Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

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Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

USUAL AREA OF OPERATION: Israeli-occupied territories

OVERVIEW

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is the representative body of the Palestinian people. It comprises an umbrella group of various Palestinian organizations, many of which have paramilitary connections, that makes up the 689-member Palestinian National Council, although most political power rests with the fifteen-man PLO Executive. The PLO also holds permanent observer status at the UN General Assembly. Despite its status as a political organization, the PLO's critics, particularly Israel, say that this is nominal and they have accused it of carrying out a vast number of terrorist and extremist acts.

HISTORY

The PLO was founded at a Palestinian Congress held in East Jerusalem (then under Jordanian control) in May 1964. It marked the culmination of several years of efforts to create a formal representative body for the Palestinian Diaspora, refugees, and Israeli-Arabs by Ahmad al-Shuqeiri, representative of the Palestinian Arabs in the Arab League, and the Egyptian President, Gamal Abdul Nasser. In 1959, Nasser had suggested the creation of a "Palestinian Entity" to further the cause of the Palestinian people internationally but also to advance his own interests within inter-Arab politics and to maintain a decisive say across Egypt's northeastern border. At the Arab Summit in January 1964, Nasser had further argued the case for this Palestinian Entity and talked a reluctant King Hussein of Jordan around to the creation of what would, four months later, become the PLO. This comprised the Palestinian National Council, a kind of Palestinian Parliament, topped by an Executive Committee, that would, in practice, hold much of the power.

The PLO's first Executive Committee was formed on August 9, with Ahmad al-Shuqeiri nominated chairman. At the second Arab Summit in September 1964, it established what was intended as a regular army—the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA)—to fall under PLO control, although in practice its units (comprised of Palestinian battalions already set up by the Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, and Iraqi regimes) would remain under the control of their host nations. The only PLA force that ever came under PLO command was the Ein Jalut Brigade, which participated in the Yom Kippur War and later served in the Lebanese Civil War until the evacuation of Palestinians from Beirut in September 1982. (The Syrian brigades were also used in the same conflict, though for Syria's purposes and under Damascus' orders).

The early life of the PLO was dogged by accusations that al-Shuqeri was merely a Nasserite puppet and that the organization was an extension of Egyptian foreign policy. The catastrophic Six Day War of 1967 and the growing number of guerilla attacks carried out by increasingly popular groups such as Yasser Arafat's Fatah Revolutionary Council, quickly shook away these vestiges of complacency. The Battle of Karameh, of March 1968, when Fatah destroyed the myth of Israeli invincibility by reaping a limited victory after an Israel Defense Force (IDF) border raid, gave Arafat an inexorable momentum. That July, at the Fourth Session of the Palestine National Council (PNC) in Cairo, Fatah joined the PLO along with several other militant groups, whose leaders were elected to key positions within the organization. Arafat became the PLO's spokesman and was elected chairman the following February.

The Fourth Session of the PNC transformed the PLO from the talking shop, political sop envisaged and encouraged by Nasser, to a radical umbrella organization for various Palestinian interests, be they the guerilla groups—that now formed its core—civilians, or the large-scale Palestinian Diaspora. Fatah dominated the new movement, a factor that brought it into conflict with the likes of George Habash's Popular Front For The Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which were unwilling to accept the political discipline demanded by Arafat. The PLO also claimed to speak as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, centering attention on Arafat, which quickly made him one of the most famous men on earth—a completely unparalleled position for a guerilla leader still to carry out his "revolution."

The essence of what the newly radicalized PLO stood for was encompassed in its charter, to which it had made sweeping changes at the Fourth Session of the NPC. When it had been constituted four years earlier, the charter had included clauses denying PLO sovereignty over parts of Palestine occupied by Jordan and Egypt and been circumscribed by the demands of other Arab states. These were ripped up and replaced by clear demands that the "Palestinian Arab people [Arab citizens living permanently in Palestine until 1947 and their descendents; also Jews living permanently in Palestine until the invasion were 'considered Palestinians'] possess the right to a homeland." It declared "the claim of a historical or spiritual tie between Jews and Palestine" to be "null and void" and that "Judaism … is not a nationality … the Jews are not one people."

