• Political Organization Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 1964

 

The PLO has a nominal legislative body, the Palestinian National Council (PNC), but most actual political power and decisions are controlled by the PLO Executive Committee, made up of 18 people elected by the PNC. The PLO incorporates a range of generally secular ideologies of different Palestinian movements committed to the struggle for Palestinian independence and liberation, hence the name of the organization. The Palestine Liberation Organization is considered by the Arab League and by the United Nations to be the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and holds a permanent observer seat in the United Nations General Assembly. It has been widely criticized, however, over the lack of Hamas presence in the Organization, even after Hamas won almost two - thirds of the seats in the 2006 legislative council elections.

Yasser Arafat was the Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee from 1969 until his death in 2004. He was succeeded by Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen).

Initially, as an armed guerrilla organization, the PLO was responsible for terrorist activities performed against Israel in the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1988, however, the PLO officially endorsed a two - state solution, contingent on terms such as making East Jerusalem capital of the Palestinian state and giving Palestinians the right of return to land occupied by Palestinians prior to 1948, as well as the right to continue armed struggle until the end of "The Zionist Entity." Though Yasser Arafat promised on multiple occasions in letters and in speeches to remove the parts of the PLO's charter which called for the destruction of "The Zionist Entity," the version which contains those articles is the version displayed to the UN, and to other Palestinian bodies.

Other institutions are the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Central Council (PCC) which consists of 124 members from the PLO Executive Committee, PNC, PLC and other Palestinian organizations. The PCC makes policy decisions when PNC is not in session, acting as a link between the PNC and the PLO-EC. The PCC is elected by the PNC and chaired by the PNC speaker.

The PLO has no central decision making or mechanism that enables it to directly control its factions, but they are supposed to follow the PLO charter and Executive Committee decisions. Membership has fluctuated, and some organizations have left the PLO or suspended membership during times of political turbulence, but most often these groups eventually rejoined the organization. Not all PLO activists are members of one of the factions – for example, many PNC delegates are elected as independents.

Present members include:

• Fatah – Largest faction, Left - wing Nationalism.
• The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – Second largest, radically far left militant and communist
• The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) – Third largest, communist
• The Palestinian People's Party (PPP) – Ex - communist, Social Democratic, non - militant
• The Palestine Liberation Front (PLF, Abu Abbas faction) – Minor left wing faction
• The Arab Liberation Front (ALF) – Minor faction, aligned to the Iraqi Ba'ath Party
• As-Sa'iqa – Syrian controlled Ba'athist faction
• The Palestine Democratic Union (Fida) – Minor democratic socialist, 2 state solution, non militant faction
• The Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF, Samir Ghawsha faction) – minor socialist faction
• The Palestinian Arab Front (PAF) – minor pro - Fatah Iraqi Ba'athists faction

Former member groups of the PLO include:

• The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC)

The Arab League in Cairo Summit 1964 initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian National Council convened in Jerusalem on 28 May 1964. Concluding this meeting the PLO was founded on 2 June 1964. Its Statement of Proclamation of the Organization declared "... the right of the Palestinian Arab people to its sacred homeland Palestine and affirming the inevitability of the battle to liberate the usurped part from it, and its determination to bring out its effective revolutionary entity and the mobilization of the capabilities and potentialities and its material, military and spiritual forces".

Due to the influence of the Egyptian President Nasser, the PLO supported 'Pan - Arabism', as advocated by him – this was the ideology that the Arabs should live in one state. The first executive committee was formed on 9 August, with Ahmad Shuqeiri as its leader.

In spite of the 1949 Armistice Agreements, the Arab states remained unreconciled to Israel's creation as they had been to the proposed partition of Palestine in 1948. Therefore, the Palestinian National Charter of 1964 stated: "The claims of historic and spiritual ties between Jews and Palestine are not in agreement with the facts of history or with the true basis of sound statehood... [T]he Jews are not one people with an independent personality because they are citizens to their states."

