Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
The Palestine Liberation Organization is the
national liberation movement of the Palestinian
people. It was originally founded in East JerUsa-
lem in May 1964 at the behest of Egyptian presi-
dent Jamal abd al-nasir (d. 1970) and other
Arab leaders who attended a summit meeting
in Cairo in January of that year. The PLO was
originally headed by a functionary of the arab
leagUe, Ahmad Shuqayri, but it was taken over
at a meeting of the Palestine National Congress
in Cairo in October 1968 by the largest Pales-
tinian guerrilla organization Fatah (Palestine
National Liberation Movement). yasir araFat
(d. 2004), the leader of Fatah, was chosen as
chairman of the PLO Executive Committee and
he remained in that position for more than three
decades. According to its 1964 charter, the PLO
was conceived as a secular organization whose
purpose was to reclaim the Palestinian homeland
from Jewish Zionists through popular armed
struggle (Jihad). While asserting the Arabness of
the Palestinian national ideal, it promised citi-
zenship to Palestinian Jews.
The PLO evolved into a full Palestinian gov-
ernment in exile with a representative parliament
(the Palestine National Council), a cabinet (the
PLO Executive Committee), and departments
that replicated ministries such as planning, social
affairs, and information. The PLO also encom-
passed armed guerrilla organizations (for exam-
ple, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation
of Palestine, and al-Saiqa), as well as unions and
mass organizations for women, workers, students,
and writers. The PLO became a coordinating
body for Palestinian military forces (the Palestine
Liberation Army) in Arab countries and guerrilla
organizations. It maintained significant military
forces in Jordan until 1970 and then in lebanon
until the forced withdrawal of PLO fighters after
the Israeli invasion of the country in 1982. The
PLO was totally eclipsed as a significant military
threat to israel by the defeat in 1982 and a series
of Israeli assassinations of leading members of the
PLO in the 1980s, including two of the original
founders of Fatah, Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad)
and Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad).
Shortly after Fatah gained ascendancy in the
PLO in 1968, the organization achieved unprec-
edented diplomatic recognition in the interna-
tional arena and especially in the United Nations.
In 1969 the UN General Assembly first affirmed
the right of “the people of palestine” to “self-
determination.” In 1970 a General Assembly
resolution affirmed that the Palestinians were vic-
tims of “colonial and alien domination” and were
therefore entitled to restore their rights “by any
means at their disposal.” The PLO international
diplomatic initiatives were capped in 1974 by the
first full-fledged debate on the Palestine question
in the UN since 1947 and Chairman Arafat was
invited to New York that October to address the
General Assembly. In 1975 the General Assembly
set up a permanent committee for exercising the
rights of the Palestinians to self-determination
and the UN Secretary General is still bound to
report to this committee to this day.
The Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and
Gaza in 1988, known as the intifada, bolstered
the international consensus for the creation of
an independent Palestinian state led by the PLO.
However, after the first Gulf War in 1991, the PLO
gave up its strategy of UN diplomacy. Chairman
Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzak Rabin
(d. 1995) signed the oslo accords on the lawn
of the White House on September 13, 1993. In
exchange for U.S. recognition and Israel’s allowing
Arafat to set up a restricted Palestinian Authority
in the West Bank and Gaza, the PLO favored the
United States instead of the UN as the arbiter of
Palestinian national legitimacy. However, the Oslo
Accords did not recognize an independent Pales-
tinian sovereign entity and described the Palestin-
ian negotiating partner as the “PLO team” within
a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to a Middle
East peace conference. There were no enforce-
ment mechanisms within the agreement thatK 544 Palestine Liberation Organization