Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

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Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is an umbrella political organization founded in 1964 to deal with the problems of the Palestinian Arab refugees. The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947) had divided the ex-British mandate territory of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab-Palestinian state, with the Greater Jerusalem area, including Bethlehem, placed under international administration. But the first Arab-Israeli war (1948–1949) led to a three-way partition of Palestine and the problem of the so-called occupied Palestinian territories. Egypt took the Gaza Strip, the kingdom of Transjordan (later Jordan) took the West Bank (of the River Jordan), and the rest of Palestine was incorporated into the newly formed State of Israel, prompting the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs who were dispersed to refugee camps all over the Arab world. The PLO emerged from the angry despair of the homeless and impoverished Palestinian refugees and their desire to establish an independent Palestinian state in the “occupied territories.”

The PLO is governed by a legislative body called the Palestinian National Council (PNC), which elects an executive committee to assume leadership of the organization between its sessions. The PNC meets every two years and passes resolutions by a simple majority with a two-thirds quorum. The first PNC, composed of 389 nominated representatives from Palestinian diaspora communities in Jordan, Gaza, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, Libya, and Algeria, met in East Jerusalem, Jordan, on May 29, 1964, and adopted the Palestinian National Covenant (Palestine’s constitutional charter). It established the PLO as the political voice of the Palestinian people and elected Ahmad Al-Shuqeiry (1908–1980) as the first chairman of the PLO Executive Committee.

Fatah, an Egyptian-backed guerrilla movement led by Yasser Arafat (1929–2004), joined the PLO in 1968. It was followed by other Palestinian guerrilla groups (fedayeen ) such as the pro-Syrian As Saiqa, the Marxist-oriented Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the leftist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), among others. The PLO’s military wing, the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), began staging acts of guerrilla warfare against military and civilian targets inside Israel, as well as Jewish targets in third countries; the Israeli government has branded these acts “terrorism.” Arafat became PLO leader in 1969 and declared himself the only legitimate spokesman for the Palestinian people. For much of its history, the PLO regarded Israel as an illegitimate foreign presence in Palestine, because neither the local Palestinian Arabs nor any neighboring Arab country have ever agreed to the creation of a Jewish state in their midst. The PLO leadership has accused Israel of illegally occupying the Arab lands in Palestine, especially the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which were captured by Israel during the Six-Day War of June 1967. The PLO has also insisted on the “right to return” to their ancestral homes for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees (and their descendants) who were forced into exile in 1948.

The PLO was expelled from its guerrilla bases in Jordan after a bloody confrontation with the army of Jordanian King Hussein I (1935–1999) in September 1970 (which became known as “Black September” because as many as 3,400 Palestinians were killed in the conflict). The defeated PLO relocated most of its fighting force to refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria. In 1974 the Arab League proclaimed the PLO the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinians, with Jordan and Egypt giving up their claims to the West Bank and Gaza, respectively. In the same year, Arafat called for a democratic, secular Palestinian state, and the United Nations recognized the PLO as the government-in-exile responsible for all Palestinian affairs, according it the status of a permanent observer to the UN. Since then, more than 100 non-Arab states have also extended diplomatic recognition to the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The PLO was granted full membership in the Arab League in 1976.

The PLO became embroiled in the first phase of the bloody Lebanese Civil War (1975–1977), but suffered defeat at the hands of the Syrian army, which in 1976 invaded Lebanon in support of the Christian-dominated government in Beirut. Arafat rejected the Camp David Accords of 1977 and accused Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat (1918–1981) of betraying the Palestinian people and all other Arab nations, but at the same time called for diplomacy to resolve the Palestinian problem. The PLO suffered another setback in 1982 when the Israeli invasion of Lebanon forced some 8,500 of its fighters to leave their stronghold in West Beirut and resettle in other Arab countries, such as Tunisia and Syria. In 1985 the Israeli air force bombed the PLO headquarters in Tunisia, inflicting significant losses of life, but missing Arafat. The PLO was caught by surprise by the first Palestinian intifada (1987–1993), and while it was trying to help and direct the anti-Israeli uprising from abroad, the local radical Islamic groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad challenged its leadership position within the occupied territories. The PLO also lost financial support from wealthy Arab Gulf states for backing Iraq during the First Gulf War (1990–1991).

With U.S. support, Israel refused to negotiate with the PLO, insisting that it would only talk to Palestinian representatives from the occupied territories, which complicated and delayed the peace process. In reaction to the intifada, the PLO unilaterally declared an independent “Arab state of Palestine” at the nineteenth PNC session held in Algiers in 1988. Arafat expressed support for a UN Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement on the pre-1967 borders (which had been vetoed by the United States in January 1976), with Israel and Palestine living side by side, provided that East Jerusalem became the capital of the Palestinian state and Palestinian refugees were given the right to return to their pre-1948 homes in Israel. On September 13, 1993, after months of U.S.-brokered back-channel negotiations, Arafat signed an historic peace agreement with Israel in Oslo, Norway, even though such an accommodation was vehemently opposed by radicals within the PLO’s own ranks and by irreconcilable Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The agreement, known as the Oslo Accords, involved mutual recognition, with security guarantees to and from Israel, and the gradual introduction of Palestinian self-government and autonomy in Gaza and parts of the West Bank until a final peace settlement was signed. A year later, Arafat appointed a provisional government, the nineteen-member Palestinian Authority, to administer the areas of Palestinian self-rule. He was elected president of the Palestinian-controlled territories in 1996. The PLO convened a PNC session in Gaza in April 1996, which voted with 504 votes in favor and 54 against to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Mahmoud Abbas (b. 1935), a moderate Fatah politician, was appointed Palestinian prime minister in 2003 in the midst of the second intifada (2000–2006). In the same year, Palestinians and Israelis agreed to new negotiations based on the U.S.-proposed “roadmap to peace,” although this failed to stop the daily violent attacks and reprisals. However, Abbas soon resigned after clashing with Arafat over control of the PLO’s security forces. Following Arafat’s death in November 2004, Abbas succeeded him as PLO leader and was elected Palestinian Authority president in January 2005.

In an unexpected blow to Abbas, Hamas swept the Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006 and formed a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority cabinet that promised to rid Palestinians of the rampant corruption, mismanagement of foreign aid, and endemic abuses of power under Fatah’s rule. The result was an escalating conflict between President Abbas and Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh (b. 1963) of Hamas over many issues, including Hamas’s retaliatory missile attacks on Israeli territory and Abbas’s plan to hold a referendum to force Hamas to recognize Israel. To end sporadic armed clashes between Hamas members and the Fatah-controlled security forces, a Hamas-led coalition government with the participation of several Fatah-supported ministers was formed in March 2007. But the Hamas-Fatah coalition collapsed in June 2007 when a military confrontation between the two rival groups led to Hamas’s victory and takeover of Gaza. Without the consent of the Hamasdominated Palestinian parliament, Abbas dissolved the coalition government and appointed an emergency cabinet led by pro-Fatah prime minister Salam Fayyad (b. 1952) on June 17, 2007, signaling a newly divided Palestine ruled by the Iranian-backed Hamas in Gaza and the American-backed Fatah in the West Bank.

SEE ALSO Arab-Israeli War of 1967; Arafat, Yasir; Intifada, The; Palestinian Authority; Palestinian Diaspora; Palestinians; Peace Process