Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Walter 

Laqueur and Barry Rubin, The Israel-Arab Reader: A 

Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict. 6th ed. 

(New York: Penguin Books, 2001); Edward W. Said, The 

Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage, 1992); Tom 

Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the 

British Mandate (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry 

Holt, 2000).

Palestine

  

543  J

---

Palestine Liberation Organization

 

(PLO)

The Palestine Liberation Organization is the 

national liberation movement of the Palestinian 

people. It was originally founded in East J

erUsa

-

lem

 in May 1964 at the behest of Egyptian presi-

dent  J

amal

  a

bd

 

al

-n

asir

 (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 a

rab

l

eagUe

, 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). y

asir

  a

raFat

(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 J

ordan

 until 1970 and then in l

ebanon

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 i

srael

 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 p

alestine

” 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 o

slo

  a

ccords

 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 that 

K  544