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The All-Palestine Government (Arabic: حكومة عموم فلسطين Hukumat 'umum Filastin) was established in Gaza by the Arab League on 22 September 1948, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It arose in response to the failure of the Arab armies to prevent the incorporation of Palestinian land into the newly declared State of Israel, and the clear intentions of King Abdullah I of Transjordan to annex the West Bank. As such, it was the first attempt to establish a Palestinian state.
On October 1, 1948, an independent Palestinian state in all of Palestine was declared, with Jerusalem as its capital. The Prime Minister was Ahmed Hilmi Abd al-Baqi and the Foreign Minister was Jamal al-Husayni. The All-Palestine Government formally adopted the Flag of Palestine that had been used by Palestinian nationalists since 1917. The state was recognized by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, but not by Transjordan or any non-Arab country.
Despite its lofty goals, the All-Palestine Government proved to be deeply ineffectual. The Palestinians, and the Arab World in general, were shocked by the speed and extent of the Israeli victories, and the ill-preparedness of the Arab armies, who were poorly equipped. This, combined with the expansionist designs of King Abdullah, cast the Palestinian leadership into disarray. As such, Egypt under King Farouk I exerted strong control of the government, which had little influence or funding.
Avi Shlaim writes:
The decision to form the Government of All-Palestine in Gaza, and the feeble attempt to create armed forces under its control, furnished the members of the Arab League with the means of divesting themselves of direct responsibility for the prosecution of the war and of withdrawing their armies from Palestine with some protection against popular outcry. Whatever the long-term future of the Arab government of Palestine, its immediate purpose, as conceived by its Egyptian sponsors, was to provide a focal point of opposition to Abdullah and serve as an instrument for frustrating his ambition to federate the Arab regions with Transjordan. (Shlaim, 2001, p. 97)
After the 1949 Armistice Agreements which ended the war, the Gaza Strip was the only area of Palestine under the sovereignty of the All-Palestine Government (78% of the British Mandate of Palestine had been seized by Israel, and the West Bank was soon to be annexed by Transjordan). In effect, the territory was under direct Egyptian administration, though Egypt never laid any claim to or annexed any Palestinian territory. Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and Egypt were issued All-Palestine passports.
After the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 and the rise to power of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egyptian support for Palestinian resistance and liberation efforts increased. The Suez War of 1956, when Israel invaded the Gaza Strip and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, was partially an attempt by Israel to definitively crush the Palestinian fedayeen of Gaza. Israel was later forced to withdraw from the territory it has invaded, and the All-Palestine Government continued to have official sovereignty in Gaza. The legal fiction of this situation was finally ended after the 1958 unification of Egypt and Syria in the United Arab Republic (UAR). The UAR President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, reasoned that the All-Palestine Government had failed to successfully advance the Palestinian cause, and officially annulled the All-Palestine government by decree in 1959. From then until Israel's capture of the Gaza Strip in the Six Day War of 1967, the territory would be directly governed by the UAR (Egypt retained the official name of the republic even after the end of the union with Syria in 1961).
References
- Shlaim, Avi (1990). The rise and fall of the All-Palestine Government in Gaza. Journal of Palestine Studies. 20: 37-53.
- Shlaim, Avi (2001). Israel and the Arab Coalition. In Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds.). The War for Palestine (pp. 79-103). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-79476-5
