Legitimization of the

Palestine Liberation Organization

By Lewis Kaufman

Seminar Paper
June 11, 1999
METU Dept. of International Relations
IR 603 - "The Middle East in World Affairs”
 The nearly complete legitimization of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from

its roots as a reactionary movement employing terrorist methods to its current status as a

legitimate political entity in the eyes of most nations has paralleled the topsy-turvy, winding

path towards peace in the Middle East. In fact, a key aspect of the PLO’s current status has

been its success in promoting the Israeli-Palestinian issue as the most important issue to be

resolved in the overall Arab-Israeli conflict. This has included changing international

perceptions of the Palestinian issue from one of displaced refugees in need of humanitarian

assistance to one of Palestinian statelessness in need of real political answers. In this paper

I will attempt to trace some of the major developments in this process of PLO political

legitimization, showing that international recognition of the legitimacy of the PLO’s claims

was nearly completed during the first fifteen years of its existence, but that the severe

setbacks of the 1980s necessitated a renewed campaign for international legitimacy that

reached a high point with the 1993 Oslo accords..

Throughout the past one hundred years, more or less, the depth and range of the

Palestinian-Israeli conflict have increased markedly due to a variety of circumstances

including the formation of the state of Israel, the various Arab-Israel wars, the displacement

of Palestinians en masse, and Palestinian retaliation in the form of terrorism. Within this

context of violence, bitterness, distrust, and revenge seeking, the 1993 peace accord

between the PLO and Israel is extremely significant. Although inevitable obstacles have

hindered full implementation of the accord, the very fact that such an accord could be

reached indicates that a real change has taken place in the perception of the actors towards

each other. Both the PLO and the state of Israel now seem to recognize each other as

1
having legitimate rights and aspirations, which is a long-awaited development by many on

both sides.

The PLO was originally a creation of the Arab States at the January 1964 Arab summit

in Cairo. The principle objective of this summit was to formulate an Arab response to the

Israeli plan to divert water from the Sea of Galilee. This response included plans for an

Arab water-diversion scheme, creation of Palestinian commando units designed to sabotage

Israeli water facilities, and encouragement to Ahmad Shuqayri, the Palestinian

representative to the Arab League, to make plans for the establishment of a Palestinian

entity that would contribute in a broader sense to the struggle against Israel.1

It should be noted that the primary purpose of the Arab leaders in creating the PLO was

not to facilitate Palestinian desires for self-determination, but rather to preempt and contain

the various Palestinian guerrilla groups in order to prevent them from drawing the Arab

states into a war with Israel.2 The most important of these groups was Fatah, the Palestinian

National Liberation Movement, which was led by a group of men including Yasser Arafat.

Other groups included the Arab Nationalist Movement, led by George Habash, and its

offshoots (the Palestine Liberation Front led by Ahmad Jibril, the Vengeance Youth led by

Nayif Hawatmeh, and the Heroes of the Return), all of which merged in December 1967 to

form the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. During 1968 the PFLP came under

the umbrella of the PLO and Habash, Jibril, and Hawatmeh soon began to exert influence

within the organization.3

Shuqayri assumed the title of president of the first Palestine National Council, which

met in Jerusalem in May 1964. He opened the meeting with a “Declaration of the Creation

of the Palestine Liberation Organization” which defined the PLO as a “shield for the rights

2
and aspirations of the people of Palestine.” 4 The delegates at the conference then approved

two basic documents that had been authored by Shuqayri.

The first document, the Palestine National Charter, or Covenant, set forth the basic

goals of the Palestinian people, including the PLO’s commitment to the liberation of the

Palestinian homeland and the destruction of Israel. 5 The second document, the General

Principles of Fundamental Law, was the PLO’s constitution. It provided for the

establishment of the Palestine National Council, a fifteen-member Executive Committee

which would be elected by the PNC and which in turn would elect the PLO’s chairman, and

the Palestine National Fund for raising money.6 The Palestine National Council was the

official parliament of the Palestinian people of which the Jerusalem meeting was designated

the first session.

