Palestine Liberation Organization
The Palestine Liberation Organization is a Palestinian nationalist coalition that is internationally recognized as the official representative of the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories. It is currently represented by the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank city of Al-Bireh.
Founded in 1964, it initially sought to establish an Arab state over the entire territory of the former Mandatory Palestine, advocating the elimination of Israel. Mediated talks between the Israeli government and the PLO in 1993 resulted in the PLO recognizing Israel's legitimacy and accepting United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which mandated Israel's withdrawal from occupied territories, while Israel recognized the PLO as a legitimate authority representing the Palestinian people. Despite the Israel–PLO Letters of Mutual Recognition, in which PLO leader Yasser Arafat renounced violence against Israel, the PLO engaged in militant activities during the Second Intifada. On 29 October 2018, the PLO Central Council suspended the Palestinian recognition of Israel.
As the officially recognized government of the State of Palestine, it has enjoyed United Nations observer status since 1974. Prior to the Oslo Accords, the PLO's militant wings engaged in acts of violence against both the Israeli military and civilians, within Israel and abroad. The United States designated it as a terrorist group in 1987, though a presidential waiver has permitted American–PLO contact since 1988.
History and armed actions
Early actions
At its first summit meeting in Cairo in 1964, the Arab League initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people. The Palestinian National Council convened in Jerusalem on 28 May 1964. After concluding the meeting, the PLO was founded on 2 June 1964. Its stated "complementary goals" were Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine.The PLO began their militancy campaign from its inception with an attack on Israel's National Water Carrier in January 1965. The group used guerrilla tactics to attack Israel from their bases in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria.
The most notable of what were considered terrorist acts committed by member organizations of the PLO were in the 1970s. The 1970 Avivim school bus massacre by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 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 1972, the Black September Organization, whose relationship to the PLO is disputed, 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.
PLO operations in Jordan: 1967–1971
From 1967 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, including Karameh, 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 struggle against 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.
Lebanese Civil War: 1971–1982
In the late 1960s, and especially after the expulsion of the Palestinian militants from Jordan in 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 Point 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. On 20 January 1976, the PLO took part in the Damour massacre in retaliation to the Karantina massacre. The PLO and Lebanese National Movement attacked the Christian town of Damour, killing 684 civilians and forcing the remainder of the town's population to flee. In 1976 Syria joined the war by invading Lebanon, 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 Lebanon-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 mainly PLO-Christian conflict into involvement of all Lebanese factions – whether Sunni, Shia, Druze, and Christians.
Headquarters in Tunis: 1982–1991
In 1982, the PLO relocated to Tunis, Tunisia after it was driven out of Lebanon by Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War. 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 was a negative point in the PLO's history, leading up to the Oslo negotiations and formation of the Palestinian Authority. 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.