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- [00:01]
William Dalrymple
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter. Sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:19]
Eugene Rogan
morning run level it up. TikTok has pacing tips, breathing drills, recovery hacks from 5k to marathon. Real runners, real progress. Train smarter, not longer. Download TikTok now.
- [00:34]
Anita Anand
We gather here tonight to bring women back to their rightful place.
- [00:39]
Commercial Announcer
The Testaments A new Hulu Original series from the executive producers of the Handmaid's Tale.
- [00:44]
Anita Anand
It's easier to accept a story than
- [00:46]
Eugene Rogan
believe that the people around you are monsters.
- [00:48]
Commercial Announcer
The battle isn't over. There comes a time when you have
- [00:51]
Eugene Rogan
to take action, when you have to choose your own destiny.
- [00:55]
Anita Anand
Never quite as it seems.
- [00:57]
Commercial Announcer
What's the new Hulu original series? The Testaments, Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.
- [01:09]
William Dalrymple
This episode is brought to you by Attio, the aicrm the larger an empire becomes, the harder it is to know what's happening across it. Modern organizations face the same sort of problem, and ATTIO helps solve it. ATTIO is an AICRM designed for how teams really operate. Sync your email and calendar and you're up and running in minutes. From there, ATTIO brings your conversations and contacts together in one place so your team can see what is happening in real time. AskAttio goes a step further. Simply ask questions about your pipeline, which deals are moving fastest, where the momentum is building, or what needs attention next and and get a clear answer in moments. With attio, you can focus on the real work of building your empire from day one onwards. Try Attio for free@attio.com Empire.
- [02:24]
Anita Anand
Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand.
- [02:27]
William Dalrymple
And me, William Dalrymple. And we have back with us our wonderful friend Eugene Rogan, professor of Modern Middle Eastern history at Oxford and author of the Arabs, which I love and have been rereading this week in preparation for Eugene's triumphant return.
- [02:45]
Anita Anand
In the last episode, we talked about the position of different states, but what we do need to talk about is what all of this meant. The aftermath of 1967 meant to to the people who lived in these areas because it has a profound effect on them.
- [03:00]
William Dalrymple
Eugene Absolutely.
- [03:01]
Anita Anand
So the west bank we're talking about, it is the largest Palestinian territory and we see in the weeks after 1967 a huge movement of humanity. Around 200,000 people leave the West Bank. Tell us A little bit about that.
- [03:16]
Eugene Rogan
When countries go to war, civilians leave. It's the natural thing to try and protect your family, to take to the road and get away from the scene of warfare. And some 200,000 Palestinians, seeing the intense warfare that emerged in June 1967, did the sensible thing and took their families to safety in Jordan. And remember, in the course of the war, the bridges are bombed, the roads are cut off. It becomes very, very dangerous. Perhaps more surprising is how the vast majority of Palestinians in the west bank choose to stay. And they do so in the sure knowledge that those who leave Palestine who left in 1948 were never allowed to return. They thought that by staying in the west bank and facing the Israeli occupation that they would stand a better chance of being able to retain their land, their property, their lives, and negotiate for some sort of return to the status quo as it had been before the war. In this, they were, of course, to be disappointed. What Israel occupied in 1967, it retains until the present day. But it means that there's over 3 million Palestinians today living in the west bank who are the people who did not take to the road to leave the horrors of war.
- [04:32]
Anita Anand
But the 200,000 who do go to Jordan, I mean, they're going to a place which is already home to an enormous number of Palestinian refugees. So those numbers swell considerably.
- [04:43]
Eugene Rogan
So, yes, Jordan had been the most important reception area for Palestinian refugees after 1948, and following the annexation of the west bank and East Jerusalem by the Hashemite Kingdom, the Palestinians in Jordan become citizens. They're the only exile population of Palestinians to gain citizenship rights in an Arab state. And they did so not just because the Jordanians were nice people, but in retaining the territory of Palestine, the Jordanians acquired those Palestinians and made them citizens. What this means is for the 200,000 fleeing the June war entering into the east bank of Jordan, they find themselves among many Palestinians, refugees of 1948, citizens of the state, people who are politically active and mobilized, but also very concerned about their vulnerable position as Palestinian citizens of a Jordan that sees itself as the primarily responsible to the tribes and villagers who were originally from the east bank of the Jordan, the Jordanians of the East Bank.
- [05:50]
William Dalrymple
Has there been much tension between those from the west bank and those in the East Bank? Have there been riots in Amman at any point in Jordan's history?