Although the Arab League formally recognized the PLO as the official representative of

the Palestinian people, it was not an important participant in the Arab-Israeli conflict during

its first three years of existence between 1964-1967.7 The PLO did establish a military

force, the Palestine Liberation Army, but pressure on Shuqayri from Egypt kept the PLO

from exercising significant military action against Israel. On the other hand, though, the

independent Palestinian guerrilla groups, led by Arafat and Fatah, became increasingly

drawn to the use of armed raids in the wake of the PLO’s establishment during the years

immediately prior to the June 1967 war.8

In many ways the June 1967 war would have far-reaching consequences on the Arab-

Palestinian-Israeli situation for all parties concerned. The most immediate result of the war

was a dramatic change in the territorial status quo in favor of Israel. 9 After the war Israel

was in possession of five different territories that had been part of or controlled by Egypt,

3
Syria, and Jordan. These territories included the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, captured

from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, captured from Jordan, and the Golan

Heights, taken from Syria. All of these territories were of significant strategic importance

for Israel, and in the future would prove to be useful as bargaining chips in the never-ending

peace negotiations.10

For the Arab states, the war was an unmitigated disaster, both in terms of territorial and

human losses and the attendant loss of prestige and international humiliation. Some sources

estimate the number of Arab casualties as high as 20,000 compared to only 766 Israeli

soldiers killed in action, 95% of these on the Egyptian and Jordanian fronts. 11 In addition,

the Israeli reference to the war as the Six Day War highlights the rapidity and finality with

which the Israelis vanquished the Arabs, leading the Arabs to prefer to speak of the conflict

as the June War.12 For the purposes of this paper I will refer to the war as the 1967 War.

In the wake of the war intense diplomatic activity began among the United States,

Soviet Union, United Nations, and the Arab states in an attempt to solve the problems

created by the Israeli aggression and resulting territorial gains. Although the Arabs states

themselves were divided about the course of action that should be pursued against Israel,

the subsequent Arab summit in Khartoum in August 1967 produced a resolution that many

felt indicated a victory for the hard-line states, although it failed to mention the PLO. 13 The

resolution declared that there would be no peace with Israel, no recognition of the state of

Israel, and no direct negotiations with Israel (the famous three “noes”) as well as affirming

the “rights of the Palestinian people in their own country.” 14 Although Israelis pointed to

the resolution as a continuing sign of Arab intransigence, the Arab leaders insisted that the

resolution did not call for the destruction of Israel, that it did not preclude third party

4
mediation in the disputes or political compromise. 15 In fact, moderate Arab leaders

dominated the summit to the extent that the more hard-line presidents of Syria and Algeria

refused to attend. Furthermore, displeasure with the decisions reached at the summit,

including the exclusion of the PLO, led Shuqayri, the Palestinian representative, to boycott

the final concluding session.16

On the international scene, the United Nations Security Council was busy trying to

formulate a response to the situation that would satisfy both the major powers supportive of

Israel as well as the majority of the Arab states. By November 1967 this response had been

carefully crafted, and on November 22nd the fifteen members of the Security Council

unanimously adopted United Nations Resolution 242.17 This resolution, though somewhat

ambiguous, was optimistically regarded as a potential catalyst for more sustained attempts

at peacemaking in the region. The importance of the resolution lay in the fact that by

asserting the principle of an exchange of land for peace, it provided a coherent framework

that could serve as a basis for discourse and peace negotiations in the Middle East.18

However, as the Palestinians were soon to point out, there were serious deficiencies in

the UN 242. Because of the general consensus that the Palestinian problem was an issue of

displaced refugees needing relief and rehabilitation, the resolution dealt vaguely with this

issue but said nothing about Palestinian aspirations to statehood or the more general

problem of statelessness of the Palestinians.19 For the Palestinians the problem of

statelessness was paramount and thus UN 242 was hopelessly inadequate from their

perspective.

In general, for the Palestinians the 1967 war was a watershed event. The withering,

demoralizing defeat of the Arab countries, the apparent willingness of the majority of Arab

5
leaders to compromise with Israel, and the subsequent failure of the United Nations to

properly address the Palestinian cause led the various Palestinian guerrilla groups to

conclude that they alone could carry on the struggle for the liberation of their homeland. 20

This in turn meant that the face of the PLO would soon change as these guerrilla groups

began to wrest more control away from Shuqayri, who was derided as Nasser’s puppet.

Yasser Arafat and the leadership of Fatah took the lead in trying to give Palestinians

hope for the future in the wake of the Arab states’ devastating defeat by intensifying their

various activities. Most of the Fatah leaders began to successfully lobby for diplomatic

support and funding from the Arab states while Yasser Arafat and a few others attempted to

infiltrate the occupied West Bank in the hopes of initiating an armed rebellion. 21 Although

the attempt to organize an effective resistance network in the West Bank was not very

successful, one military confrontation with the Israeli Defense Force greatly enhanced

Fatah’s reputation and popularity among Palestinians.

