legitimacy of the Jewish state.
This fact does not negate the existence of real disputes regarding borders, settlements, or the future of the territories. However, it does require an understanding that the conflict did not begin in 1967.
When the PLO was established, Judea and Samaria were under Jordanian control, and Gaza was under Egyptian control. Nevertheless, no Palestinian state was established in those territories. The call for the “liberation of Palestine” was not directed against Cairo or Amman, but against Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa.
This is a historical fact that must not be ignored. We must remember how it all began.
The establishment of the PLO reminds us that the roots of the conflict run deeper than the question of borders. For many years, the dispute was not only about where the borders of Israel should be, but whether Israel had the right to exist at all.
Therefore, any serious discussion about the future of the region must begin with an understanding of the past. Not because history determines the future, but because it reveals the underlying assumptions that brought us to the present.
On the day the PLO was established, three years before the Six Day War, one of the most important documents for understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was born.
It reminds us of a simple historical truth: the argument over Israel did not begin with the territories. In many respects, it began much earlier, with the very idea of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.
The writer is the deputy chairman of the Institute for Security Policy of the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF) and served as a policy adviser to former strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer.