Palestinian Intellectual History with Sabri Jiryis

The center was set up by the PLO in 1965 to serve as a hub for Palestinian intellectual production and to conserve and archive source materials on Palestine and its people.

Why was it important to have a research center that was explicitly tied to the political struggle?

I would reverse the question.

[chuckles] Why it is not important? Of course it is important.

I'll tell you why.

Then the day the Palestine Research Center was established, the decision was taken to establish it, I got my lawyer's license in Israel on the 20th of February 1965, exactly the same day the decision was taken by the executive committee of the PLO to establish the research center.

And at the same day, I was in Jerusalem, and I got my advocate's license.

As far as I know, and I think I know well, it was very clear and it was very natural that they established the center because at that time, the Palestinians were dispersed everywhere.

The Palestine question was almost fading away, going away.

All, all of Palestine was just taken away.

I mean, you people didn't know it.

You had part of it in Israel, part of it was the West Bank, which was...

And the other part was another strip which was under Egyptian military rule.

And the word Palestine had vanished from the UN in the early 1950s, before the mid of the 1950s, when Trygve Lie, the then secretary-general of the UN, had changed the item on the, uh, the list of the United Nations, uh, General Assembly from the Palestine question to the situation in the Middle East.

So when the PLO wanted the, you know, under the leadership of Shukeiri, the founder of the PLO, is that to have an institute to start researching the Palestinian question and documenting it.

That's all.

It was so simple, and that's exactly what the Palestine Research Center was doing and is doing until this day.