The Battle of Karameh, on the East Bank of the Jordan, in which the outnumbered

guerrilla defenders inflicted heavy losses on the IDF attackers, immediately assumed

mythic proportions in the resistance folklore. One Palestinian leader, Abdallah Frangi,

called it the “political and military turning point in the Palestinian resistance, especially for

al-Fatah.”22 The immediate result was that Fatah and other Palestinian guerrilla

organizations were deluged with new recruits aspiring to join the Palestinian resistance

movement.

The most important outcome of the increased popularity of Fatah, though, was the

organization’s ability to parlay this increased popularity into a political presence,

particularly in the refugee camps of the East Bank.23 This included the establishment of a

6
political department to organize activities, provision of a range of social services that later

were organized under the Palestine Red Crescent Society, and expansion of activities

related to the various Palestinian workers’ unions. With the implementation of these

programs during 1968-1970, Fatah and the other guerrilla organization were in a position to

challenge the current leadership of the PLO for control of the organization.

During the Fourth Palestine National Council in Cairo on July 10-17, 1968 the guerrilla

movements exhibited their growing influence in the PLO by introducing new provisions

into the charter which stated that “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine”

(Article 9) and “the Arab Palestinian people, expressing themselves by the armed

Palestinian revolution, reject all solutions which are substitutes for the total liberation of

Palestine” (Article 21).24 However, it was not until the Fifth PNC in February 1969 that the

guerrilla groups were able to achieve a majority on the Executive Committee and see one of

their members elected chairman. Four of the eleven members of the new Executive

Committee were Fatah delegates, and Yasser Arafat, Fatah’s leader by this time, was named

chairman of the Executive Committee. Thus, at the Fifth PNC Fatah and the other guerrilla

groups finally succeeded in taking control of the PLO.25

Under the effective leadership of Fatah, the PLO accomplished its goal of

organizational unity within the Palestinian ranks by 1970 when the PFLP finally agreed to

cooperate with the PLO and sent a delegate to the Seventh PNC meeting in mid-1970.

Habash and his group now accepted the authority of the PLO Central Committee and the

PLO was finally the comprehensive and representative organization that Fatah desired it to

be.26

7
 Within this context of organizational unity the PLO also was evolving institutionally.

The major policy-making bodies were the Palestine National Council, the Executive

Committee, and the intermediate advisory organ created at the Seventh PNC meeting, the

27-member Central Committee. The permanent bureaucracy of the PLO included the

Secretariat, the Political Department, the Military Department (theoretically in charge of the

various resistance groups that had come together in 1969 under the Palestine Armed

Struggle Command), the Palestine National Fund, the General Union of Palestine Workers,

the General Union of Palestine Students, and numerous other departments and affiliated

organizations that eventually were created.27

At the same time that the PLO was becoming more institutionally developed and

organizationally unified, its ideology was also evolving in a direction that would eventually

enable it to secure much needed international legitimacy. 28 Key aspects of the new political

formula that the PLO began to assert were the understanding that the Arab-Israeli conflict

was in fact a struggle between Zionism and Palestinian nationalism and that the Zionists

had displaced the Palestinians and taken control of their ancestral homeland. 29 Thus the

PLO claimed that rather than just being refugees in need of humanitarian aid, the

Palestinians actually were a people and nation that had been deprived of its land and

potential statehood. In this case the problem was a political one, not a humanitarian one,

and required a political solution.

These assertions of the PLO were reflected in the revised National Charter that was

adopted at the Fourth PNC in 1968. Throughout the document the political and national

rights of the Palestinians are trumpeted with the insistence that these rights supersede the

humanitarian disasters that have befallen the Palestinian people. 30 For example, Article 3

8
states that “The Palestinian Arab people possess the legal right to their homeland and have

the right to determine their destiny after achieving the liberation of their country…” and

Article 26 goes on to say that “The Palestine Liberation Organization, the representative of

the Palestinian revolutionary forces, is responsible for the Palestinian Arab people’s

movement in its struggle to retrieve its homeland…and exercise the right of self-

determination in it…”31

In line with the emphasis on the political nature of the problem, the PLO also began to

make statements indicating that its position might be softening in certain respects. For

instance, Fatah statements in 1969 and 1970 proclaimed that all Jews presently living in

