Subaltern world events: the PFLP’s external operations, 1968–1970

This study introduces the subaltern world event as a distinct form within the repertoire of world events, long dominated by phenomena such as global sporting spectacles, world wars, scientific congresses, and economic summits. Using the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's ‘external operations’ (1968-1970) as an empirical case, it argues that aircraft hijackings and captive-takings were not reactive moves in a regional conflict but deliberate attempts to globalize the Palestinian struggle. These operations are reconstructed as event-based interventions through which the colonized momentarily reorganize the communicative order of world society. Drawing on the PFLP's semantic reservoir, the analysis shows how communication, organizational form, and face-to-face interaction enabled the subaltern to compel global attention and insert themselves into worldwide communication. Subaltern world events, though fleeting, reveal how globality is continually produced from below.