On 15 November, 1988, in Algiers, Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), stood before the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s parliament-in-exile, and proclaimed the Palestinian Declaration of Independence. Drafted by the celebrated late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, the text claimed sovereignty over the territories Israel occupied in 1967 – the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Some 75 countries recognised the declaration within a month, and more than 90 had done so by early 1989, giving the Palestinian national movement unprecedented diplomatic momentum. Yet nearly four decades later, Palestinian statehood remains unrealised on the ground.

This historic declaration did not emerge in a vacuum but rather after a long fight against Israeli occupation. Two distinct developments forced the Palestinian liberation movement to make such an announcement. First, the eruption of the First Intifada, the popular Palestinian uprising, in December 1987 shifted the political centre of gravity to the occupied territories, compelling the PLO leadership in exile in Tunis to translate popular resistance into a concrete diplomatic platform. It was one of the rare moments in the history of the Palestinian struggle in which those living under brutal occupation forced their own will on their leadership abroad.

Second, King Hussein of Jordan’s formal severance of legal and administrative ties with the West Bank in July 1988 created a vacuum that forced the PLO to assert immediate authority. By making this move in Algiers, the PLO executed a major strategic pivot: invoking UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the 1947 partition plan, alongside UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, it implicitly accepted a two-state framework, trading the historical demand for total liberation for a sovereign state on 22 per cent of historic Palestine.

This major development in the Palestinian struggle had far-reaching diplomatic........

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