Palestine would be entitled to full citizenship in the PLO’s democratic state, provided that

they change their attitudes and renounce Zionism. 32 Despite these and other similar

statements, the secular state proposals of the PLO remained vague, and Israel and its

supporters summarily dismissed them as recent, artificial fabrications that in no way

compared to the ancient national rights of the Jews. As Tessler points out, it was in this

context that Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister, stated in 1969 that the Palestinians do not

exist.33 Furthermore, Moshe Ma’oz has pointed out that these calls by the PLO for a

secular, democratic state were calls for a new, single state in Palestine, to be built not beside

Israel but on its ruins.34 Without international support the PLO was unwilling to go much

further than its vague statements about secularism and democracy, and thus the evolving

ideology of the PLO did not have immediate effect on the Arab-Israeli dispute in the late

1960s.

Although the restructuring and ideological evolution of the PLO were beginning to

attract international attention, the worsening situation between Israel and its Arab

9
neighbors, especially Egypt, continued to dominate the Middle East during the last years of

the 1960s. In this increasingly confrontational atmosphere, the PLO had also begun to

engage the Israeli military from within southern Lebanon and the East Bank of the Jordan.

Due to an escalating cycle of retaliation from Israel, these actions also drew the PLO into

conflict with the governments of Lebanon and Jordan, who generally did not want to

antagonize Israel and if so wanted to control the attacks.35 In Jordan the increasing conflict

with King Hussein’s forces led to what is known by the Palestinians as “Black September,”

in which Hussein’s army brutally cracked down on the PLO. 36 By the following July King

Hussein announced that the PLO guerrillas had been completely driven from Jordan.

Among Palestinians there was real fear that the resistance movement might collapse,

despite the base of operations that still existed in southern Lebanon.

Although the immediate result of “Black September” was an increase in the use of

terrorism by frustrated extremist factions of the Palestinian movement, the mainstream of

the PLO began to reduce its use of commando operations following the banishment of the

organization from Jordan.37 During the 1970s the focus of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

shifted to the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the PLO by the mid-

1970s had begun to develop a diplomatic and political strategy designed to win

international support for their cause.

This new thinking was clearly evident in June 1974 at the Twelfth Palestine National

Council meeting in Cairo, when a ten-point program calling for the Palestinian revolution to

be implemented in stages was approved.38 Specifically, this meant that the immediate

objective of the PLO became to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza

Strip. These resolutions were the first official expression of any willingness to consider

10
liberation of anything less than the totality of Palestine. 39 Furthermore, the Twelfth PNC

also departed from earlier PLO thinking in its expressed willingness to consider the

possibility of political dialogue between a Palestinian state in the liberated territories and

progressive peace-oriented forces in Israel.40

In addition to revamping its official statement regarding the Israeli-Palestinian dispute,

the PLO also embarked on a remarkably successful diplomatic campaign to gain

international recognition, and thereby a greater measure of political legitimacy, for its

cause.41 The first gain came at the Arab summit conference meeting in Algiers in

November 1973 when the Arab states recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate

representative of the Palestinian people, although the Jordanians expressed reservations

about this decision. Similar recognition was granted the PLO by the summit meeting of the

Islamic Conference Organization in February 1974. The PLO’s range of support extended

beyond the Arab and Islamic circles when the Non-Aligned Movement adopted a resolution

in March 1974 that also expressed full recognition of the PLO and called on its members to

break off relations with Israel. The range of support was further broadened during Yasser

Arafat’s first official visit to the Soviet Union inn August 1974, when the Soviets also

recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. Finally, Arab unity

regarding the PLO was achieved at the Rabat, Morocco summit in October 1974, when

Jordan agreed that the PLO was the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians.42

The final diplomatic accomplishment of 1974 for the PLO came in November when

Arafat was invited to address the United Nations General Assembly. Nine days later the

Assembly passed two key resolutions, one granting the PLO observer status within the UN

and the other giving international recognition to the “inalienable rights” of the Palestinian

11
people, including the “right to self-determination without external interference” and “the

right to national independence and sovereignty.”43

During the months that followed Arafat’s UN visit, the United Nations was the scene of

still more international support for the Palestinians. First, in the summer of 1975 there was

a nearly successful drive to revoke Israel’s membership in the United Nations. Second, the

UN General Assembly in November 1975 passed a resolution stating that Zionism was “a

form of racism or racial discrimination.” 44 Finally, at the same time the General Assembly

created a permanent Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian

People, which was mandated with formulating recommendations for the realization of

Palestinian political rights now recognized by the UN.45

Despite a determined effort by Israelis to discount and play down the PLO diplomatic

initiatives, general international opinion seemed to favor the Palestinians. This was

becoming evident even in the United States, traditionally a fervent ally of Israel.