- [05:59]
Eugene Rogan
You know, in the period before 1967, I can't recall any rioting going on between East Bank Palestinians. Remember that for most Palestinians, the deal they got from Jordan was better than any other exile community in the Arab world. And so they had something to preserve. They were in government, they played a role in Hashemite affairs. They were successful business people, they owned houses. And so, in a sense, because they had something to conserve, it made them relatively conservative in the Jordanian context.
- [06:32]
Anita Anand
And for those who stay, for those who say, look, actually it's our best bet to keep the land that has belonged to our families for generations, what is the system that immediately begins to be constructed around them?
- [06:47]
Eugene Rogan
For the Palestinians who decide to stay in their homes and lands in the west bank, they find themselves under Israeli military rule. And it's an important point, though it sounds terrible. The fact of remaining under military rule was a way of recognizing that the land was occupied and that it did not have a permanent defined status. Were it to pass under civilian rule, it would then begin to enter into the realm of annexation, which is something that Israel has, to the present day, never done.
- [07:19]
William Dalrymple
Aside from East Jerusalem, though, is imminently discussing as we record.
- [07:25]
Eugene Rogan
The discussions that go on about annexation in the 21st century are quite different from where the world was in the 1960s and 70s. But already Israel had annexed the eastern parts of Jerusalem following the occupation of the city as part of the unification of Jerusalem as Israel's eternal and undivided capital. This is the way Israel has framed its position in Jerusalem. The international community continues to view the annexation of East Jerusalem as illegal under international law, and that East Jerusalem remains occupied territory. But the rest of the west bank is under military rule, where the military is looking for local leaders to be able to organize local government at the town and village level. And that will lead to the rule of mayors in the major towns and congregations of the west bank operating under the umbrella of Israeli military rule.
- [08:19]
William Dalrymple
And all this is a big shock, isn't it, Eugene? Because as we heard in the first episode, the Arab radio stations are proclaiming great victories. They're saying there's Arab jets flying over Tel and so on. And suddenly jeeps full of Israeli commandos are turning up in Ramallah, in Nablus, in Jenin. And these people are finding themselves under occupation. To their own surprise, they're not expecting this to happen.
- [08:46]
Eugene Rogan
No, I think that for Palestinians in the west bank, the expectation was that the Arab world would win that war. And just as loss was not contemplated, so it was frightening because Palestinians did not know what would happen to them under Israeli occupation. Would they be lined up and shot? There were instances of atrocity. In 1948, one thinks of Deir Yassin,
- [09:10]
William Dalrymple
or in 53 in Gaza and in Gaza.
- [09:13]
Eugene Rogan
So there had been instances of atrocity that made Palestinians fearful of their safety under Israeli occupation. For the most part, those fears were unfounded. And the Palestinian communities that came under Israeli occupation found that they were safe in their homes and not subject to atrocity or massacre. But they didn't know that. And so it was a moment of uncertainty, of fear. The cataclysm came with so little warning, they were so ill prepared for it. This is perhaps why a majority chose to remain as well. They simply had not been preparing for the risk of sudden collapse. Occupation.
- [09:50]
William Dalrymple
So in terms of administrative rules, the Israelis are applying legal measures that the British put in place originally during the Palestinian revolt in 1936 to control villages. There are systems of administrative detention whereby military courts can sentence you. There's no jury system. It's quite an oppressive system.
- [10:12]
Eugene Rogan
The oppressive apparatus that Israel inherited from the British Mandate has been used to stifle Palestinian dissent from very early in the occupation. These are measures that are applied to against dissent. And in the initial aftermath of occupation, the Palestinians were not themselves organized. It's interesting because Yasser Arafat, head of the Fatah militia, saw an opportunity in Palestinians on their land under occupation. The whole example of, let's say, Algerian resistance to French occupation motivating Palestinian revolutionaries meant that there could be a sort of Palestinian maquis in which guerrillas might be able to operate, mobilize Palestinian resistance. And he quickly infiltrates into the west bank shortly after Israeli occupation and tries to mobilize resistance to the Israelis, but finds that he just doesn't have the scope for maneuver, that the Israeli army is too strong on the ground and that the repressive apparatus is too effective. And so he's forced to abandon hopes of stirring a revolt in occupied west bank territory to withdraw across the Jordan river and base his operations on the Jordanian side of the river to try and advance the goal of the liberation of Palestine.
- [11:27]
Anita Anand
You've got these sort of the modeling on the old British regulations, but you also have a fallback on Ottoman law as well. I mean, tell us a little bit about what kind of effect that has on land provision or land ownership.
- [11:42]
Eugene Rogan
Well, the State of Israel always took the existing legal systems that had applied to the territory of Palestine as an inheritance. And if you think about it, it takes time to create a corpus of law of your own. So start with the laws such as they were. And for the Israelis, that starts first and foremost with Ottoman law. And then the laws as applied under the British Mandate, civil as well as the Emergency regulations we just discussed. And when it comes to the land order, the British, too, had played a bit with trying to work with Ottoman land norms. One of the first things the British do is to translate the corpus of Ottoman land law to give them a basis to put in place a land regime that would get the consent and would fit with the precedence of the existing situation on the ground.
- [12:32]
Anita Anand
Okay, so, I mean, there's the familiarity aspect, but there's also this idea of marwat, or dead land. Can you explain what that is? It was a big deal in the Ottoman context. How is it employed here?
- [12:44]
Eugene Rogan
Well, Moabat land was precisely the territory that allowed mobile people to ride their goats over land without fearing that a landowner is going to drive them off.
- [12:54]
William Dalrymple
Is that where it starts off? I haven't taken that in. So this is provision for Badu.
- [12:59]
Eugene Rogan
You know, it's funny, but even in, let's say, 1980s Amman, I would see empty lots filled with herders riding their goats through to graze them wherever grass was growing after spring rains. It just. The idea that you have a right to roam with your herds and to graze is one of those common rights that I think moatt represents. But it meant that it wasn't titled land.
- [13:25]
Anita Anand
It doesn't belong to anyone. No one can claim it.
- [13:28]
William Dalrymple
What you call common land in an English village in the Middle Ages, it's
- [13:31]
Eugene Rogan
common land in the English sense. And in a sense, it meant that no one was taxed on the land.
- [13:37]
Anita Anand
Right.
- [13:37]
Eugene Rogan
Because title under the Ottoman system was really not just about your rights to a property as shown in a deed, but identifying who the taxpayer was. And the British begin to trouble that because you get competition over ownership of land through Jewish immigration and through the Jewish Agency's very determined bid to acquire land. So this creates competition over land. That means that land regimes take on new importance. Mo' wat, as untitled land, becomes something that the occupational authorities moving into the west bank are able to seize on as a way to turn it into state land for Israel.
- [14:14]
William Dalrymple
These hilltops, which had previously been for grazing, gets turned into land for settlement. And over the end of the 1960s and through the 1970s, we see Hilltop after hilltop taken, fenced off and new
- [14:27]
Eugene Rogan
settlements established, though not exclusively muat land. And I would say that Israel in the occupation has not confined itself to land for which people don't have title deeds. We can point to many settlements that were established on land in which Palestinians claim to have title, but the title was not enforced. The status of Mowatlan makes it seem easier to Acquire. But I don't think that's been a particular constraint.
- [14:49]
William Dalrymple
Eugene. When I started traveling in the West bank in the 80s and covering the intifada as a young journalist, the thing that struck me as particularly oppressive was this court system that while Israeli settlers had the right to vote in Israeli elections and could have all the legal rights that a democracy in Europe or America would promise its citizens, the Palestinians under occupation had a military court system. And that if they did anything wrong or if they were hauled in by the army or didn't pay their taxes, they go before a military judge with a 97% conviction rate. Annual proceedings in HEBREW So you can
- [15:28]
Eugene Rogan
imagine the disadvantage that puts Palestinians in. And I guess their only recourse then would be to try and seek redemption through the Israeli Supreme Court. And I would say that the Supreme Court has found in favor of Palestinians where they can demonstrate that Israeli actions have been unconstitutional. So the justice system, however, is clearly slanted towards the interests of the Israeli occupiers and against those of the Palestinians.
- [15:56]
Anita Anand
The picture that we have of modern Israel and the Palestinians who work and live in the occupied territories is these huge lines that are waiting of Palestinians who need to cross over into Israel. When does that start happening?
- [16:11]
Eugene Rogan
Well, it's hard to imagine today, Anita, but, you know, in the 70s, 80s, the border between Israel and the Palestinian territories was very fluid. It was very open. And for Israel, Palestinians in the west bank immediately become a source of cheap labor. They will go to work on construction sites and they are paid wages that would be lower than what Israelis would expect to be paid. And there's a lot of access to Palestinian markets in the occupied territories by Jews trying to get around Shabbat restrictions and whatnot, also where they might get produce at lower prices. So there is a sense of a labor market and other markets that can be exploited by Israel. And for the Palestinians, it becomes a very important source of livelihood. While maybe they were being paid less than Israeli workers would get in Israel, they were getting paid more than they were expected to get in Palestine itself. And so for Palestinians, they will look back on the 1970s as relatively good times compared to what was to follow.