Although Egypt and Jordan favored the creation of a Palestinian state on land they considered to be occupied by Israel, they would not grant sovereignty to the Palestinian people in lands under Jordanian and Egyptian military occupation, amounting to 53% of the territory allocated to Arabs under the UN Partition Plan. Hence, Article 24: "This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank, the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area."

• Ahmad Shukeiri (10 June 1964 – 24 December 1967)
• Yahya Hammuda (24 December 1967 – 2 February 1969)
• Yasser Arafat "Abu Amar" (4 February 1969 – 11 November 2004)

(in exile in Jordan to April 1971; Lebanon 1971 – December 1982; and Tunis December 1982 – May 1994)

• Mahmoud Abbas "Abu Mazen" (From 29 October 2004 – present)

(acting [for Arafat] to 11 November 2004)

The resounding defeat of Syria, Jordan and Egypt in the Six Day War of 1967 destroyed the credibility of Arab states that had fought to be patrons for the Palestinian people and their nationalist cause. The war radicalized the Palestinians and significantly weakened Nasser's influence. The way was opened, particularly after the Battle of Karameh in March 1968, for Yasser Arafat to rise to power. He advocated guerrilla warfare and successfully sought to make the PLO a fully independent organization under the control of the fedayeen organizations. At the Palestinian National Congress meeting of 1969, Fatah gained control of the executive bodies of the PLO. Arafat was appointed PLO chairman at the Palestinian National Congress in Cairo on 4 February 1969. From then on, the Executive Committee was composed essentially of representatives of the various member organizations.

The PLO at this time did not clearly either accept or refute a two state solution. According to Israeli Likud leader Menachem Begin, the PLO at this time was 'a Nazi organization' and its charter 'an Arabic Mein Kampf'.

From 1969 to September 1970 the PLO, with passive support from Jordan, fought a war of attrition with Israel. During this time, the PLO launched artillery attacks on the moshavim and kibbutzim of Bet Shean Valley Regional Council, while fedayeen launched numerous attacks on Israeli forces. Israel raided the PLO camps in Jordan, withdrawing only under Jordanian military pressure.

This conflict culminated in Jordan's expulsion of the PLO to Lebanon in July 1971.

The PLO suffered a major reversal with the Jordanian assault on its armed groups in the events known as Black September in 1970. The Palestinian groups were expelled from Jordan, and during the 1970s, the PLO was effectively an umbrella group of eight organizations headquartered in Damascus and Beirut, all devoted to armed resistance to either Zionism or Israeli occupation, using methods which included direct clashing and guerrilla warfare against Israel. After Black September, the Cairo Agreement led the PLO to establish itself in Lebanon.

In 1974, the PNC approved the Ten Point Program formulated by Fatah's leaders, which calls for the establishment of a national authority over any piece of liberated Palestinian land, and to actively pursue the establishment of a democratic state in Israel / Palestine. The Ten Point Program was considered the first attempt by PLO at a peaceful resolution, though the ultimate goal was "completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory, and as a step along the road to comprehensive Arab unity."

This led to several radical PLO factions (such as the PFLP, PFLP-GC and others) breaking out to form the Rejectionist Front, which would act independently of PLO over the following years. Suspicion between the Arafat led mainstream and more hard line factions, inside and outside the PLO, have continued to dominate the inner workings of the organization ever since, often resulting in paralysis or conflicting courses of action. A temporary closing of ranks came in 1977, as Palestinian factions joined with hard line Arab governments in the Steadfastness and Confrontation Front to condemn Egyptian attempts to reach a separate peace with Israel (eventually resulting in the 1979 Camp David Accords).

Israel claimed to see the Ten Point Program as dangerous, because it allegedly allows the Palestinian leadership to enter negotiations with Israel on issues where Israel can compromise, but under the intention of exploiting the compromises in order to "improve positions" for attacking Israel. The Hebrew term for this is the "Plan of Stages" (Tokhnit HaSHlabim). During the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s, some Israelis repeated this suspicion, claiming that the Palestinians' willingness to compromise was just a smoke screen to implement the Ten Point Program. After the Oslo Accords were signed, Israeli right wing politicians claimed (and still claim) that this was part of the ploy to implement the Stage Program as Yasser Arafat himself admitted in Arabic many times. The Ten Point Program was never officially canceled by the Palestinians.