Prestigious think tanks, such as the Brookings Institution, began to issue reports speaking of

the Palestinians’ right to self-determination that were endorsed by a variety of prominent

academics, journalists, and politicians.46 In addition, the deputy assistant secretary of state

for Near Eastern affairs delivered a report to a Senate subcommittee in 1975 which stated

that the Palestinian question was the heart of the Israeli-Arab conflict and that therefore the

legitimate interests of the Palestinian Arabs must be taken into account in any final

settlement.47 Furthermore, there was only token American resistance to PLO attendance of

UN Security Council meetings in December 1975 and January 1976. 48 While the

significant of these events seemed questionable to the Palestinians, they were extremely

12
troubling to the Israelis and indicated how far the PLO had traveled in its move toward

international legitimization.

For the PLO, two of the most significant elements of the diplomatic achievements of

1974 and 1975 were the UN General Assembly resolutions in November 1974 and

November 1975. In effect, the governments voting for these resolutions had acknowledged

the PLO’s claim that UN 242, with its emphasis on the refugee issue, was an inadequate

response to the Palestinian dilemma.49 Although UN 242’s land for peace formula was still

important to the international community, the new resolutions had affirmed the PLO

assertion that the Palestinians are a nation, not a group of refugees, with a need for a

political solution to the problem of statelessness.50

In general, it can be said that the PLO was finally able to firmly establish itself in the

international political arena in the 1970s, approximately ten years after it was formed.

However, after this heady decade when the PLO’s star seemed destined to continue rising,

the 1980s were a frustrating period of confrontation and political stagnation, culminating in

the violent Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories at the end of the decade.

Although the intifada, as the uprising was called, is a much focused upon period in modern

Palestinian history, in this paper I am more concerned with the aftereffects of the intifada in

the 1990s. After the frustrations of the 1980s, how did the PLO arrive at the historic 1993

accord with Israel?

Despite the turbulence of the 1980s, it is apparent that the PLO’s rhetoric continued to

move toward a stated willingness for political compromise. Palestinian intellectuals and

leaders pointed out that the resolutions of the successive Palestine National Council

meetings indicated a gradual softening of the PLO platform away from maximalism

13
towards accommodation.51 For example, Edward Said has asserted that just as the PNC

program has become more and more moderate and reasonable the Israeli governments have

generally moved further and further to the right, becoming more and more intransigent, thus

putting the real position of the PLO into sharper focus.52

Manuel Hassassian has divided the PNC resolutions from the inception of the PLO to

1988 into three distinct phases to emphasize the major turning points in Palestinian thinking

regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue.53 The first phase encompasses the years from 1964

to 1968 and was characterized by an emphasis on the total liberation of Palestine, first by

the Arab states and then by the Palestinians themselves, so that all Palestinians could return

to their original homes. The second phase, including the years 1969-1974, was marked by

an emphasis on the secular democratic state that the PLO would create. This was a

dramatic shift away from the demand for total liberation to the ideal of a free democratic

state where Christians, Muslims, and Jews could live harmoniously. In the third phase,

1974-1988, despite the mounting pressures of the 1980s, PLO political thinking moved

more and more toward acceptance of the two-state solution and peaceful coexistence with

Israel. This thinking culminated in the unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence in

1988 and would bear even more impressive fruit in 1993 with a bilateral Declaration of

Principles with Israel.

Arab political initiatives and developments in the occupied territories also lent

credibility to the PLO’s claims that its cause was legitimate and moderate. Arab states,

including Egypt, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia, were increasingly advocating a two-state

solution as proposed by the PLO.54 The fact that Saudi Arabia, who previously had not

recognized Israel, was in favor of such a solution lent much credibility to the PLO’s efforts.

