The Palestine Liberation Organisation was formed in 1964 to act as the umbrella movement for eight guerrilla groups opposed to any negotiated settlement with Israel. Al-Fatah, the principal guerrilla group, assumed leadership of the PLO in 1969 and has retained it in subsequent years. The PLO technically is governed by a 15-member Executive Committee dominated by Al-Fatah and its leading personality, Yassir Arafat.
The principal Palestine Arab guerrilla organisations are:
1. Al-Fatah, with approximately 18,000 members. Al-Fatah conducted military operations under the name Al-Asifah in Lebanon.
2. Saiqa, approximately 5,000 members, organised and controlled by Syria. Saiqa has been sponsored by the Syrian Baathist Party from its inception. Its guiding spirit was Zuheir Mohsen, an Arafat rival who was murdered in France.
3. Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), approximately 3,000 members. PDFLP was organised by a Jordanian, Naif Hawatmeh, and supports Marxist ideology.
4. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command is made up of approximately 1,000 pro-Syrian activists.
5. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is a force of 2,000 to 3,000 armed insurgents led by a Lebanese Christian and Marxist-Leninist, Dr. George Habash.
6. The Arab Liberation Front identifies with Iraq, and has several hundred to slightly more than 1,000 men under arms.
7. The Palestine Liberation Front, also supported by Iraq, has a few hundred followers.
8. The Palestine Popular Front, a small personalised organisation led by Dr. Samir Ghosheh, comprises only a few hundred followers.
The PLO was created in the belief that Palestinian Arab claims could be better projected by an indefatigable and unified Palestinian front. Between 1948 and 1964, the Palestinians were more inclined to defer to the established Arab states. Many Palestinian refugees were organised into armed bands of fedayeen (warriors of Islam) by Arab governments, especially Egypt under the leadership of Gamal Abdul Nasser. Growing frustration with these governments, however, prompted greater independence.
In the 1950's, Palestinian students at Stuttgart University in West Germany organised Al-Fatah (Conquest). It was soon led by Yassir Arafat, one of those students and a cousin of the last mufti of Jerusalem. Arafat fled Jerusalem with his family after the eruption of hostilities between the new state of Israel and the armies of the Arab League in 1948.
In the 1950's Al-Fatah supported the Algerian Liberation Movement in its war against the French. Following Algeria's independence, Al-Fatah established a training base there. With assistance from Egypt, Arafat's forces began terrorist strikes inside Israel and soon established their pre-eminence among the Palestinian organisations. In May 1964, East Jerusalem, then under Jordanian control, was the site for the first Palestinian National Congress. This congress gave birth to the PLO, but it was not until the 1967 war with Israel that the organisation received special recognition. Amidst humiliation, defeat, and loss of territory, Yassir Arafat's Al-Fatah held off a determined Israeli force at the Jordanian village of Karameh, and in so doing legitimated the organisation and raised its leader to new heights in the Arab world.
The Palestinian National Covenant was drafted and proclaimed the following year under PLO sponsorship. Armed struggle, not diplomacy, became the PLO's central theme. Total victory was its objective. The growing strength of the PLO was used to arouse the Palestinians in Jordan to greater efforts, not only against Israel, but also against the Hashemite monarchy of King Hussein. Facing retaliatory blows by Israeli forces for PLO forays against Jewish settlements, and especially embarrassed by the PLO's use of Jordanian airfields as sanctuaries for terrorist skyjackings, King Hussein ordered his Arab Legion to constrain the Palestinians. The consequence of this order was a bloody encounter between the Palestinians and Royal Jordanian forces. Despite Syrian efforts on behalf of the PLO, Arafat's organisation was badly mauled in the encounter. Estimates of casualties ran between several hundred to more than several thousand dead. No less significant, the PLO was compelled to shift its main operations to Syria and Lebanon.