It also contained a call to arms: "The liberation of Palestine … is a national duty to repulse the Zionist, imperialist invasion … and to purge the Zionist presence from Palestine … The Palestinian people … through the armed Palestinian revolution, reject any solution that would be a substitute for the complete liberation of Palestine … Armed struggle [defined as 'a strategy not a tactic'] is the only way to liberate Palestine … [guerilla] action forms the nucleus of the popular Palestinian War of Liberation."

The revised charter attracted much criticism in the West, particularly Israel, for its extreme language and was usually referred back to as evidence of PLO complicity whenever one of the growing number of Palestinian international terror attacks were carried out.

This was one of the principal problems facing the PLO. Despite Arafat's calls for moderation and his attempts to rein in the extremists, the PLO would be repeatedly singled out by Israel for responsibility whenever there was a hijacking or shooting by one of its member groups. According to the Israeli government, as self-appointed representatives of the Palestinian people, the PLO bore responsibility for whatever excess were carried out in the name of Palestinian liberation. Indeed, for many years, the Israelis would make no distinction between the PLO, groups within it, or even groups—like the PFLP—opposed to it. It was a situation akin to blaming the Arab League in it entirety for an act carried out by just one of its member states. This did much to discredit the PLO in the eyes of a world usually unable to distinguish between rival Palestinian factions and discredited Arafat's attempts to be seen as a legitimate political leader. The reality was, however, that the PLO itself had no specific means to carry out military raids, despite Arafat's Fatah movement frequently being identified with them.

The Arab Summit of November 1973 recognized the PLO as "legitimate" representatives of the Palestinian people. Subsequently, at the twelfth PNC session in Cairo in June 1974, the PLO moderated some of its demands and accepted the strategy of building a Palestinian state in stages. With hindsight, this acknowledgement can be seen as the first step towards the creation of the modern Palestinian Authority in Gaza and the West Bank.

LEADERSHIP

MAHMOUD ABBAS (OR ABU MAZEN)

Dr. Mahmoud Abbas (or Abu Mazen) became leader of the PLO on November 11, 2004, following the death of Yasser Arafat. One of the founding members of Fatah in 1957, he had accompanied Arafat for the majority of his five-decade-long political career, through exile in Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, and finally back in the occupied territories in the 1990s.

For most of this time, he was known more as a backroom operator than political ideologue and has been credited with engaging in secret talks with Israeli "doves" in the late 1980s, discussions that directly led to the peace agreements of the early 1990s. He was also instrumental in repairing damage done in the PLO's relationship with Gulf States, after it had backed Iraq in the first Gulf War.

As Arafat's credibility crumbled during the al-Aqsa intifada, both Israel and the United States refused to deal with him, forcing him to appoint Abbas as Prime Minister in March 2003. He resigned six months later after Arafat repeatedly undermined his position.

As the preeminent Fatah politician (the other candidate, Marwan Barghouti, was in an Israeli jail) following Arafat's death, Abbas was the natural candidate to take over as Chairman of the PLO and followed this up with election as President of the Palestinian Authority the following January. This was greeted with renewed optimism that the peace process would resume, and even the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, called Abbas to congratulate "him on his personal achievement and his victory in the elections and [to] wish him luck."

KEY EVENTS

1964:: PLO formed in Jerusalem.
1968:: Fourth Congress of the PNC: PLO Charter rewritten; militants elected to key positions.
1969:: Yasser Arafat elected chairman of the PLO.
1973:: Arab Summit recognizes PLO as "legitimate" representative of the Palestinian people.
1976–1982:: PLO involvement in Lebanese Civil War; this eventually prompts a full-scale Israeli invasion and PLO exile into Tunisia.
1988:: Arafat renounces terrorism.
1991:: Madrid Talks.
1993:: Oslo Peace Agreement between PLO and Israel.
1994:: Formation of Palestinian Authority.
2000–2005:: Al-Aqsa intifada.
2004:: Death of Arafat and accession of Mahmoud Abbas.