- [17:20]
William Dalrymple
And when you go around the west bank, you see lots of quite sort of prosperous housing in Palestinian villages and towns, some of which comes from remittances sent from cousins working in Kuwait or whatever. But quite a lot is coming from working in Israel. And unquestionably, we've described all the very strong negative features of the occupation, but there's no question that the Economy takes a turn for the better after 1967. And that people's personal prosperity has gone up after the occupation, amid all the loss of rights and so on. There is economic benefits.
- [17:58]
Eugene Rogan
And I think in peacetime in the west bank, the scope for cohabitation between Palestinians and Israelis was demonstrated. There is a tendency to say it's unthinkable that Palestinians and Israelis might be able to live side by side. But we can definitely point to times in recent history where, under terms of a very unfair and unequal occupation, I don't wish in any way to sound like it was a good thing. Nonetheless, the cooperation and cohabitation were demonstrated.
- [18:29]
William Dalrymple
I interviewed various artists who tried to have exhibitions at this period, in the early days of Israeli rule. And it was a kind of astonishingly blunt system. There was a woman called Vera Tamari who I interviewed in Ramallah. And she was telling me how that the Israelis used to hit very heavily on the League of Palestinian Artists, which was the kind of union of artists who were organizing a lot of the exhibitions. And they had to have permits to show their work, and their art was censored. Several artists were imprisoned, often on charges that they were painting the colors of the Palestinian flag. And they would say, you can paint, but don't use red, white, or black. And they would imprison you if you use those colors. So you couldn't paint a poppy or a watermelon. They were the wrong colors. And often this was just down to the artistic judgment of the officer in charge. That one guy would be perfectly reasonable. Another guy would imprison these artists and shove them in jail.
- [19:25]
Eugene Rogan
The repression of Palestinian national identity was complete. So you were forbidden from showing a Palestinian flag. You were forbidden from talking about Palestine. As long as you were willing to be an Arab under occupation, you could get on with your life in security and more or less unmolested right through the 1970s. But the moment you began to promote the idea of national rights for Palestinian people outside of occupation, that's when you fell foul of the military administration governing the West Bank.
- [19:55]
Anita Anand
And what about the psychological transformation of Israeli society while all this is going on? What are people thinking saying there?
- [20:04]
William Dalrymple
I think if you talk to Israelis, they regard 1967 as this miracle said by God in many cases, that they have felt that they are extremely vulnerable in the 1967 borders, that there are all these Arab nations with these armies unseen in the distance, who could potentially arrive and drive them into the sea. And suddenly, after 1967, they feel more secure. They won a great victory. They can see the power of their own army and they've conquered, in their view, their biblical heartlands. The early Israelites are first found in the archaeological record in the hills of the West Bank. This is where the very earliest archaeological remains turn up. And they are dug at this point and you get this very nationalistic Israeli archaeology spree going on. Often Palestinians will criticize it because they dig through the Ottoman and the Byzantine layers to find the Israelite remains. But it's time of confidence for Israel. And where there had been anxiety, fear and nervousness before, there is this sense that God has given them a great victory. And this on the extreme end leads to the arrival of a whole range of religious parties which had been very small in the 1950s. From this point onwards, gather strength to the point where now they are running much of the government.
- [21:25]
Anita Anand
So far, we've been talking about the aftermath of 1967 and this enormous confidence that Israel has. But what happens to Palestinian confidence? Because at that time, in 67, obviously crushed. How long does it remain crushed? Join us after the break to find out.
- [21:47]
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- [22:17]
Alistair Campbell
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- [23:24]
William Dalrymple
Welcome back. So we're now going to talk about a crucial moment in, if you like, the mythology of Palestinian resistance. On March 21, 1968, there is a clash which oddly, in a sense, becomes this moment of Palestinian liberation.
- [23:44]
Anita Anand
We can't really discuss this without discussing a pivotal figure at this moment, and that is Yasser Arafat, who rises at this time. Now let's do a little pen portrait. First of all, Eugene, people will know the image, the kefir on his head over one shoulder, which Willie told me, actually he draped it in a way such as it would represent the land of Palestine. I didn't know that, Willie, until you told me. But tell us who he was, what his backstory is.