In the late 1960s, and especially after the expulsion of the Palestinian militants from Jordan in the Black September events in 1970 - 1971, Lebanon had become the base for PLO operations. Palestinian militant organizations relocated their headquarters to South Lebanon, and relying on the support in Palestinian refugee camps, waged a campaign of attacks on the Galilee and on Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide. Increasing penetration of Palestinians into Lebanese politics and Israeli retaliations gradually deteriorated the situation.

By the mid 1970s, Arafat and his Fatah movement found themselves in a tenuous position. Arafat increasingly called for diplomacy, perhaps best symbolized by his Ten Points Program and his support for a UN Security Council resolution proposed in 1976 calling for a two - state settlement on the pre 1967 borders. But the Rejectionist Front denounced the calls for diplomacy, and a diplomatic solution was vetoed by the United States. In 1975, the increasing tensions between Palestinian militants and Christian militias exploded into the Lebanese Civil War, involving all factions. In 1976, Syria joined the war, by invading Lebanon, and beginning the 29 year Syrian occupation of Lebanon, and in 1978 Israel invaded South Lebanon, in response to the Coastal Road Massacre, executed by Palestinian militants based in Lebanon.

The population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip saw Arafat as their best hope for a resolution to the conflict. This was especially so in the aftermath of the Camp David Accords of 1978 between Israel and Egypt, which the Palestinians saw as a blow to their aspirations to self determination. Abu Nidal, a sworn enemy of the PLO since 1974, assassinated the PLO's diplomatic envoy to the European Economic Community, which in the Venice Declaration of 1980 had called for the Palestinian right of self determination to be recognized by Israel.

Opposition to Arafat was fierce not only among radical Arab groups, but also among many on the Israeli right. This included Menachem Begin, who had stated on more than one occasion that even if the PLO accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242 and recognized Israel's right to exist, he would never negotiate with the organization. This contradicted the official United States position that it would negotiate with the PLO if the PLO accepted Resolution 242 and recognized Israel, which the PLO had thus far been unwilling to do. Other Arab voices had recently called for a diplomatic resolution to the hostilities in accord with the international consensus, including Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat on his visit to Washington, DC in August 1981, and Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia in his 7 August peace proposal; together with Arafat's diplomatic maneuver, these developments made Israel's argument that it had "no partner for peace" seem increasingly problematic. Thus, in the eyes of Israeli hard liners, "the Palestinians posed a greater challenge to Israel as a peacemaking organization than as a military one".

After the appointment of Ariel Sharon to the post of Minister of Defense in 1981, the Israeli government policy of allowing political growth to occur in the occupied West Bank and Gaza strip changed. The Israeli government tried, unsuccessfully, to dictate terms of political growth by replacing local pro-PLO leaders with an Israeli civil administration.

In 1982, after an attack on a senior Israeli diplomat by Lebanese based Palestinian militants in Lebanon, Israel invaded Lebanon in a much larger scale in coordination with the Lebanese Christian militias, reaching Beirut and eventually resulting in ousting of the PLO headquarters in June that year. Low level Palestinian insurgency in Lebanon continued in parallel with the consolidation of Shia militant organizations, but became a secondary concern to Israeli military and other Lebanese factions. With ousting of the PLO, the Lebanese Civil War gradually turned into a prolonged conflict, shifting from a mainly PLO - Christian conflict into involvement of all Lebanese factions - whether Sunni, Shia, Druze or Christians.

In 1982, the PLO relocated to Tunis, Tunisia, after it was driven out of Lebanon by Israel during Israel's six month invasion of Lebanon. Following massive raids by Israeli forces in Beirut, it is estimated that 8,000 PLO fighters evacuated the city and dispersed.