The PLO also received generous funding from other Arab states (the Israelis claimed that this was diverted into the bank accounts of militant groups) with which they set up the apparatus of a government in exile, and social, health, and educational institutions in the refugee camps. In November 1974, Yasser Arafat's appearance before the UN—the first representative of a liberation movement and not a government to do so—and the PLO's subsequent invitation to join the UN as an "observer" gave the PLO an additional vestige of political credibility.

The confusion about PLO's identity—was it an extremist organization or a political force?—grew with the onset of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. After King Hussein had removed the Palestinians from Jordan in 1970, groups under its umbrella had regrouped in Lebanon, particularly in the south and in parts of Beirut. This led to accusations that Arafat had effectively formed a "state within a state." Maronite Christian militias massacred twenty-seven Palestinians on a bus in April 1975, and reprisal killings bubbled over into all-out civil war.

The subsequent fifteen-year-long conflict became muddled by the input of external forces, but what of the PLO's role? Certainly, there was collusion between individual Palestinian guerilla groups acting under the umbrella of the PLO; the PLA also fought in the conflict. However, Israeli and Maronite forces accused the PLO of virtually every attack carried out by Palestinians—accusations that betrayed the actual capability of the PLO. Moreover, many Palestinian groups, such as the PFLP-GC, were fighting not under PLO orders, but those of external powers, such as Syria or Iran. At several stages within the conflict, anti-Arafat Palestinians even turned on PLO forces.

PRIMARY SOURCE
H. R. 4693

During the second session of the 107th Congress House, in 2002, Resolution 4693 (H.R. 4693) was sponsored or cosponsored by eighty representatives and resulted in nothing more than subcommittee hearings. The bill was designed to "hold accountable" the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, and for other purposes.

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the 'Arafat Accountability Act".

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

Congress makes the following findings:

(1) The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), under the leadership of Chairman Yasser Arafat, has failed to abide by its promises, enumerated in the Oslo Accords, to commit itself to "a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides', that "all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations', and that the PLO "renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violence, and discipline violators".

(2) Yasser Arafat failed to exercise his authority and responsibility to maintain law and order in the West Bank and Gaza, which has resulted in ongoing acts of terrorism against Israeli and American civilians in the State of Israel.

(3) Yasser Arafat has failed, through words and deeds, to offer credible security guarantees to the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, and has once again violated his commitment to peace through the recent purchase of 50 tons of offensive weaponry from Iran.

(4) Yasser Arafat and the forces directly under his control are responsible for the murder of hundreds of innocent Israelis and the wounding of thousands more since October 2000.

(5) Yasser Arafat has been directly implicated in funding and supporting terrorists who have claimed responsibility for homicide bombings in Israel.

Under the present circumstances, Yasser Arafat's failure to adequately respond to end the homicide bombings further complicates the prospects for a resolution of the conflict in that region.

SEC. 3. STATEMENT OF CONGRESS.

(a) SENSE OF CONGRESS—It is the sense of the Congress that—

(1) the United States should continue to urge an immediate and unconditional cessation of all terrorist activities and the commencement of a cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians;

(2) the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority should immediately surrender to Israel for detention and prosecution those Palestinian extremists wanted by the Government of Israel for the assassination of Israeli Minister of Tourism Rehavam Zeevi; and

(3) PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization must take immediate and concrete action to—

(A) publicly condemn all acts of terrorism, including and especially homicide bombings, which murdered over 125 Israeli men, women, and children during the month of March 2002 alone, and injured hundreds more;

(B) confiscate and destroy the infrastructures of terrorism, including weapons, bomb factories, and other offensive materials;

(D) urge all Arab nations and individuals to immediately cease funding for terrorist operations and payments to the families of terrorists.

