Ghassan Kanafani (غسان فايز كنفاني) was an author, political journalist, editor and revolutionary born in Akka (عكّا), Palestine in 1936.
Kanafani’s father was a lawyer, and he grew up in a middle-class family, attending a missionary school in Yaffa. However, this all changed when at eleven years old he and his family were forced to flee their home. The family left Akka on the same date as the infamous Deir Yassin massacre in which at least 107 Palestinians were killed1, and they sought refuge in the Syrian capital Damascus. Kanafani began teaching at an UNRWA school while still a student himself and quickly incorporated himself within the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), becoming particularly fond of founding member George Habash2.
Kanafani would write short stories and political commentaries for weekly magazines such as Al-Ra’i, then later, al-Fajr while living in Kuwait. By 1960, Kanafani was on the move again to Beirut. Here he became an editor for al-Hurriyya (Freedom), and by 1963, became editor of the daily al-Muharrir (The Liberator), and was placed in charge of its monthly supplement Filastin (Palestine). From 1967 until 1970, Kanafani would again be entrusted as an editor working with al-Anwar (The Lights). Throughout this period Kanafani produced successful novels, plays, short stories, paintings, posters and graphics, amongst other theoretical political works under various pseudonyms. His political and revolutionary words continued to garner attention and inspire many across the Arab world.
Following the disastrous war of June 1967, George Habash amongst other Arab leaders began to re-examine the policies of the ANM. By December of 1967, a Marxist-Leninist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was founded and led by George Habash. The organisation’s aim was to achieve the National liberation of Palestine through armed struggle, utilising a progressive Marxist analysis. Kanafani played a role in the founding of the PFLP and was elected to its political bureau. He went on to become editor-in-chief of the PFLP’s weekly magazine Al-Hadaf from 1969. Kanafani would maintain this role until his assassination by the Israeli Mossad in 1972. An explosive planted in his car resulted in the death of both Kanafani and his niece.
The following article, Resistance is the Essence, was originally published around two months before the establishment of the PFLP. In it, Kanafani responds to Egyptian journalist Ahmed Baha’iddin, who in the aftermath of the June War of 1967 proposed the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, East Bank and Gaza. Kanafani criticises this standpoint from a humanist-Marxist perspective. He highlights not only the dispossession of Palestinian land, but the dispossession of the Palestinians themselves. Therefore, the remaking of the Palestinian human ran in parallel with the importance of the remaking of the Palestinian state. Kanafani reinforced this message in 1972 when discussing the Palestinian individual,
‘Political Movements resemble human beings. When a person is physically well, famous and wealthy, friends gather around him, and everyone supports him. But when he becomes old, sick and loses his money, the friends around him disperse. Now we are [as a resistance movement] passing through this stage, the stage, the stage of apathy, so to speak. The Palestinian individual feels that the dreams he built up over the last few years have been undermined. This is a painful feeling, you know, but I think many comrades share my opinion: that this stage is temporary. When the Palestinian discovers that we are fighting a great enemy that we cannot defeat in a few years, that our war is long term and that we will be defeated repeatedly, then their loyalty to the Palestinian revolution will not be as fragile and emotional as it is now. I believe that we can mobilise the masses again when we win our first new victory. I am confident that this victory will come.’3
Kanafani believed that only by revolutionising thought, transforming the individual through Marxist theory and practice, would the Palestinian Resistance gain total victory. Kanafani’s words below have stood the test of time when we consider the disastrous consequences of the Oslo Accords and the consequential Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1993-94.
Resistance is the Essence
The suggestion of Ahmed Baha’iddin on the issue of recreating a Palestinian state in Jordan and Gaza (al-Masur, 13 October) will appear to many as putting the horse before the cart. But I think the problem is doubly more difficult than that. And if now was a suitable time to open the old notebooks, to make it easy for us to become acquainted with the new pages, the worst thing about these notebooks is that the Arabs of Palestine, and the Arabs in general, rejected suggestions like this in 1948. And on 15 May of that year, as Israel announced the creation of its first government at midnight, the thought didn’t cross the mind of any Arab that announcing a Palestinian government that same night would change more than a single event of the 20 years that followed.
Is it possible to right these wrongs after 20 years, after a disaster even more bitter than the disaster of 1948? There is no doubt that it is possible, as long as we know from the start that this time it will be even more difficult and less effective than it would have been in 1948. But this does at all not mean that the suggestion is not a worthy entrance to a field whose gates now appear to be completely closed.
However, consideration of this proposal in the first place requires the recording of several points that are related, directly and indirectly, to the matter as a whole:
Firstly, that the biggest crime committed against the rights of the Palestinian people, after the crime committed by the Zionists in alliance with the imperialists, was the crime of dislocating the Palestinian people from their cause, and then expelling them from what remained of Palestine. This did not take place from 1948, but since 1936, when the waves of Palestinian revolution practically constituted a rising of the Arab movement for freedom, at a time when the Arab organisations were as yet unable to perceive the organic link between Zionism and colonialism, and felt unashamed in appealing to the Palestinians to end the revolution, relying on the promises of ‘our friend Britain.’
