SUMMARY
The PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization; Munazamat Tahir Falastin) was a Palestinian separatist organization that began fighting an intrastate armed conflict over territory against the Government of Israel in 1965. The primary goal of the PLO, as a Palestinian nationalist umbrella organization, was to coordinate a plethora of Palestinian groups in order to establish an independent Palestinian state.
The creation of the PLO was decided at an Arab League summit meeting in Cairo on 13-16 January 1964; the President of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a driving force behind the group’s creation. As a result, the group was initially focused on a pan-Arab agenda and had close ties to the Arab states, particularly Egypt. Furthermore, PLO’s armed wing (the Palestine Liberation Army, PLA) was integrated into the armed forces of these states; the militant armed groups linked to the PLO had little influence over the group’s policies. However, following the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, control over the PLO was largely transferred to the various existing Palestinian fedayeen (militant/guerilla) groups.
Later, the main ideological direction of the PLO became Palestinian nationalism; when the group was created, it demanded at least the return to the borders that existed in 1949. However, as the group was an “umbrella” organization, it harbored Palestinian groups of a wide range of ideological convictions; during its existence, it included groups ranging from radical Marxists to liberal democrats. When the PLO was created, it maintained a strong focus on military activities to achieve its goals. This hardline position was however ameliorated following a series of military defeats to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in southern Lebanon at the end of the 1970s; after this, the PLO acknowledged diplomacy as a viable strategy. The PLO would eventually be widely recognized by the international community, and came to be viewed as the embodiment of the Palestinian “state without a country”. The PLO generally served as the primary Palestinian actor in negotiations with Israel.
In 1988, the PLO overtly recognized the UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (calling for a ceasefire in the 1967 Six-Day War, and for the recognition of the territorial sovereignty of all states in the region, including Israel) and 338 (calling for a ceasefire in the 1973 Yom Kippur War) for the first time. The United States and Egypt had set recognition of these resolutions as a necessary prerequisite for peace negotiations. The PLO had also renounced the use of terrorism in 1988. Another important ideological shift occurred in 1993, when the PLO and the Government of Israel signed the “Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements” (“Oslo I Accords”). This was the first face-to-face agreement between the two actors, and it included statements of mutual recognition. In 1994, the PLO and the Government of Israel agreed to create the Palestine National Authority (PNA), which was intended to be an interim administration in Gaza and parts of the West Bank; the PNA came under the control of PLO/Fatah.
The PLO’s executive body was the Executive Council, which was led by a chairman. The group also maintained a legislative body, a “parliament-in-exile”, called the Palestine National Council (PNC), which in turn formally elected the Executive Council; however, in practice, the Executive Council has functioned as the highest level of authority within the PLO. At its inception, Ahmed Shukairy led the PLO as Chairman of the Executive Council; Yahya Hammuda replaced him in December 1967. In 1968, the PLO came under the control of the Palestinian liberation group Fatah and its leader Yasser Arafat, who replaced Hammuda in February 1969. The emergence of Fatah as the dominant force within the PLO also brought a shift from the pan-Arab agenda towards a stronger focus on only Palestine. Arafat led the PLO (and Fatah) until his death in 2004; he was then replaced by Mahmud Abbas.
It is worth noting that for the duration of its existence, PLO’s composition of member groups has changed frequently. For example, during the mid-1980s only Fatah and PFLP were part of the organization. Over the decades, PLO’s membership has varied as its constituent bodies have reorganized and disagreed internally. The principal ideological fault lines have, among others, included maximalists against minimalists (that is, how much of Palestine should be liberated), pan-Arabists against regional nationalists, and those favoring political struggle against those favoring a military one. Aside from the groups mentioned here, there has been a plethora of Palestinian groups associated with the PLO since the 1960s.
In late 1973 and early 1974, PLO readjusted its policy towards claiming that Palestinian self-rule could be installed in the West Bank and Gaza before the liberation of all Palestinian lands. This policy-shift caused a rift between a more moderate Fatah-led faction, and a more radical faction that was formally materialized as the Rejectionist Front. The organizations that left PLO were the PFLP, PFLP-GC, the Arab Liberation Front, and the Popular Struggle Front. Fatah, Al-Saiqa, and the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (later called DFLP) remained in the PLO; PFLP rejoined PLO during the early 1980s.
Furthermore, two non-Fatah PLO factions were created in the early 1980s, namely the strongly anti-Arafat “National Alliance” (which included actors like PFLP-GC, Fatah Revolutionary Council (FRC), and Al-Saiqa), and the more moderate “Democratic Alliance” (which included for example DFLP, and initially also PFLP). In April 1987, the PLO underwent a reunification process in which many organizations returned to its fold; notable exceptions were PFLP-GC, Al-Saiqa, FRC, and the Abu Nidal Group.
The PLO’s most long-standing and prominent supporter was the Arab League, which continuously provided funding and political support. During the 1970s, PLO also received training and weapons from the Soviet Union and the Arab states. In the 1980s, China and North Korea also supplied weapons to PLO.
Up until 1971 PLO made use of Jordan as a sanctuary, maintaining large bases and training camps in the kingdom. The group, however, soon outstayed its welcome as it extended its powerbase throughout the country with the help of the kingdom’s large Palestinian population and sympathies within the Jordanian army. Some Palestinian groups even attempted to assassinate the Jordanian king. King Husayn, feeling threatened by the loss of control over his kingdom, forcibly purged the PLO from his territory in 1970; this prompted the group to relocate to Lebanon, where it established new bases of operation.
Note that from 1989 and onwards, some of the constituent groups of the PLO were also analyzed in their separate capacities (see Fatah and the PFLP). This shift in the level of analysis was possible given the proliferation of more detailed information available to the UCDP on different Palestinian groups from 1988 and onwards.