SUPPORT FOR PEACE EFFORTS—The Congress supports the President's efforts, in conjunction with Israel, the Arab states, and members of the international community, to achieve a comprehensive peace in the region, and encourages continued efforts by all parties.

Source: H.R. 4693 U.S. Congress Congressional Record Washington, D.C., 2002.

On most occasions, Israeli reprisals or attacks were far in excess of what the PLO could muster. For instance, in July 1981, Israeli artillery bombarded the West Beirut suburb where Fatah's headquarters were based, killing 200 and wounding 600, most of whom were civilians. Arafat then ordered rocket attacks on northern Israel. This killed six people and wounded fifty-nine. In 1996, the World Maronite Union accused the PLO of genocide and the deaths of 100,000 Lebanese civilians, entirely spurious claims that exaggerated the PLO's role in the civil war beyond recognition (the U.S. State Department puts the number of dead for the "entire" conflict at 100,000).

In June 1982, Israel accused the PLO of attempting to murder its London ambassador, Shlomo Argov, and used it as a pretext to launch a full-scale invasion of Lebanon. The accusation was entirely false; it was actually the PLO's avowed enemy, Abu Nidal, who had been responsible for the attempt. In the ensuing conflict, approximately 17,000 people died, including 2,000 Palestinian refugees at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Within months, Israel fulfilled its intention of driving the PLO out when a peace deal saw 15,000 PLO members leave Lebanon into exile, mostly to Tunisia.

Despite being demonized by Israel, Arafat continued to preach—if not always practice—moderation among the PLO. His case had weakened following Israel's peace deal with Egypt in 1978, which removed one of the PLO's more moderate backers and allowed countries like Iraq, Libya, and Syria to exert a greater influence on the more radical elements within the PLO. Likewise, the Lebanese experience had had a negative impact on the PLO and physically removed the organization to the fringes.

Arafat was not averse to launching terrorist raids, however. He had his own personal guard as Fatah leader, Force 17, which began launching seaborne attacks against Israeli targets in 1985. After it killed three Israeli civilians aboard a yacht in Cyprus in September, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered a bombing raid on the PLO headquarters in Tunisia, killing fifty-six Palestinians and fifteen Tunisians. Israel's difficulty in recognizing the difference between the PLO and one of its member groups (even if it did share the same leader) was never more apparent.

But the slow path to peace picked up again when, in December 1988, Arafat publicly renounced terrorism. Talks with Israel opened at Madrid in 1991, but were tentative; more progress was made at secret talks staged in Oslo in 1993, which resulted in a Declaration of Principles (DOP) between Israel and the PLO. The PLO reaffirmed its commitment to the peace process, and Israel and the United States formally recognized it as the legal representative of the Palestinian people. In 1994, Palestinians, including Arafat, began returning from exile into the occupied territories, and in 1995, the Palestinian Authority (PA) was formed. However, Arafat was poor at day-to-day government and administration, but also stubbornly unwilling to delegate. Life in the PA quickly deteriorated.

Arguably, this was not helped by the Israeli government, which—despite recognizing the PLO as a partner for peace—continued to list it as a "terrorist organization."

Nevertheless, when the peace process ground to a halt in 2000 and the al-Aqsa intifada (uprising) broke out, there was less of a readiness to tar the PLO with the crimes of some of its constituent members. Even if Yasser Arafat was again singled out for culpability, that was more in relation to the activities of various Fatah offshoots and the failings of his government, than the suggestion that the PLO was operating as a homogenous terrorist organization.

PHILOSOPHY AND TACTICS

The PLO is an umbrella organization comprising a number of Palestinian liberation organizations that are committed to the creation of a Palestinian homeland. In the pre-Oslo Accords era, it served to bring attention to the plight of the Palestinian people and to serve as a kind of government-in-exile. Since the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1995, many of these functions have been duplicated between the two bodies. It publicly renounced violence in 1988, although the involvement of organizations that still use extremism mean that this commitment is often treated with skepticism.

