Cau Kieu Collective: Vietnam and Palestine

The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) established diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLO) in 1968, making it one of the first countries to do so.

In 1988, Vietnam also officially recognized the State of Palestine after the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in Algiers, Algeria.

Palestinian revolutionary groups like Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) were inspired by the Vietnamese Revolution and Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF), along with Cuban, Chinese, and Algerian revolutionaries. PFLP published pamphlets that studied the Vietnamese Revolution — viewing it as a model for guerrilla warfare due to Israeli military superiority, mirroring the brute strength of the United States over Vietnam.

“The Vietnamese people fully support the Palestinian people’s liberation movement and the struggle of the Arab peoples for the liberation of territories occupied by Israeli forces.” – Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnamese President, at the International Conference for the Support of Arab Peoples (1969).

In the 1970s, members of the PLO were given military training in Vietnam and even translated the works of Vo Nguyen Giap, leading army general of Vietnam’s People’s Army, into Arabic.

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