ABSTRACT
The Palestinian political project evolved into an attempt to undo an-Nakba and re-establish the links between Palestine and the Palestinians. Palestinians used to imagine and speak of Palestine as the totality of everything within the Mandate map. Palestinian political orientations were divided mainly along the lines of pan-Arabism, regionalism and Marxism. Pan-Arabism helped crystallize Palestinian self-representation as part of the al-qawmiyya al-arabiyya, and therefore local nationalism did not appear as a nodal concept until 1968. For Palestinians the political and social order that followed an-Nakba represented provisional and temporary conditions. Socialization and referentialism played a significant role in orienting Palestinian perceptions of the possible and the realistic. The Palestinian leadership interpreted the neoliberal post-Soviet Union narrative of the new world order as attentive to Palestinian national rights, and it therefore seemed appropriate to work from within, and be part of, this order.
