PLO

PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization). The PLO was founded in 1964, as an umbrella organization for groups dedicated to the foundation of an independent Palestine. It is organized into three main bodies: the eighteen-strong Executive Committee serves as the decision-making body of the PLO and includes members from the major fedayeen, or commando, forces; the Central Committee, which advises the Executive Committee and is made up of 60 members; and the Palestinian National Council (PNC) which is the legislative body of the PLO and elects the Central Committee. The 483 delegates of the PNC are elected or appointed, depending upon the condition under which the members' constituents live. Its functions are assumed by the Central Committee when the PNC is not in session.

In the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, when the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights were occupied by Israel, the PLO assumed the role of a Palestinian ‘government in exile’. In 1968, Yasser Arafat was elected to the chairmanship of the Executive Committee. He proceeded to centralize power and become the undisputed leader of the Palestinian diaspora. Under his direction, the fedayeen organizations under PLO control launched bloody terrorist attacks in Israel and on Israeli interests abroad from their bases in Jordan.

International reprisals forced Jordan to outlaw the PLO and forcibly eject the organization from Jordanian territory in 1970. Most of the PLO fled from Jordan to Lebanon, from where they continued their raids on Israel for the next twelve years. By the mid-1970s international pressure had forced the PLO to limit most of its terrorist activity to Israel and the Occupied Territories. The PLO raids from Lebanese territory provided Israel with a good excuse to invade Lebanon in 1982. This invasion weakened the PLO greatly. Splits within the organization were intensified as its members were forced into exile in several Arab countries. The Central Committee relocated to Tunisia.

Perhaps the most successful action taken under PLO leadership was the intifada, or uprising, unleashed in the Gaza Strip in 1987. This war of attrition contributed to the political agreements in the early 1990s, which granted the Occupied Territories self-rule.

Although it was condemned as a terrorist organization, the PLO was also recognized as the political organization representing Palestinian interests. In October 1974, it was formally recognized by the UN General Assembly as the representative of the Palestinian people and was granted UN observer status. In 1988, Arafat publicly announced that the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized the right of Israel to exist, and the PLO was diplomatically recognized by the USA.

Intensive negotiations resulted in the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. This agreement paved the way for self-rule in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In January 1996, the Palestinians conducted their first democratic election to choose representatives for the Palestinian Authority (PA), which comprises an 88-member council and a president. Yasser Arafat was elected first president of the PA with 83 per cent of the vote. The PA is staffed largely with PLO members and members of the former fedayeen make up the PA's security forces.

Bibliography

• Cobban, Helena, The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power and Politics (Cambridge, 1984).
• Livingstone, Neil C., and Halevet, David, Inside the PLO (New York, 1990)

— Robert Foley

The PLO was created in May 1964 at the suggestion of President Jamal Abd al-Nasir of Egypt. The liberation of Palestine had increasingly become an issue in inter-Arab competition, with each government using or supporting different emerging guerrilla groups. While the PLO's creation indicated support for the Palestinian cause, it was also to the advantage of Arab governments to control and channel the energies and hopes of the Palestinians away from an independent use of violence. Attacks on the territory of Israel could lead to Israeli retaliation and expose the vulnerability of Arab governments. Initially supportive of the idea of the PLO, King Hussein of Jordan, in particular, was fearful that it could imply the formation of a ‘Palestinian entity’ which would include the West Bank: i.e. Palestinian land that had been annexed by his grandfather, the Amir Abdullah, 1948 as a result of the first Arab-Israeli war. To avoid this implication, the objective of the PLO was defined in its constitution as ‘the liberation of Palestine’ rather than a formation of a ‘Palestinian entity’.

The Palestinian National Covenant states that the Palestinian Arabs are ‘part of the Arab nation’ and have a ‘legal right’ to their ‘homeland’; that Palestinians and their descendants, whether Muslims, Christians, or Jews, who were permanent residents in Palestine prior to 1947 would be citizens of Palestine. All the conditions and obligations imposed on the peoples of Palestine by the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate, the partition of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel that had abrogated the rights of Palestinian Arabs were declared ‘null and void’. The Covenant declared that all Palestinians shall form a united front for the liberation of Palestine.

During its early years, the PLO set about establishing the organizational framework within which all Palestinian activities—social, economic, political, cultural, educational, and military—could be pursued. It built an army, parts of which were attached to the various Arab national armies. Despite a lack of sovereign territory, the PLO eventually was able to provide many of the complex needs of its dispersed population. Indeed, its aim was to prepare for, and achieve, statehood in Palestine.

However, in the aftermath of the humiliating Arab military defeat in the Six Day War in June 1967, many of the Palestinian guerrilla groups—fedayeen—which had emerged in the previous decade or more, coalesced into: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) under the leadership of Dr George Habash, a marxist Christian Palestinian; the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) led by Nayif Hawatmeh; the People's Party; and the most important guerrilla group, Fatah (the Palestinian National Liberation Movement) founded in 1957-8, led by Yasir Arafat. As the numbers attracted to the fedayeen grew, they came to dominate the PLO by 1968. At the next session of the Palestine National Council (PNC) in 1969, Yasir Arafat was elected Chairman of the Executive Committee. From this point on, the PLO drew under its umbrella many of the fedayeen organizations whose leaders were appointed to the Executive Committee and the strategy of PLO became that of ‘armed struggle’.

This change of the PLO occurred in the aftermath of the Six Day War of June of 1967 which left an expanded Israel in control of the Golan Heights, the West Bank including all of Jerusalem, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula. Israel and Egypt ended up facing each other across the Suez Canal in an uneasy ceasefire, rejecting negotiations. By 1970 the fedayeen in Jordan had created a state within a state, further weakening the position of King Hussein. After the PFLP hijacked three airliners, civil war soon broke out in Jordan (Black September) when King Hussein with a newly formed military government attacked the fedayeen. In the aftermath of the war, the fedayeen were expelled from Jordan. Throughout the civil war, the King's appeals to the US for military support were coordinated with Israeli preparation to come to his assistance if needed.

With the election of Yasir Arafat as chairman of the Executive Committee, the PLO became an independent actor, no longer under the control of any Arab government. The predominant view in the PLO was that of armed struggle but there was a lack of agreement among the fedayeen as to strategy and tactics. Though the PLO had gained an international profile, its ability to play a role in the solution to the Palestinian problem appeared as remote as ever. In the Jordanian crisis, Arab governments were not inclined to be drawn into confrontation with Israel unless of their own choosing. It also created the current strategic relationship between the US and Israel.

From this time until 1988, the role of the PLO was either peripheral or non-existent in the many wars as well as in the peace process. Each Arab government had a different strategy as regards Israel and expected the PLO policy and the activities of the Palestinians to be compatible with its strategy and whatever tactics it would be pursuing at the time. The PLO, having been declared a ‘terrorist’ organization by the Israeli government, was unable to become a negotiating partner on behalf of the Palestinians. The US government also came to accept this particular Israeli position as its official policy which meant that both the US and the PLO were reduced to quiet or secret intermittent back channels in their diplomatic contacts and negotiations.

This situation changed after King Hussein relinquished Jordan's legal and administrative ties to the West Bank 1988 in favour of the PLO. Yasir Arafat then convened the PNC, where he declared the existence of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza (recognized by over 90 countries) with himself as president. Soon after, to the US government's satisfaction, Yasir Arafat confirmed the PLO's recognition of UN Resolution 181 of 1947 which partitioned Palestine into two states thereby recognizing de facto the right of the state of Israel to exist in the region, accepted UN Resolutions 242 and 338 and renounced all forms of terrorism, at which point the US lifted the ban on its dealings with the PLO.

However, in the ensuing Madrid Peace Process, the Israeli government of Yitzhak Shamir still would not negotiate with the PLO. In his view, to do so, would be to legitimize the PLO's position calling for a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees. Several ‘covers’ had to be constructed before the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators could sit together in the same room. These consisted of a Joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation with all the Palestinians coming from the Occupied Territories (OT), all of whom were selected by the PLO. It appointed an advisory group to support the negotiating team which included those members which the Israeli government would not allow on the team: one from East Jerusalem, and one from the Palestinian Diaspora. In this way, the Palestinians, in effect, had a representative negotiating team and the Israelis could say that they were not dealing with the PLO nor had they recognized East Jerusalem as part of the Occupied Territories.

In 1991-3, conditions in the Occupied Territories deteriorated considerably and violence in the form of destruction, deaths, and arrests had escalated. The PLO had reportedly lost most of its financial support as a result of its pro-Iraqi stance in the Gulf War. The Israeli economy was adversely affected by events in the Occupied Territories and the Israeli government was under pressure to renew the peace process. Secret negotiations between Israel and the PLO covering an eight-month period (January-September 1993) began in Oslo. The Israeli government of Yitzhak Rabin proposed to the PLO that initially Gaza (except for Jewish settlements) and the town of Jericho in the West Bank would be given self-governing status. Yasir Arafat and a majority of the PLO Executive Committee supported this proposal over the opposition of many Palestinians including members of the negotiating team. The resulting Oslo Declaration of Principles, based on UN Resolutions 242 and 338, provided for a phased Israeli military withdrawal over a five-year period, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and at the end of this period, Final Status negotiations regarding Jerusalem, the return of refugees, Jewish settlements, and borders. In September 1995 the Oslo 2 agreement was signed in Washington DC which provided for an extension of autonomy in the West Bank. About one month later, Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli right-wing extremist.

The launching of the Oslo era impacted negatively upon the PLO. When the PLO moved to the Occupied Territories, it left its Political Department in Tunis. There was dissension amongst the groups that made up the PLO over the wisdom of the concessions which Yasir Arafat had made to Israel in return for only a small presence in the West Bank and Gaza from which to secure the remainder of the Territories. However, to secure the remainder of the Territories depended upon continued Palestinian popular support, international donor support, and a Palestinian police force, the assumption being that this would strengthen Arafat's negotiating position in the Final Status talks. After the signing of Oslo, however, Israel continued to pursue ‘terrorists’, targeted assassinations and collective punishments in the Occupied Territories. The deepening dissension within the PLO exposed the lack of vision and strategy for developing a law-based democratic Palestinian state in the wake of the changed conditions after Oslo, again on the assumption that this might strengthen the Palestinians' position vis-à-vis Israel. Instead, the PLO found itself pushed increasingly into pursuing Israel's internal security requirements which did not satisfy Israel nor strengthen the PLO's position.

Once the Palestinian Authority was established in 1996, it and the PLO have existed side by side. The Palestinians were at this stage formally organized and reasonably united. Initially, prospects for peace seemed promising. However, the negotiations soon stalled. Effective third-party involvement foundered on the inability of the US, for domestic and strategic reasons, to mediate impartially, the EU's inability to form a common policy on the issues and its reluctance to stand in opposition to the US. Conditions within the OT deterioriated culminating in an escalating spiral of violence. The contending forces were unequal with the advantage lying disproportionately with Israel. In April 2002, Israel reinvaded the autonomous towns held by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and in the process destroyed the infrastructure for a future Palestinian state. (See also intifada.) Abu Mazen (also known as Mahmoud Abbas) became leader of the PLO in 2004, following Arafat's death.

— Barbara Allen Roberson