- [24:12]
Eugene Rogan
So Yasser Arafat stands out as the iconic Palestinian leader. Though his actual birthplace is under some dispute. Whether he was born in Palestine or in Cairo, he is nonetheless the quintessential Palestinian commando. He went to Cairo for his university education and immediately becomes active in student politics around the Palestine question. This gets him attention from the Egyptian authorities, ever supportive of Palestinian claims and rights. It also forces him under the watchful eye of security forces who don't want to see firebrand student politics creating turmoil in Egyptian universities. And upon graduation as an engineer, Arafat will seek his fortune in Kuwait. And it is there that he creates the most successful and enduring of all Palestinian militias, Fatah, the Movement for the Liberation of Palestine, and will bring together some of the most influential political leaders of the Palestinian liberation movement. It's Arafat who will launch the first armed struggle with the saika movement in 1964. And now, in the aftermath of Arab defeat in 1967, is Arafat who's looking to take the initiative.
- [25:30]
William Dalrymple
You painted this picture already of Arafat frustrated by the security system in the West Bank. That means he can't do there what the Algerians have successfully done against the French in Algeria. But he has his big moment at the Battle of Karame, March 21, 1968, a few months after the defeat of 1967. And this is absolutely central to understand Palestinian politics. Tell us about it. What happens in that moment?
- [26:00]
Eugene Rogan
Well, driven out of the West Bank, Arafat and his lieutenants established their base in a village in the Jordan Valley called Al Karame. And the name means honor. And it was obviously of great symbolic value because they were training guerrillas in Karami, it becomes a target for Israeli attack. Forewarned that the Israelis are mobilizing for a cross border raid across the Jordan river, the Jordanians suggest that Arafat and his men withdraw from the area. But they decide instead to stand their ground and take the Israelis on. The Jordanians take up positions with their artillery and the hills overlooking the Jordan Valley. And as the Israeli column enters across the Jordan river, the Jordanians open fire on the Israelis. But the Israelis have pretty much free movement to destroy the village of Karami. And they do so without running into too much opposition from Palestinians on the ground. It's only as they come to the end of their destructive incursion and are regrouping to retreat back into Israeli controlled territory that from underground bunkers Palestinian guerrillas or Fedayeens emerge, guns blazing, anti tank missiles on shoulders to engage the withdrawing Israelis. The Israelis now find that between Jordanian artillery and Palestinian attackers they're taking casualties. They lose tanks. And for the Palestinians, they could claim that the Israelis were forced into retreat under Palestinian pursuit and hot fire. It was in that sense the first victory against the Israeli army by Arab arms and it was led by Palestinians. And though the victory is totally symbolic,
- [27:47]
William Dalrymple
Will, yes, the figures, there's far more Palestinian casualties than there are Israeli casualties, a reality.
- [27:53]
Eugene Rogan
Palestinians lose about 150 men and I think the Israelis lose about 20. It's those sort of numbers.
- [27:59]
Anita Anand
But nevertheless this does one that's particularly for Arafat.
- [28:04]
Eugene Rogan
And even bigger, Anita, is the Fatah movement succeeding where Nasser and King Hussein had failed. This is an Arab militia defeating the Israelis in a way that Arab armies had not been able to do. And that inflames enthusiasm among Palestinians and among Arabs generally. And the most immediate consequence of Karami will be the flooding of recruitment centers with volunteers from across the Arab world who wish to come under the Palestinian banner and fight with Fatah and other militias for the liberation of Palestine. This is when the Palestinian movement really takes flight.
- [28:46]
William Dalrymple
How does the news get out? Do Arab TV stations cover it? What's the mythologizing of it? How quickly does that happen?
- [28:54]
Eugene Rogan
You know, for an Arab world starving for good news? You could see where this was, a story that every news agency, print and broadcast alike was running. And so, yes, I mean the word spreads very quickly. And the heroics of Karami are celebrated in Arab capitals right round the Middle east and North Africa.
- [29:16]
Anita Anand
And Arafat becomes the face of this, doesn't he? Because you know, he will appear in the COVID of Time magazine, he'll be invited to address Arab summits. He will not just be regarded as a soldier, but as a statesman. Very quickly after Karameh.
- [29:31]
Eugene Rogan
Well, I think it's the soldier reputation in 1968. That is the dominant one. So what you have is a kind of Arab Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, his fatigues, keffiyeh, sunglasses, always carrying a piece on him, whether it's a pistol or a Kalashnikov. This is the armed Arafat. He's gonna carry that armed Arafat image until his address to the United nations in 1974. But at this period, what's inspiring and mobilizing is the militant, well armed militia leader, the commando, Yasser Arafat.
- [30:06]
William Dalrymple
And the crucial thing is that this is the Palestinians for the first time themselves. They have their own homegrown hero. They're not relying on the Lebanese or the Syrians or the Jordanians and the Egyptians, nor are those countries particularly able to control this. This is now a self propelled force which becomes a problem for their hosts in Jordan pretty quickly.
- [30:31]
Eugene Rogan
Absolutely. And you know, if the Arab world is confined by the negativity of the three no's of Khartoum, the sheer electrifying energy of Palestinian military victory meant that the initiative had now passed from the Arab states to the Palestinian movement. When it comes to the liberation of Palestine, that makes 1968 the vital turning point. But then the question is, how do you mobilize an armed movement when you don't have territory? They're not Algeria. Algerians were mobilizing guerrillas to fight against the French on their own land. And the Palestinians are trying to mobilize action from across the frontiers of their own land. And they're trying to do so through Arab states, neighboring Israel, each of whom is fearful of the consequences of Palestinian activity against Israel, bringing Israeli reprisals against the territory of Egypt or Jordan or Syria.
- [31:29]
Anita Anand
And Jordan, just to remind people, has a majority Palestinian population. So they will have enormous sympathy for Arafat, for the plo. You can't just go in there and stamp on them. But then there is a point which allows him to do just that. And that's what now we know as historians is Black September 1970. Now, this is a pivotal moment. Eugene, talk us through what happens here.
- [31:56]
Eugene Rogan
Well, between Karami in 1968 and September of 1970, you have a period in which a number of different Palestinian militias are jostling for the agendas of seizing the initiative of bringing Palestine back into public debate, getting the name of the country back into the headlines. And this is a very ideological age, Anita. Variants of Marxism. You have your Maoists and your Leninists and your Stalinists all jostling for the ascendancy of whose solutions will drive the Palestinian revolution. And this is A revolution no one's talking about, just a liberation movement. This is meant to be a socially transformative moment where Palestinian working classes will achieve social revolution at the same time that they're achieving the liberation of their homeland. So the agenda is huge. Now the umbrella organization of the PLO is meant to contain all these different militias and organizations. Fatah is emerging, dominant, and by 1969, Yasser Arafat will become the chairman of the PLO. But that organization does include all the other militias. The Popular Front, the Democratic Front, General Command, all of them. And it is a debating arena with very little ground for agreement. And no one is particularly obedient to the authority of Yasser Arafat. Most challenging to Arafat would be the Popular front, led by Dr. George Habash,
- [33:23]
William Dalrymple
which is further to the left, is more ideologically Marxist than Arafat.
- [33:29]
Eugene Rogan
So the Popular Front, as its name suggests, any popular organization usually has a Marxist orientation, emerges from the movement of Arab nationalists and follows Nasserist trends towards Arab socialism to then take off on a truly Marxist direction. And these are the origins of the Popular Front who see in Marxism the social revolution that they wish to couple with Palestinian liberation. But their first target, interestingly enough, is a public relations war. They're the ones who are keen to bring Palestine back into the headlines. And they see the strategy of hijacking as the best way of doing so, because the moment you seize an airplane, you get the top of the news agenda. Their aim was not mass murder. It was not to destroy airplanes in the air. This is before the Al Qaeda type of suicide attack. Rather, they wanted to hijack airplanes, land them into countries where they thought Palestinians might get a fair hearing, allow themselves to be taken, arrested by the authorities and put on trial. And the trial could then become a show trial that could be drawn out as a way of making the case for Palestine for the public's eye. It seems to us a very convoluted way of getting there. But this leads the PFLP to a series of very dramatic hijackings that will increasingly lead them towards Arab capitals. There's one other element of the Popular Front's thinking, which is that the forces of reaction in the Arab world are getting in the way of. Of the liberation of Palestine. And no one in their thinking more reactionary than a monarchy. King Hussein is in the crosshairs of the Marxist movements of the PLO they talk about creating now. They're inspired more by Vietnam than Algeria, an Arab Hanoi. And what better place than Amman with its large Palestinian population, its regressive Monarchy. You want to start the Palestinian revolution in Jordan, create an Arab Hanoi in Amman and launch the liberation of Palestine from the Jordanian side. Then you'd have territory. Then you'd have infantry and air force and what it takes to mobilize a war against the Israeli enemy that would elude them as long as they were landless bands operating from different arenas. That's the picture that's going to lead us towards the collision moment of Black September.
- [35:59]
Anita Anand
What will end up happening is that hijacked aircraft are blown up on television. I mean, you will have the cameras trained on them. Passengers are released, I should say, before they're blown up. But this gives King Hussein, who's already feeling threatened and hemmed in by these new forces that want him gone, a justification for military reprisal. And that reprisal is huge, isn't it? And a huge number thousands of Palestinians are killed when he decides, okay, if that's what you're going to do, we're going to launch the military at PLO bases throughout Jordan. That's it. Had enough? Get out.
