Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

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PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION (PLO)

Palestinian political institution (Munadhdhamat al-Tahrir al-Filastiniya).

Meeting in Jerusalem at its first congress on 28 May 1964, the Palestine National Council (PNC) created the PLO by adopting the Palestine National Charter and the PLO Fundamental Law, and becoming itself a member. As an umbrella organization for the Palestinian national struggle, the PLO replaced the moribund Arab Higher Committee, which had been presided over by Hajj Amin al-Husayni, and eventually became the most important of the Palestinian political organizations. Ahmad Shuqayri, a Palestinian lawyer and former assistant to the secretary general of the Arab League, was named chairman of the PLO executive committee.

The PLO platform was based on four principles:
1) rejection of the partition decreed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947; 2) armed struggle

for the liberation of Palestine; 3) the fight against Zionism; and 4) ultimate establishment of an independent Palestinian state. The organization comprises three principal components: the Palestine National Council (PNC, al-Majlis al-Watani al-Filastini), with 300–600 members—roughly 30 percent from the resistance and guerrilla organizations that are members of the PLO, 20 percent from affiliated mass organizations and trade unions, 20 percent from the diaspora, and 30 percent independent members; the executive committee (EC, al-Lajna a—Tanfidhiya), with 15 members elected by the PNC, similar to a cabinet-style government, who direct the bureaucracy and apply policies adopted by the PNC; and the Central Council (CC, al-Majlis al-Markazi al-Filastini), with 50–70 members who act as a constitutional council to oversee the functions of the executive committee.

Although the Central Council serves a consultative role, acting as an intermediary legislative entity between the PNC and the EC, it can use its veto to sanction the action of the executive committee. The executive committee supervises the PLO's departments or ministries. It meets at the request of its members; and in the past has met often in Tunis, sometimes in Baghdad. During the deliberations of the EC, a quorum of two-thirds of its members is required, although decisions can be made by a simple majority of those present. Because of regional disturbances, the headquarters of the PLO has been moved successively from Jerusalem to Amman (1967), Beirut (1970-71), Tunis (1982), and Ramallah (1995). The PNC was originally headquartered in Cairo, then moved to Damascus (1979), Amman (1984), and Gaza (1996).

At first considered merely a tool of the Arab League, the PLO became truly independent in 1969. Defeat of the Arab forces in the 1967 War discredited the leadership of both the Arab states and the PLO; Shuqayri resigned in 1967 and was replaced by another lawyer, Yahya Hammuda. When the fida?yyun groups, primarily al-Fatah, increased guerrilla attacks against Israel, they earned the respect of the Arab public, receiving many new recruits and greater financial assistance from the Gulf states. On 4 February 1969 Yasir Arafat, head of al-Fatah, was elected chairman of the PLO executive committee, and since then, al-Fatah has been the dominant element within the PLO. Arafat has followed a pragmatic course designed to balance internal differences and further move the PLO toward its single overriding goal.

At times other leaders and organizations have disagreed with Arafat's strategies, leaving the organization and later rejoining it; but the PLO's core membership has remained stable. It includes all the major Palestinian liberation movements, encompassing a diversity of orientations. The largest groups are the centrist al-Fatah, the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the PFLP–General Command (PFLP–GC), and the Marxist-Leninist inspired Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).

In July 1969, the PLO was invited for the first time to attend a meeting of nonaligned countries that took place in Belgrade. Confronted by internal rivalry and affected by regional political changes, there was much dissidence within the PLO, reflecting ideological cleavages among the Palestinian movements. These disagreements came to a head in 1970 when the PFLP launched a violent campaign to sabotage and overthrow the monarchy in Jordan, the base of PLO activity, provoking the government to strike back brutally during what became known as "Black September" 1970. The result of this conflict was the PLO's expulsion from Jordan and transfer to Lebanon, where it had already compelled the government there to grant it a degree of autonomy in governing and providing for the large population of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and in defending them from many Lebanese enemies.

On 26 October 1974, a year after the 1973 War, the PLO was recognized at the Arab League summit in Rabat as the "only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." On the following 13 November Arafat made a historic speech before the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, after which the PLO obtained observer status at the UN. With the exceptions of Israel and the United States, the international community thereafter recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.

