After the Colombo Conference was held, the Arab Committee doubled its activity to raise the Palestine cause in official and popular eastern forums. It then resumed its efforts following the convening of the Bogor Conference in Indonesia on 28 December 1954 and its decision to hold the Asian-African Conference at Bandung.
The Arab Committee found in the invitation to convene the Bandung Conference a valuable opportunity to strengthen Palestine’s ties with the Islamic and eastern states and to highlight the Palestine cause and what Western colonial policy and Jewish Zionist ambitions had inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people. It therefore intensified its contacts with the Colombo states and then with other states, urging them to participate in the Bandung Conference. It sent them memoranda and letters requesting that the Palestinian people be allowed to participate in the conference as observers.
God then enabled me, while I was in Egypt, to attend the Bandung Conference held in Indonesia in April 1955 with Professors Muhammad Ishaq Darwish (1) and Emil Khoury. We were a Palestinian delegation that traveled to the conference to pursue our Palestinian cause, which was then in the darkest days of its ordeal. No one at that time was thinking of inviting a delegation representing Palestine to the Bandung Conference, but we were determined to travel in service of our cause, even from behind the conference walls. We had hardly reached Bandung when the delegation of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, headed by His Highness Sayf al-Islam Prince al-Hasan, through its secretary Sayyid Abdallah ibn Yahya al-Alawi, offered that we become members of the Yemeni delegation. We gratefully accepted. The Syrian delegation, headed by the late Sayyid Khalid al-Azim, made the same offer, but we thanked it and informed it that we had already joined the Yemeni delegation. The appearance of our delegation at the conference in an official form surprised many conference members.
Some problems arose at the conference when Israel requested representation at the Asian-African Conference. U Nu, prime minister of Burma, and John Kotelawala, then prime minister of Ceylon, supported the request. But Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, prime minister of Pakistan, and Ali Sastroamidjojo, prime minister of Indonesia, strongly opposed it. President Nehru stood hesitant and perplexed between the two sides. The five states that invited the conference were India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Burma, and Ceylon. Nehru thought the problem could be resolved by not discussing the Palestine question at all, so as not to create disagreement between the states that had invited the conference and the states participating in it. But Prince Faisal, then head of the Saudi delegation, warned that he would leave Bandung immediately with his delegation if the Palestine question was not discussed, and all the Arab and Islamic states supported his position. Nehru was therefore forced to yield. Yet the presence of an Arab Palestinian delegation at the conference sessions worried him, because he feared that disagreement between those supporting Israel and those opposing it might cause the conference to fail. India’s ambassador in Cairo, Aliya Varang, had learned of the matter and did not facilitate our travel. He refused to stamp our transit passports for India despite our friendship with him.
Our appearance at the conference and attendance at the first official session therefore surprised Nehru and the other members. Questions and whispers arose in the meeting hall, and eyes turned toward us strangely, but the matter became a fact. The prime minister of the People’s Republic of China, Zhou Enlai, took an admirable position. He supported the Arabs and spoke forcefully about the Palestine cause, saying that it was one of the foremost issues that had to be discussed at the conference. I had met him privately and explained the Palestine cause to him, and he became enthusiastic about supporting it and showed great interest.
I also met President Nehru repeatedly. In one meeting, he invited me to his table, and I explained the Palestine cause to him. Indira Gandhi, now the prime minister of India, attended the meal. Nehru listened attentively and showed interest, but above all he was concerned that nothing should happen at the conference that might cause it to fail.
Despite all the obstacles and barriers erected by the states supporting Zionism at the Bandung Conference, the Palestine cause received great attention at that historic and momentous conference. The question was debated and discussed for three of the six days of the conference.
During our stay in Indonesia, during and after the conference, our Indonesian brothers welcomed us greatly, showed our cause exceptional care, and highly valued our efforts during the war on behalf of Indonesian independence. After the conference ended, the Indonesian government invited us and prepared for us (1) Muhammad Ishaq Darwish (1896–1974), from the city of Jerusalem, was one of the leaders of the Palestinian national movement and the nephew of the mufti.