Islamist Movements and the Palestine Liberation Organization: The Case of Rāshid al-Ghannūshī’s Alliance Proposal After the 1982 Crisis

This article examines the reaction of the Tunisian Islamist movement to the 1982 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) crisis through an analysis of key writings by Rāshid al-Ghannūshī published between 1979 and 1983. It shows how one of the founders and foremost intellectuals of the Ḥarakat al-ittijāh al-islāmī [Movement of the Islamic Tendency, MIT], known today as Ḥarakat al-nahḍah [Renaissance Movement], came to embrace and interpret the Palestinian question. Having overlooked it during the movement’s first decade, al-Ghannūshī linked the ‘Palestinian revolution’ to the liberation of Arab countries from their authoritarian governments through the resumption of the armed struggle. Moreover, by advocating a regional cooperation between the PLO and the Islamist camp, al-Ghannūshī’s writings represent one of the earliest attempts of reconfiguration the political alliances in the Arab region beyond the ideological binary Islamist-secularist.