The Lebanese Civil War began in 1975, threatening Lebanese sovereignty and contributing to the destabilization of Lebanese politics. PLO operations in that country were partly to blame for the war because they were so extensive that the organization was often referred to as a "state within a state," and parts of southern Lebanon were known as "Fatahland." These operations included not only military organizations and activities, but civilian institutions that provided security and social services to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had no other resources within a Lebanese population that was largely hostile to them. Both for these reasons, and for the need to defend its people and maintain its operations, the PLO became a major participant in the war.

In September 1976, Palestine, represented by the PLO, was given full membership in the Arab League. The following year saw the famous journey of Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat to Jerusalem, followed by the Camp David Accords in 1978, and the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty in 1979. This treaty led to a schism in the Arab world that affected the PLO because, besides returning the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, it provided for negotiations toward a future settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli issue "on the basis of" UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, and contained a vague Israeli plan for Palestinian "autonomy" within restricted zones in the West Bank and Gaza without committing Israel's removal of settlements. The other signatories, Egypt and the United States, agreed with Israel's view of Resolution 242—that despite calling for complete Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, it did not apply to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Jordan, which was part of the Camp David negotiations, and the PLO, which was not (although there were Palestinian representatives on the Jordanian delegation), along with the entire Arab world, rejected the treaty. In effect, Israel had removed Egypt, which was strong enough to threaten it, from the Arab-Israel dispute while conceding nothing to the Palestinians.

With the Egyptian threat neutralized by the treaty, Israel began aiding and subsidizing Lebanese who were hostile to the Palestinians; and in June 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon to attack the PLO directly in an attempt to destroy it. A cease-fire mediated by the United States in August obliged Arafat and his followers to leave Lebanon, which they agreed to do after receiving an American promise to protect Palestinian refugees. Under the protection of a multinational force, the leadership of the much weakened PLO and about 14,000 fighters went to Tunis where the remnants of the organization found itself cut off from both the Palestinian territories and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Within days of the PLO's withdrawal, the Israelis abetted the Phalange by invading two adjacent refugee camps in Beirut, perpetrating the Sabra and Shatila Massacre and leaving the entire community vulnerable. Later in 1982 the United States proposed a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, the Reagan Plan, based on the same Israeli autonomy plan as was in the Camp David Accord, again refusing to allow the PLO a part in the negotiations.

In late 1983 Arafat sought to restore the PLO in Lebanon; Syria, which under President Hafiz al-Asad had entered the Lebanese war in 1976 and wanted to control the PLO, thwarted him by helping Fatah-Intifada, a breakaway group founded by Sa?id Musa Muragha (Abu Musa), to defeat him. Asad, wanting Syria to replace Egypt as the primary deterrent to Israeli power—and as the leading state of the Arab world—aided opponents of Arafat's policies, led by former PNC president Khalid al-Fahum, to organize the Palestinian National Salvation Front (PNSF) in March 1985. Gathering together the Fatah-Intifada, the PFLP–GC, the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), al-Sa?iqa, the Palestinian Revolutionary Communist Party (PRCP), and some members of the PFLP, the PNSF strove to constitute an alternative to the PLO. The DFLP and the balance of PFLP members, opposed to foreign interference in Palestinian affairs, refused to join because of Syrian backing. Riven by personality conflicts and ideological divergences, the PNSF was a failure and had faded away by 1989.

Meanwhile, the policies of the PLO in Tunis began to evolve away from armed struggle toward political action. Despite this change, the Israelis bombed PLO headquarters in an attempt to kill Arafat on 1 October 1985. At the 17th congress of the PNC in Algiers in April 1987 there was a reconciliation among the principal Palestinian movements, including al-Fatah, the DFLP, the PFLP, and the PCP.

Then in December of the same year the first Intifada broke out; and a new, younger leadership began to form within the Occupied Territories, forcing the leadership of the PLO to adapt and revise its strategy again. Many members of PLO organizations in the territories joined the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), the network of leadership committees that rose spontaneously early in the Intifada. Using the argument of "popular legitimacy," the Intifada proclaimed the state of Palestine, with Jerusalem as the capitol, at the 18th PNC congress in Algiers on 15 November 1988.

