Source: Article by Micheal Oren, online here.
The Six Day War sparked Palestinian nationalism, which was almost
non-existent before 1967 because, according to Oren, “the Palestinians
realized that they could no longer look to any Arab leader to redeem
Palestine for them and so they began to look to themselves. This is
why the Palestinian Liberation Organization emerges immediately after
the war as a major force in Arab politics.” And “while the
PLO had been created by Nasser in 1954 as a sort a straw organization;
it didn’t command any type of legitimacy, certainly among Palestinians,
before the Six Day War.” However, in the immediate years that
changed. As Oren tells us, “The PLO as an umbrella group began
to take in all the Palestinian organizations, including Al-Fatah,
which wasn’t part of the PLO before that. And a year after, in 1969,
we saw Yasser Arafat emerge as the chairman of the PLO.”
Source: AlJazeera Documentary.
Links:
Infoplease
– History of the PLO
Wikipedia
– creation of the PLO
Docshare
– the History of the PLO
Arab-Israeli Conflict 1956-1979
Arab Israeli Conflict– The Middle Eastern Problem – Suez Crisis – Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) – Arab Summits 1964-65 – Six Day War – Hijackings by Arab Groups 1970-72 – Munich Massacre, 1972 – Yom Kippur War – Arab-Israeli Oil War of 1973 – Arafat at the United Nations – Israeli Occupation of the West bank and Gaza Strip – Ansar Sadat address to Israeli Parliament – Israeli invasion of Lebanon, 1978 – Camp David Accords – Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty