Summary
The organisation created in 1964, in Sayegh’s account, by which the Palestinian people reasserted its corporate personality and seized the initiative for the liberation of its homeland after sixteen years of dispersion and exile; its Research Center, founded by Fayez Sayegh in 1965, published Zionist Colonialism in Palestine.
Details
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After sixteen years of dispersion and exile, during which the Palestinian people had reposed its faith in its return in world conscience and international public opinion, in the United Nations, and/or in the Arab states, it chose at last to seize the initiative, and in 1964 reasserted its corporate personality by creating the Palestine Liberation Organization (Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, PDF p.19 / printed p.224).
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Sayegh presents this as the fifth stage of the Palestinian response to Zionism: only in the liberation of Palestine, spearheaded by Palestinians prepared to pay the price, can past sacrifices be vindicated (Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, PDF p.19 / printed p.224).
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In 1965 Fayez Sayegh founded the Research Center of the Palestine Liberation Organization and served as a member of its Executive Committee (Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, PDF p.1 / printed p.206); the Center, in Beirut, was the original publisher of his Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965) (Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, PDF p.2 / printed p.207).
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In Said: the PLO is recognized by over 100 nations, and of course by all Palestinians, as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and yet neither the United States nor Israel concedes that the PLO represents Palestinians; Camp David specifically arrogated the right of Palestinian representation to the United States, Israel and Egypt (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.46 / printed p.25).
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In Said, Chapter Three I: the PLO was founded by the Arab League in 1964 as a way of institutionalizing (perhaps even containing) Palestinian energies; early on it was not so much a political as a rhetorical apparatus, but it attracted militants for whom it might become genuinely national, responsible and governmental, and despite having no native territory it created advanced social services, mobilized exiled Palestinians with spectacular success, and gained the commitment of the overwhelming majority of Palestinians exiled, occupied, or inside Israel (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.154-155 / printed p.133-134).
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Said traces its stunning international successes to its undertaking responsibility for all Palestinians — in exile, under occupation, and inside Israel — its schooling, arming, protecting and feeding of Palestinians, its independent diplomatic identity and informational and research apparatus, and its opening to the entire community, which made being a Palestinian a meaningful thing and turned the Palestinian from a passive into a participating political being (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.160-161 / printed p.139-140).
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Its partial replacement of UNRWA on a political level in Lebanon and Jordan is treated at PDF p.153-154 / printed p.132-133, and the more Israel identified the PLO with terrorism in the Occupied Territories, the more Palestinians considered it their only political hope (PDF p.158-159 / printed p.137-138).
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In Said, Chapter Three III: after Karameh in March 1968 the PLO ran a quasi state for Palestinians inside a host Arab state, first in Jordan and later in Lebanon, which came into collision with the larger one; its vacillation between a revolutionary direction (liberation) and national independence is treated at length, as are its component organizations — Fateh, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Democratic Front, Saiqa and smaller units (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.179-180 / printed p.158-159).
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Said argues the PLO did not get its popularity because it was a made-up device to terrorize the world, but because it represented a general Palestinian consensus; within a decade it managed a startlingly active array of students’ organizations, women’s groups, trade unions, schools, veterans welfare programs and a vast health and supply network, and its most important achievement is that it immediately makes a place for any Palestinian anywhere (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.185-186 / printed p.164-165).
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The Palestinian National Fund, accountable to the Palestinian National Council, effectively pays for services, supplies, training and armaments for approximately a million people, supplemented by sums from Arab states including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.187 / printed p.166).
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The 1974 Rabat Conference decision to designate the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people was a result of the Jordanian-Palestinian clash in 1970 and 1971; the West Bank and Gaza municipal elections of 1976 and the Day of the Land brought strong support for the PLO as representative from the occupied and from inside Israel (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.189-190 / printed p.168-169).
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The PLO has indicated that in return for a U.S. declaration of support for Palestinian self-determination culminating in an independent state it will formulate very concrete proposals on peace (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.218 / printed p.197).
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In Said, Chapter Four III: the PLO is the Palestinian question, in the private view of senior U.S. administration officials as Said reports it, and too legitimate and representative a body for any alternative Palestinian leadership ever to emerge; the Sinai II / Kissinger condition — no U.S. recognition or talks unless the PLO accepts Resolution 242 and recognizes Israel — withheld legitimacy for the PLO and consequently for the Palestinians in the American political arena (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.236 / printed p.215).
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The PLO formulated the Secular Democratic State idea after 1967, and in 1974 the Palestinian leadership gave up any idea of a purely military solution; on occasion after occasion the PLO stated its willingness to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and the National Council meetings of 1974 and 1977 committed the whole national community to this idea, with an implicit recognition of Israel as a neighbor (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.241, p.245 / printed p.220, p.224).
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Armed with UN Resolution 3236 (November 22, 1974), the PLO attempted to be a U.S. interlocutor, protected American citizens in Lebanon in 1975 and 1976, and on January 22, 1976 openly supported a Security Council resolution on Palestinian self-determination and all states’ right to live in peace, which Daniel P. Moynihan vetoed (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.246-247 / printed p.225-226).
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The late-summer 1977 agreement Said records — PLO acceptance of Resolution 242 with a reservation on Palestinian national rights, in return for U.S. recognition and something definite about self-determination — collapsed when the United States would go no further than a dialogue; indirect PLO-U.S. contacts on Palestinian participation at Geneva were canceled abruptly on November 19, 1977 (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.247-248 / printed p.226-227).
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Said’s closing assessment: the PLO has symbolized both the loneliness of the Palestinian vision and the wonderful power of faith in it, and gathers support every minute after Camp David, while current ideas that leave out the PLO are proven bankrupt (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.254, p.259 / printed p.233, p.238).
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In Pappe, Chapter 11: Palestinian nationalism re-emerged centred on the Right of Return and found its embodiment in 1968 in the PLO, whose leadership was refugee-based and whose ideology was grounded in the demand for moral and factual redress of the evils Israel had inflicted in 1948 (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.273). Pappe calls the PLO of 1964-1968 the ‘bogus PLO’ in his History of Modern Palestine (Chapter 11, note 1, PDF p.324). By Camp David in 2000 a fragmented PLO, advised by the Adam Smith Institute, put the Nakba at the top of its agenda and its leader refused the Israeli plan (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.279).
Related pages
Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, Fayez Sayegh, Liberation of Palestine, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine