Israel - Palestina

Palestinian Nationalism: An Overview
The first steps in the development of the Palestinian national movement were taken in the early twentieth century and were strongly influenced by the Zionist movement and the Jews’ aspirations to establish a state. They emerged from the Emir Feisal’s abortive attempt to establish a state of “Greater Syria” and the subsequent institution of the British mandate over Palestine, as provided for by the Sykes-Picot agreement that allocated Syria and Lebanon to France and “Southern Syria” (Jordan and Palestine) to Great Britain.

This political separation helped reinforce Palestinian national consciousness at the expense of Pan-Syrianism. During the 1920’s and 1930’s, real attempts were made to establish national institutions and develop organizational structures for the movement. Special efforts were invested in founding Muslim-Christian societies in the larger cities and, later, nationalist societies that were considered to be “more advanced” forms of organization than the confessional societies. Various bodies were established to represent all or most of the Palestinian population. The first of these was the “Palestinian Arab Executive Committee,” in 1920, soon followed by the “Palestinian Higher Committee,” headed by Haj Amin al-Husseini. These organizations made a serious contribution towards crystallizing the early ideological lines of the Palestinian national movement and its arguments for the existence of a Palestinian people with a right to a Palestinian homeland.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.18.2.11?seq=1