- [36:35]
Eugene Rogan
Well, Anita, September 1970 is an existential crisis for the Hashemite monarchy. Let's be clear. What's really at stake here is that the Palestinian movement is treating Jordanian territory as its own without reference to the sovereign authority, the king and his government, and it's the Jordanian military that really drives things to a crisis point. It's probably an apocryphal story, but it's repeated by Jordanians as well that tank commanders and infantry commanders descend on the palace with their tanks flying women's brassieres off their radio antennas saying, we are being emasculated by you allowing foreign militias to act on our sovereign territory that we, the army are here to defend. Whose Jordan is it? Either let us resolve this sovereignty crisis or else accept that you made women of your army. It was probably the justification that Hussein used to unleash what would prove to be a war of exclusion that drives every single Palestinian faction out of Jordan. And it starts in September of 1970 as largely urban based warfare. The Palestinians having been settled into areas in and around Amman that are in a sense, refugee camps that turn into city quarters. So these become the first venue and then it follows up north towards Jerash, into the Jordan Valley, up and towards the hills of Ajun, wherever Palestinian camps were held, where you have this drive by the Jordanian army to drive every single Palestinian faction of militia out. It's going to be the crisis that will be the last act of Gamal Abdel Nasser where working with his comrade King Hussein. As I said, the two Nasser and King Hussein had really come together after defeat in 67, but also with Arafat, now chairman of the PLO, who has found his authority undermined by the actions of the Popular Front and their hijackings, achieved without the permission of Arafat, Fatah or the plo, seen as a threat and a challenge to his authority. So everybody's a little compromised by the conflict in Jordan in September 1970. They go to Cairo. Nasser negotiates a resolution between these two sides, sees the last of his guests on their airplanes, goes home and has the fatal heart attack that will lead to the death of Nasser in September of 1970.
- [39:03]
Anita Anand
And he's only 52 years old. I mean, the age of him considering, you know, he's been such a colossal figure.
- [39:09]
William Dalrymple
There are extraordinary scenes, aren't there, Eugene? In the streets of Cairo, there is sort of massive mourning. This man who in some ways has lost his image as the liberator because of the defeat of 67, nonetheless in death is sort of recognized as this great Arab hero.
- [39:25]
Eugene Rogan
Well, I don't think the Arab world has ever seen the likes of Abdel Nasser. And I don't think that there will ever be a leader that achieves that unanimity of support across the Arabic speaking world. Even after he was defeated in 67 and so much reduced, he was nonetheless a giant of Arab politics. His death really was the end of an age. And I think it's not a bad thing in the sense that having Egypt dominate Arab states, the way that Nasser is able to do so was very disruptive to politics in the region. It was in no small way what leads the region to a catastrophic war in 1967. So a different kind of leader would probably serve Arab affairs better. But nonetheless, for people across the Arab world, they mourned the loss of one who they had thought had for a moment shown the Arab world to be players in the new international order. And now instead of there being one big Arab leader, one big Arab world, it would be a more fragmented Arab world of sovereign states pursuing their own interests alongside Arab interests. And for Palestinian rights. This would have implications, you know, that
- [40:38]
Anita Anand
outpouring of grief for a figure like Nasser. 5 million people. I've seen estimates of 5 million people pouring onto the streets of Cairo. The man who will take over is a very different kind of character. President Sadat, Egypt's new president. You couldn't get two more different creatures, could you?
- [40:57]
Eugene Rogan
No, I think that Sadat brought all the legitimacy of Having been a free officer from the very prelude to Revolution in 1952 to distinguished military career. But the man had no charisma. He was a pious villager from the delta who basked in the glory of Nasser, but reflected very little of his own. He was an easy man to underestimate. And I think both the international community and Israel underestimated him to their peril when he would lead Egypt to a very different kind of War in 1973. But none of that was apparent at the time of his succession to power in 1970. You had the sense that a giant had given way to a very negligible successor when Nasser died and Sadat became president.
- [41:47]
Anita Anand
It's true to say that this funeral, this huge outpouring of grief for Nasser is almost a sort of a pause in what was going on before and what will continue to go on now, which is King Hussein of Jordan deciding to stamp on the Palestinians who are operating on his territory. So what happens then after the funeral and the grief all dies down? And what happens to the Palestinians that he now determined to get out of Jordan?