The appearance of the PLO in Lebanon tipped a delicate balance between Christian Phalange and indigenous Muslim elements. Moreover, with the PLO insistent on using Lebanon as its principal base of operations against Israel, Lebanese society was brought under Israeli guns. The dispute between Christians and Muslims and between conservatives and radicals in Lebanon had deep roots. In 1958, the U.S. government had ordered troops onto Lebanese soil to stabilise a shaky political system. The activities of the PLO reactivated and intensified old controversies. The result was a breakdown of law and order, paralysis in the Lebanese government, division in its armed forces ╤ and ultimately a full-blown civil war that commenced in 1975. Given Palestinian assistance to the Lebanese opposition, the ruling Christian Phalange faced almost certain defeat. Syria, however, sent its armed forces into the country and attacked the PLO in its principal bases. The Syrian intervention turned the tide of battle, and the Phalange was able to regroup and sustain its position in East Beirut. The PLO lost several thousand men in the clash. No less important, it was made dependent on the Syrian government.
Syria occupied a good portion of Lebanon and offered the PLO assistance in its struggle against Israel. The PLO's principal bases were located in southern Lebanon, in proximity to Israel, and Syria became its primary support base. The joint Syrian-PLO pressure on Israel's northern border precipitated Israeli counterblows. Moreover, Lebanese living in the southern region sought Israeli help in warding off PLO attacks on their villages.
The PLO maintained an army of approximately 10,000 men in southern Lebanon. In 1978 Israel raided the region (Operation Litani) to neutralise the PLO threat, but hostilities continued. In 1981, an understanding was arrived at between Israel and its major antagonists, especially Syria. It specified that Syria would restrain the PLO and prevent future attacks on Israel. Israel promised to respect the frontier between Lebanon and the Jewish state. In 1982, however, after several terrorist attacks against Israel and Israelis abroad, Israel again retaliated. Air raids were made against PLO bases and camps, and Beirut was bombed. In June, Israel moved an invasion force into Lebanon (Operation Peace for Galilee), destroyed PLO bases in the south and surrounded Beirut. After weeks of heavy shelling and bombing, the PLO agreed to move their forces and headquarters from Beirut, and they were scattered to a number of Arab countries.
Despite PLO determination to destroy Israel, it has never achieved its cherished goal of unity. The differences that separate Arab governments still separate factions within the PLO. Yassir Arafat has sustained his leadership of the PLO through control of Al-Fatah, but he is not above criticism. Rebel organisations within the organisation openly seek Arafat's removal from the PLO. So have leaders of Arab governments. Anwar Sadat became a foe of the PLO and Yassir Arafat as a result of the Egyptian president's peace overtures to Israel. Conflicts between the PLO and Jordan as well as Syria are parts of the record. Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi also criticised Arafat's diplomatic approach to the Arab-Israeli question. Qaddafi supported an armed uprising against Arafat's leadership in the Lebanese city of Tripoli in 1983. Arafat survived only with the help of the Israelis, who provided him with safe passage from the scene of the siege that took the lives of many under his command.
The formal declaration of a Palestinian state in 1988 with Arafat at its head was a strong indication that he had not yet lost his grip on Palestinian affairs. It also pointed to the absence of successful substitutes to replace Arafat as the leader of the organisation. The assassination of Salah Khalaf, second in command to Arafat in the PLO, in Tunis on January 16, 1991, illustrated the continuing difficulties posed by the factional fighting inside the organisation.. The PLO's security chief also died on that occasion. It was believed both men had been killed because they did not support Arafat's decision to stand with Saddam Hussein in the latter's confrontation with the American-led coalition over the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. A clue to the killing of Arafat's aides was the murder of Rafiq Shafiq Qiblawi, known as Abu Ziad, a deputy speaker of the Palestine National Council and an important officer in the PLO. He had publicly condemned Saddam Hussein for his invasion of Kuwait, and his death on January 29, 1991, was judged connected to Saddam Hussein's agents. It is notable that he had been expelled from Iraq and was killed in Kuwait. These developments, connected with the general opprobrium in which the Palestinians were held in liberated Kuwait and victorious Saudi Arabia, raised new questions about the PLO's capacity to enter into a meaningful dialogue with the Israelis.