Secondly, the isolation of the Palestinians from their cause, whether it was intended or not, has led to the ‘dispossession of the Palestinian,’ after the dispossession of his land. And this comparison means something. Namely, that what happened on the level of the land happened to the human being. The Palestinian land was violated and the Palestinian was violated. What is left of the Palestinian land has not ceased to remain Palestinian, and so what is left of the Palestinian people has not ceased to remain, in the sense of struggle, Palestinian.
Thirdly, the question of the entity has remained negative, seemingly unable to rise to the required level, not least because land is necessary for such an entity, no matter how small the land is. But also because the Arab countries who had acted as the overseers of the Palestinian people would not be able to end this connection, which will be decided in practice by the Palestinians themselves.
It is these points, I think, that inexorably lead to the adoption of the proposals adopted by Ahmed Baha’iddin, if there is a genuine intention to support the Palestinian people to recover themselves and their land and take the lead again in the decisive field of struggle. However, the Palestinian state proposed by Ahmed Baha’iddin in the West Bank, East Bank and Gaza (and, I would add, with vast expanses on the borders of Syria) requires more than just a political decision based on geographical principles.
This brings us back to the story of the horse and the cart – and I think it would be a waste of time thinking about which is in front of the other, when right now, neither the horse nor the cart are within our hands.
The movement to create a ‘Palestinian state’ must inevitably go hand in hand with the ‘creation’ of a new Palestinian human being. And it is a role that the Arab countries collectively must take upon themselves – as long as they consider themselves guardians – to build it side by side with the people of Palestine themselves.
Palestinians are able, after 20 years of wandering and exile, to remain steadfast in the face of all of the treacherous conditions that confront them, and I do not think that they will give up their Palestinian identity, despite everything. Yet there is no doubt that the relationship between Palestinians has become one of exile and displacement, rather than a revolutionary relationship. And I think the demand for ‘land’ should be accompanied by a demand to create a new relationship between Palestinians, as well as between them and the Arab states. This question runs parallel in importance to the creation of a Palestinian state. Because this state will not be created as an ordinary state, but a ‘state of juncture,’ a ‘state of importance,’ a ‘state with an aim.’ This means the immediate demand – along with the creation of the state of Palestine – for the creation of a people who embody the cause of this state.
Here is not the space for detailed discussion on how this will happen. However there is no doubt that at the forefront of what needs to be done is to create a new relationship between the Arab states and the Palestinian people in order for this state to emerge, with the Palestinian cause as the ‘centre of the archway’ for Arabism. And then find a way, either through coercion or free will, to mobilise the Palestinian people, from all the wasted capabilities that I have discussed in relation to its particular field, to put in place a Palestinian and Arab strategy and carry out its goal.
All of this brings our attention to the dangers of the caveats contained in the following points:
Firstly, that this state is considered the solution to the Palestinian cause. Secondly, that it will be an excuse for the international public opinion to get rid of the Palestinian cause; this is dependent on the fact that the world, wrongly, views the Palestinian cause as a refugee issue. Thirdly, that this state will fail to achieve international recognition. Fourthly, its ability to become, like Pakistan, split down the centre, or on the other hand, like West Germany under the imposition of the Holstein agreement. And fifthly, the ability of this state to remain steadfast in the face of Israeli reprisals.
It is encouraging to note that the Palestinian resistance in the occupied lands is more capable of linking the fate of the West Bank and Gaza than resistance elsewhere, and that certainly bolsters Baha’iddin’s theory and gives objective justification to the suggestions. And there is no doubt that this resistance, in its latest phases, presents two inseparable proposals: the creation of the state and the aim – the creation of a fighting people4.
- ‘The Deir Yassin massacre: Why it still matters 75 years later’, Al Jazeera, 9th April, 2023. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/9/the-deir-yassin-massacre-why-it-still-matters-75-years-later). ↩︎
- Other founders of the Movement were Wadi Haddad (Palestine), Salih Shibl (Palestine), Hamid Jabburi (Iraq), Ahmad al-Khatib (Kuwait), and Hani al-Hindi (Syria).
‘George Habash’, Interactive Encyclopaedia of the Palestine Question. (https://www.palquest.org/en/biography/6564/george-habash). ↩︎ - Originally published in Shu’un Falastiniyya, Issue 36, July 1974, Interview with the Martyr Ghassan Kanafani. Found in Ghassan Kanafani, Selected Political Writings, ed. Louis Brehony, Tahrir Hamdi, Pluto Press, 2024, pg 35-36. ↩︎
- Originally published in, Al-Adab, October 1967, found in Ghassan Kanafani, Selected Political Writings, ed. Louis Brehony, Tahrir Hamdi, Pluto Press, 2024, pg. 53-61. ↩︎