It does not propagate any sort of political philosophy, although it is a secular organization. It nevertheless continues to campaign about political issues relevant to the Palestinian people. According to its Department of Negotiation Affairs, these include the right of return for refugees, either in Palestine or resettlement in a third country; an equitable share of water supply from the Jordan River; full control of its economic borders and policies; compensation for Palestinian property stolen or destroyed by Israel; the removal of Israeli settlements from the occupied territories; and control of East Jerusalem in conformity with the Oslo DOP and international law.

OTHER PERSPECTIVES

Ghada Karmi, assessing the impact of the PLO in the Guardian in 2003, believed that its achievements are monumental. She recalled: "In 1969, Israel's prime minister Golda Meir astonished the world with this: 'It was not as if there was a Palestinian people in Palestine and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them,' she said. 'They did not exist.' Such a statement would be unimaginable today, thanks mainly to a tireless Palestinian struggle for recognition and legitimacy. Today's Middle East road map would seem to be an important landmark in this struggle. It establishes some significant benchmarks: it explicitly acknowledges the need for Palestinian statehood and underlines the role of territory as fundamental to a settlement of the conflict.

"It is hard to believe that in the 1960s, the very word 'Palestine' had slipped out of the lexicon. Growing up in England, I remember people thinking I meant 'Pakistan' when I said where I was born. The 1948 exodus, tragic though it was, created a new category—'Arab refugees'—but no one remembered where they came from. It took the PLO's establishment in 1964, an armed campaign against Israel and several terrorist attacks in the 1970s to force the Palestine question on to the international agenda. Political maneuvering thereafter, led by the much disparaged Yasser Arafat, kept it there. The eruption of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation in the 1987 intifada forced Israel to negotiate the Oslo Accords with the PLO. Failed though these were, they helped establish the structures of Palestinian statehood and make it broadly acceptable."

In Time magazine, at the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada, Tony Karon and Jamil Hamad argued that, while the PLO had been effective negotiators and had succeeded in raising global awareness of the Palestinian problem, the long years in exile had seen it lose the Palestinian street (a term used to denote popular opinon). "Many of those who led the last intifada believe it was their efforts that saved Arafat and the PLO and made the peace process possible, and yet there's widespread resentment in their ranks at being sidelined politically once the exiled leaders arrived home," they argued. "To be sure, it's unlikely that Chairman Arafat's headquarters would have moved from Tunis to the West Bank without the intifada. The PLO's efforts to launch guerrilla warfare against Israel from neighboring Arab states had been singularly unsuccessful. Arafat's headquarters had been in Jordan in the late '60s and Lebanon in the '70s and early '80s, but by 1987 he was billeted in far-off Tunisia with few instruments to pursue his nationalist struggle. Then came the uprising in the West Bank and Gaza. The young men of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 may have suffered heavy casualties as they hurled stones and gasoline bombs at a well-armed adversary with little patience for their protests, but they also created a political crisis for Israel. It was the intifada more than anything that forced Israel to abandon efforts to foster an alternative leadership in territories under their control, to acknowledge the PLO as the legitimate representative of Palestinian aspirations and to open negotiations."

SUMMARY

Mahmoud Abbas's takeover of the leadership of the PLO and PA in 2004 has done much to restore the diminishing credibility of both organizations. Although closely associated to Yasser Arafat for the majority of his political life, he does not carry the hint of extremism his predecessor—right or wrongly—once did. His acknowledgement of the problems caused by Palestinian violence and readiness to tackle insurgency head on have been welcomed by Israelis, while his steadfast adherence of the PLO's historic principles have won him plaudits among the Palestinian population. Nothing can be foretold with any great accuracy in the uncertainty of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but Abbas has already progressed the cause of the PLO from the state of stagnation in which he inherited it.