14
Furthermore, the new leadership of Palestinians that was emerging in the occupied

territories had come to power democratically and openly supported the moderate

mainstream of the PLO. This further legitimized the PLO’s claim that it was the sole

representative of the Palestinian people and empowered to govern them in the event of

liberation.55

However, despite such political gains, the 1980s quickly degenerated into violence and

conflict between Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the occupied territories, as well as full-

scale war involving Israeli attacks on PLO bases in southern Lebanon and PLO retaliation.

Diplomatic efforts in the mid-1980s failed and by 1987 frustrated Palestinians had launched

what would come to be known as the intifada.

In one sense the pressures of the intifada, with constant media coverage, brought the

PLO back to center stage in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite the harsh

treatment of demonstrating Palestinian youths by Israeli police and soldiers, the PLO found

it very difficult to achieve full recognition and negotiation with the United States in

addition to Israel.

Finally, the PLO began to put forward concrete proposals for peace, beginning with

distribution of a short position paper in June 1988 by one of Arafat’s closest advisors. 56

This paper called for direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in order to achieve a two-state

solution to the problem. A second Palestinian statement, the Husayni Document, was

presented in August and called for a two-state solution with a Palestinian declaration of

independence based on the 1947 UN partition plan.57 These statements were seized upon

by senior members of the PLO who felt it was time to take the initiative in the conflict

instead of just responding to the events in the occupied territories that had taken on a life of

15
their own. This movement culminated in November 1988 at the nineteenth session of the

PNC, an emergency meeting, in which Arafat issued the “Declaration of Independence for

the State of Palestine.”58

Although United States acceptance of the PLO and its official renunciation of terrorism

was slow in coming, eventually the intifada forced the PLO to change its stance enough to

satisfy the United States and many in Israel. Thus in this sense the sheer force of the

intifada convinced any doubters that resolution of the Palestinian issue was an essential

element in the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israeli and Palestinian analysts have pointed

to the intifada as being the catalyst for the adoption of resolutions by the PNC that officially

advocated the two-state solution as originally envisioned by the UN partition plan as well as

resulting in Yasser Arafat formally renouncing terrorism and essentially recognizing the

state of Israel.59 Therefore, the impact of the intifada on the PLO cannot be underestimated.

From the tentative 60s to the confident 70s through the turbulent, frustrating 80s the

PLO arrived on the South Lawn of the White House on September 13, 1993 to sign a

historic Declaration of Principles with Israel after months of secret negotiations in Oslo,

Norway.60 Regardless of the valid criticisms leveled against the accord and the innumerable

obstacles that have prevented full implementation of it during the subsequent six and a half

years, it remains a watershed event in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the evolution of

the PLO.

Tessler points out a number of considerations that pushed the Israelis and the PLO

toward the agreement, which effectively silenced all but the most extreme PLO opponents.

The PLO had been formally seeking such an agreement since 1988 and for several years

prior to that had been indicating its willingness for territorial compromise. 61 Furthermore,

16
the PLO was in dire need of tangible results for its struggle. The demise of the Soviet

Union had removed much of the PLO’s international backing and its support of Saddam

Hussein during the Gulf War had lost it the significant financial and diplomatic support of

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.62

Furthermore, the PLO nationalists were under increasing pressure from Hamas and

other Islamist groups who felt that the PLO was politically bankrupt and that the only

solution left was a return to armed struggle based on religious principles instead of the

secular Palestinian nationalism that the PLO has advocated. 63 Ziad Abu-Amr has put forth

the argument that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are basically in a position to wait and see how

public support for the PLO falls out. In other words, if public support for the PLO

continues to increase then the Islamist groups will be more likely to adapt to the PLO’s

nationalist agenda and rules, whereas if public support for the PLO drops because of its

failure to deliver on its promises then the Islamist groups will step into the

power/legitimacy vacuum and try to change the rules to suit their ideology.64

Predictably, though, Hamas and other radical Islamist groups immediately denounced

the Oslo accords as a “treasonous…surrender of Palestine at the cheapest price,” rejecting

any solution that gave up even a fraction of Palestinian land. 65 With these denunciations

came terrorist attacks by some of the same groups, which put the PLO in another

predicament. These activities led some Israeli officials to criticize the PLO on the charges

that it was not doing enough to halt the terrorism. 66 However, it can be argued that these

charges by Israeli officials are actually de facto recognition of the authority and legitimacy

of the PLO, assuming that the PLO can, like any other state, control the members of its

population or those under its “jurisdiction”.