On 1 October 1985, in Operation Wooden Leg, Israeli Air Force F-15s bombed the PLO's Tunis headquarters, killing more than 60 people.

It is suggested that the Tunis period (1982 – 1991) was a negative point in the PLO's history, leading up to the Oslo negotiations and formation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PLO in exile was distant from a concentrated number of Palestinians and became far less effective. There was a significant reduction in centers of research, political debates or journalistic endeavors that had encouraged an energized public presence of the PLO in Beirut. More and more Palestinians were abandoned, and many felt that this was the beginning of the end.

In 1987, the First Intifada broke out in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Intifada caught the PLO by surprise, and the leadership abroad could only indirectly influence the events. A new local leadership emerged, the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), comprising many leading Palestinian factions. After King Hussein of Jordan proclaimed the administrative and legal separation of the West Bank from Jordan in 1988, the Palestine National Council adopted the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in Algiers, proclaiming an independent State of Palestine. The declaration made reference to UN resolutions without explicitly mentioning Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

A month later, Arafat declared in Geneva that the PLO would support a solution of the conflict based on these Resolutions. Effectively, the PLO recognized Israel's right to exist within pre 1967 borders, with the understanding that the Palestinians would be allowed to set up their own state in the West Bank and Gaza. The United States accepted this clarification by Arafat and began to allow diplomatic contacts with PLO officials. The Proclamation of Independence did not lead to statehood, although over 100 states recognized the State of Palestine.

In 1990, the PLO under Yasser Arafat openly supported Saddam Hussein in Iraqi regime's invasion of Kuwait, leading to a later rupture in Palestinian - Kuwaiti ties and the expulsion of many Palestinians from Kuwait. Within a single week, some 450,000 Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait, resulting in one of the fastest and largest expulsions in modern history. Most of the Palestinians, who had resided in Kuwait as foreign workers and residents, returned to Jordan.

In 1993, the PLO secretly negotiated the Oslo Accords with Israel. The accords were signed on 20 August 1993. There was a subsequent public ceremony in Washington D.C. on 13 September 1993 with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin. The Accords granted the Palestinians right to self government on the Gaza Strip and the city of Jericho in the West Bank through the creation of the Palestinian Authority. Yasser Arafat was appointed head of the Palestinian Authority and a timetable for elections was laid out which saw Arafat elected president in January 1996, 18 months behind schedule. Although the PLO and the PA are not formally linked, the PLO dominates the administration. The headquarters of the PLO were moved to Ramallah on the West Bank.

On 9 September 1993, Arafat issued a press release stating that "the PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security".

Some Palestinian officials have stated that the peace treaty must be viewed as permanent. According to some opinion polls, a majority of Israelis believe Palestinians should have a state of their own — a major shift in attitude after the Oslo Accord — even though both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres opposed the creation of a Palestinian state, both before and after the Accord. At the same time, a significant portion of the Israeli public and some political leaders (including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) express doubt over whether a peaceful, coherent state can be founded by the PLO, and call for significant re-organization, including the elimination of all terrorism, before any talk about independence.

The Second or Al-Aqsa Intifada started concurrent with the breakdown of talks at Camp David with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The Intifada never ended officially, but violence hit relatively low levels during 2005. The death toll both military and civilians of the entire conflict in 2000 – 2004 is estimated to be 3,223 Palestinians and 950 Israelis, although this number is criticized for not differentiating between combatants and civilians. Members of the PLO have claimed responsibility for a number of attacks against Israelis during the Second Intifada.

The Palestinian National Charter as amended in 1968, endorsed the use of armed struggle against the internationally recognized state of Israel.

'Article 10 of the Palestinian National Charter states "Commando (Feday’ee) action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war. This requires its escalation, comprehensiveness, and the mobilization of all the Palestinian popular and educational efforts and their organization and involvement in the armed Palestinian revolution. It also requires the achieving of unity for the national ('wanted) struggle among the different groupings of the Palestinian people, and between the Palestinian people and the Arab masses, so as to secure the continuation of the revolution, its escalation, and victory."