From that time the leadership of the PLO launched a diplomatic offensive, particularly in Western countries, and especially the United States. In December 1988 Arafat renounced terrorism and declared before the UN General Assembly the PLO's acceptance of Israel's right to exist. The United States rewarded him by opening a diplomatic dialogue. Israel, however, neither acknowledged nor responded to this declaration. Consequently, in the crisis beginning in July 1990 that led to the Gulf War of 1991, and in spite of the reservations of a majority of the PLO cadres, Arafat decided to throw his support behind Iraq.

He may have felt that Saddam Hussein would be able to change the balance of power in the region, but the decision was a disaster for the PLO and the Palestinians. The immediate results were the persecution, expulsion, and impoverishment of the large Palestinian community in Kuwait, reducing a population of about 350,000 before the war to about 30,000 after it. The earnings of this community had supported many family members in the territories and camps, and the PLO had collected taxes from it for the Palestinian National Fund. Arafat's support of Iraq also cost the PLO and Palestinians the financial aid they had been receiving from the Arab states (mainly Saudi Arabia) and Arab diplomatic support for the PLO in international affairs. The PLO, therefore, responded positively in September 1991 to the American-Soviet proposal for a Middle East peace conference, which opened in Madrid on 30 October 1991.

The PLO, which Israel considered a terrorist organization, was not permitted a delegation, but Palestinian representatives, advised by a committee that consulted with the PLO, were included in the Jordanian delegation. The negotiations were unproductive, however, blocked by a combination of intransigence on the part of the Israeli Likud government and Palestinian resentment of the format for the negotiations and distrust of the American negotiators, some of whom were associated with the Israeli lobby in Washington. When a new Labor government in Israel repealed the prohibition against dealing with the PLO, Arafat was able to seek talks outside of the Madrid conference. This led to the Oslo Accords and Declaration of Principles of 1993, embodying Israeli recognition of the PLO and containing a plan for partial autonomy of the Palestinian territories in anticipation of a treaty on their definitive status. In May 1994, under the terms of the Oslo Accords, the PLO created the Palestinian Authority (PA), an interim government responsible for putting the autonomy into effect, presided over by Arafat. Most PLO departments were moved to the PA, except for the political department which remained in Tunis headed by Faruq Qaddumi. On 7 July 1998 the UN upgraded the status of the PLO, according it the right to participate in political debates in the General Assembly. That same year the PNC altered the Palestine National Charter to conform to the provisions of the Oslo Accords.

In the early twenty-first century, many of the PLO's functions have been absorbed into the PA. The primary independent purpose of the PLO is to conduct negotiations with Israel, although there has been little talk between them since the start of the al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000. The PLO also oversees affiliated mass organizations such as the General Unions, civic organizations such as the Red Crescent Society, and various social service organizations that serve the Palestinian refugee population in Lebanon, Jordan, and camps in the Occupied Territories.

In October 2004, the removal of the seriously ill 75-year-old Arafat to France for medical treatment, and the uncertainty of his recovery, set off a wave of uncertainty and political maneuvering within the leadership of the PLO. Arafat's demise will leave a vacuum at the center of Palestinian political institutions. Initial speculation over the succession centered on PLO general secretary and former PNA prime minister Mahmud Abbas, PNA prime minister Ahmad Qurai, and security chiefs Jibril Rajub and Muhammad Dahlan. Abbas is the most senior of Arafat's collaborators, and the chief of the commission established to run the PLO's affairs in his absence (other members are Qurai and PNC chairman Salim Zanoun). Qurai has little independent support, and Rajub and Dahlan have made many enemies. They face potential competition from a younger generation of leadership that has been alienated from the PLO establishment by its ineffectiveness and corruption, as well as from outside organizations like HAMAS that have opposed PLO policies toward Israel but have refrained from attacking or disrupting the PLO as long as Arafat, a living national symbol, remained in control. When Arafat is gone, there will likely be a struggle for power among the various factions: The established PLO leadership, the younger generation of secular leadership, and the Islamic organizations that have been keeping alive the al-Aqsa Intifada in the face of PLO opposition.