17
 In conclusion, although this brief account of some of the key points in the political

legitimization can hardly do justice to the topic, it appears evident from the historical data

that this process has not been a completely linear one. Although the PLO was somewhat

slow to completely condemn and renounce the use of terrorism to achieve its aims, it was at

the same time developing an institutional and ideological framework that could greatly

speed the process of legitimization once these renunciations were made. Thus, although the

PLO had appeared to achieve nearly complete international legitimization even in the

1970s, the problematic events of the 1980s showed that the process had not yet been

completed. However, the ideological growth, as reflected in the gradually softening nature

of the PNC resolutions, continued to proceed. When presented with an Israeli government

in the early 1990s that was equally ready for political compromise, the often painful process

that the PLO had endured during the previous decades bore significant fruit in Oslo.

Obviously, the question now at the end of the 1990s is whether or not the PLO will continue

down this path of legitimization in the face of the obstacles to implementation that have

characterized recent years or turn yet again to violence. Time will tell and those involved

or interested will wait and hope.

18
ENDNOTES

19
1
. Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994),
p. 373.
2
. Ibid., p. 374.
3
. Ibid.
4
. Ibid.
5
. Ibid.
6
. Ibid. pp. 374-375.
7
. Ibid., p. 375.
8
. Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Mogdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (New York: Free Press,
1993), p. 216.
9
. M. Tessler, op. cit., p. 399.
10
. B. Kimmerling, op. cit., p. 209.
11
. M. Tessler, op. cit., p. 397.
12
. Ibid.
13
. B. Kimmerling, op. cit., p. 222.
14
. M. Tessler, op. cit., p. 409.
15
. Ibid., p. 410.
16
. Ibid.
17
. Ibid., p. 420. UN 242 can also be found in its entirety on the Avalon Project internet site of Yale Law
School.
18
. Ibid., p. 420-421.
19
. Ibid., p. 423.
20
. B. Kimmerling, op. cit., p. 222.
21
. M. Tessler, op. cit., p. 424.
22
. Ibid., p. 426.
23
. Ibid.
24
. Ibid., p. 428.
25
. Ibid., p. 429.
26
. Ibid., p. 430.
27
. Ibid., pp. 430-433.
28
. Ibid., p. 433.
29
. Ibid.
30
. Ibid.
31
. Ibid., p. 434.
32
. Ibid., p. 443.
33
. Ibid., p. 444.
34
. Moshe Ma’oz, “Democratization Among West Bank Palestinians and Palestinian-Israeli Relations,” in
Democracy, Peace, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, ed. by Edy Kaufman, Shukri B. Abed, and Robert L. Rothstein
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 1993), p. 224.
35
. B. Kimmerling, op. cit., p. 229.
36
. M. Tessler, op. cit., p. 463.
37
. Ibid., p. 483.
38
. Ibid.
39
. Ibid.
40
. Ibid.
41
. Ibid., p. 484.
42
. Ibid.
43
. Ibid., p. 485.
44
. Ibid.
45
. Ibid.
46
. Ibid., p. 488.
47
. Ibid.
48
. Ibid.
49
. Ibid., p. 489.
50
. Ibid.
51
. Ibid., p. 536.
52
. Edward Said, The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination 1969-1994
(London: Vintage, 1995), p. 167.
53
. Manuel Hassassian, “The Democratization Process in the PLO: Ideology, Structure, and Strategy,” in
Democracy, Peace, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, ed. by Edy Kaufman, Shukri B. Abed, and Robert L. Rothstein
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 1993), pp. 271-276.
54
. M. Tessler, op. cit., p. 537.
55
. Ibid., p. 538.
56
. Ibid., p. 720.
57
. Ibid.
58
. Ibid., p. 721.
59
. Ibid., p. 727.
60
. Ibid., p. 753.
61
. Ibid., p. 754.
62
. Ibid.
63
. Meir Litvak, “The Islamization of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: The Case of Hamas,” Middle Eastern
Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1 (January 1998), p. 148.
64
. Ziad Abu-Amr, “Palestinian Islamists, Pluralism, and Democracy,” in Democracy, Peace, and the Israeli-
Palestinian Conflict, ed. by Edy Kaufman, Shukri B. Abed, and Robert L. Rothstein (Boulder: Lynne Rienner
Publishers, Inc., 1993), p. 253.
65
. Ibid., p. 159.
66
. M. Tessler, op. cit., p. 758.