The most controversial element of text of the Charter were many clauses declaring the creation of the state of Israel "null and void", because it was created by force on Palestinian soil. This is usually interpreted as calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.

In letters exchanged between Arafat and Rabin in conjunction with the 1993 Oslo Accords, Arafat agreed that those clauses would be removed. On 24 April 1996, the Palestine National Council held a meeting in camera, after which it was announced that the Council had voted to nullify or amend all such clauses, and called for a new text to be produced. At the time, Israeli political figures and academics expressed doubt that this is what had actually taken place, and continued to claim that controversial clauses were still in force.

A letter from Arafat to US President Bill Clinton in 1998 listed the clauses concerned, and a meeting of the Palestine Central Committee approved that list. To remove all doubt, the vote this time was held in a public meeting of PLO, PNC and PCC members which was televised worldwide, and in the presence of Bill Clinton who traveled to the Gaza Strip for that purpose. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted this as the promised nullification. He later wrote, "While the PLO repeatedly committed itself to amend the charter..., no changes have been made despite occasional claims to the contrary."

However, a new text of the Charter has not been produced, and this is the source of a continuing controversy. Critics of the Palestinian organizations claim that failure proves the insincerity of the clause nullifications. One of several Palestinian responses is that the proper replacement of the Charter will be the constitution of the forthcoming state of Palestine. The published draft constitution states that the territory of Palestine "is an indivisible unit based upon its borders on 4 June 1967" – which clearly implies an acceptance of Israel's existence in its 1967 borders.

The United Nations General Assembly recognized the PLO as the "representative of the Palestinian people" in Resolution 3210 and Resolution 3236, and granted the PLO observer status on 22 November 1974 in Resolution 3237. On 12 January 1976 the UN Security Council voted 11–1 with 3 abstentions to allow the Palestinian Liberation Organization to participate in a Security Council debate without voting rights, a privilege usually restricted to UN member states. It was admitted as a full member of the Asia group on 2 April 1986.

After the Palestinian Declaration of Independence the PLO's representation was renamed Palestine. On 7 July 1998, this status was extended to allow participation in General Assembly debates, though not in voting.

The Palestine Information Office was registered with the Justice Department of the United States as a foreign agent until 1968, when it was closed. It was reopened in 1989 as the Palestine Affairs Center. The PLO Mission office, in Washington D.C was opened in 1994, and represented the PLO in the United States. On 20 July 2010, the United States Department of State agreed to upgrade the status of the PLO Mission in the United States to "General Delegation of the PLO".

In 1993, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat recognized the State of Israel in an official letter to its prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. In response to Arafat's letter, Israel decided to revert its stance toward the PLO and to recognize the organization as the representative of the Palestinian people. This led to the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.

The PLO began their militancy campaign from its inception with an attack on Israel's National Water Carrier in January 1965. The PLO was designated a terrorist organization by the United States in 1987, but in 1988 a presidential waiver was issued which permitted contact with the organization. The United States attempted to prosecute Yasser Arafat for his complicity in the assassination of two U.S diplomats. Israel considered the PLO be a terrorist organization until the Madrid Conference in 1991. Most of the rest of the world recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people from the mid 1970s onward (after the PLO's admission to the UN as an observer).

The most notable of what were considered terrorist acts committed by member organizations of the PLO were:

• The 1970 Avivim school bus massacre by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), killed nine children, three adults and crippled 19.
• In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the second largest PLO faction after al-Fatah, carried out a number of attacks and plane hijackings mostly directed at Israel, most infamously the Dawson's Field hijackings, which precipitated the Black September crisis in Jordan.
• In 1972, the Black September Organization carried out the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes.
• In 1974, members of the DFLP seized a school in Israel and killed a total of 26 students and adults and wounded over 70 in the Ma'alot massacre.
• The 1975, Savoy Hotel hostage situation killing 8 hostages and 3 soldiers, carried out by Fatah.
• The 1978, Coastal Road massacre killing 37 Israelis and wounding 76, also carried out by Fatah.