- [42:11]
Eugene Rogan
The truce negotiated by Nasser doesn't really survive him. And Sadat doesn't have the same kind of authority to pull in Hussein and Arafat and keep them to a truce. In fact, from the Jordanians perspective, there remains unfinished business in the expulsion of Palestinians from their territory. And so immediately after the funeral of Nasser, hostilities resume between the Jordanian armed forces and the Palestinian revolution, the different militias. And sees Jordanians moving into all the areas they know full well where Palestinian training camps have been based, where concentration of Palestinian forces are. And they begin to target them in a kind of military sweep that's driving the Palestinians well out of Amman and out of all the territory of northern Jordan. And the Palestinians increasingly see their position untenable. And they begin to decamp from Jordan to resettle. They move to Lebanon.
- [43:10]
William Dalrymple
So just to be clear about this, Black September is indeed a very bloody business. There are severe Palestinian casualties, aren't there, Eugene?
- [43:19]
Eugene Rogan
And it's remembered by Palestinians down to the present day as a time where the Jordanian state turned on them. The violence of the suppression of Palestinians was another deep trauma. And I think many Palestinians felt it was a sort of new nakba driving them out of Jordan this time. And there are still neighborhoods in Amman where you'll see damage to building facades of the bullets fired in September of 1970. So, yeah, a very traumatic event, still a taboo subject in Jordan today between Jordanians and Palestinians.
- [43:51]
William Dalrymple
You arrived there immediately after this, Eugene, didn't you.
- [43:54]
Eugene Rogan
So my first visit to Jordan was in 1972. So I would have been there just when the final withdrawal of Palestinians had been complete and I think when Jordan was still very much recovering from the trauma of that event, but in a sense reassured that it had reestablished its sovereignty. I think in driving the Palestinians out of Jordan, King Hussein felt more secure on his throne and driving them out
- [44:21]
Anita Anand
of Jordan, they end up in Lebanon. Does Lebanon welcome them with open arms? Are they happy to be in Lebanon? I mean, what is the situation for those Palestinians who have been moved and moved and moved and moved again, again?
- [44:33]
Eugene Rogan
Well, Lebanon had been a major site for Palestinian refugees since 1948, and that had caused tremendous pressure on the Lebanese state system. It's very complicated, Anita, but it's worth remembering that Lebanon was created as a sort of power share between the different religious communities where positions of government are apportioned according to your religious community to this day.
- [44:56]
Anita Anand
That still exists.
- [44:57]
Eugene Rogan
That still exists. And the Palestinians who flock to Lebanon after 1948 are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims. And their presence in their hundreds of thousands destabilize the demographic balance of Lebanon with its political order based on the distribution of government posts, which was intended
- [45:16]
William Dalrymple
to be by its creators, the French, to be Christian majority. It was going to be a Maronite sanctuary. That was the point.
- [45:24]
Eugene Rogan
And by the time you reach 1948, it's already the case that Christians are in the minority of the population. We assume no census has taken in Lebanon since the 1930s. Censuses were revealing inconvenient truths. And to preserve this ascendancy of Christian rule in Lebanon, you had a freezing of things that was challenged by the Palestinians. You would not think Lebanon would welcome the Palestinian militias driven from Jordan, but they are forced to do so by an agreement imposed on Lebanon by Gamal Abdel Nasser. Again, one of the last acts of the wounded Egyptian president will be the Cairo Agreement of 1969, which gets the Lebanese government to agree that the Palestinian movement is allowed to prosecute its revolution against Israel across Lebanon's frontier. It turns the Lebanese frontier with Israel into a hot border. And this meant that if driven from Jordan, the Palestinian militias could reconstitute, regroup and relaunch their revolution, this time from Lebanese soil. But their presence in Lebanon, already destabilizing for politics in Lebanon now is an armed militia growing increasingly assertive of their position and already demonstrating how the Palestinian revolution challenges the sovereignty of the host nation, is creating trouble in Lebanon that in 1971, 72 is already beginning to pave the path towards destabilizing politics in Lebanon.
- [46:58]
William Dalrymple
So as we come to the close of this episode, the seeds are already sown for further conflicts to come. We have the prospect of the 1973 war as Egypt tries to get back Sinai. We have Sadat, a leader of a very different profile to Nasser, who will eventually make a peace with Israel at Camp David. And finally, we have the tragedy of the Palestinians and the Lebanese in Lebanon unfolding. The PLO have moved to Lebanon. They are preparing to make cross border incursions into Israel. And the result will be something that again resonates very much with us at the present, an Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
- [47:49]
Anita Anand
Till the next time we meet, then it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand, and
- [47:54]
William Dalrymple
goodbye from me, William Durimple.