“The PLO is all of us,” said a young Lebanese Palestinian in New York. “It is me, it is the guy I buy cigarettes from, it is people just like you.”
This characterization, which came as a response to why Israeli fighter jets hit civilian targets in retaliatory raids against the Palestine Liberation Organization, took place the summer before the Palestinian uprising shook the Israeli-administered territories.
The explanation was a new and frank depiction of a group long reviled by Israelis and most Jews as a terrorist organization.
The picture of an all-pervasive organization contrasts sharply with its tumultuous history, which began unremarkably on June 1, 1964.
Credit for creation of the PLO is often given to the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who convened the Cairo summit meeting in January 1964.
In the beginning, extremist Palestinian groups did not align with the PLO because of its domination by the Arab League.
The PLO National Covenant was written in May 1964. Article 15, in an English translation furnished by the Palestine Research Center, reads: “The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine.”
HEADQUARTERS IN WEST BANK
Mohammed Yasir Arafat, born in Cairo 59 years ago, raised there and in Jerusalem, did not take up the mantle of the PLO until 1969.
He and other PLO leaders spent much of the 1950s in Kuwait, where they honed their underground activities. Their organization was then known as Al Fatah, but it was little then beside talk of Palestinian liberation and a magazine.
After the Six-Day War of 1967, Arafat returned to the West Bank to establish a resistance movement. Within four months he left for Jordan. He has never since laid foot on the land he wishes to be a Palestinian state.
Arafat — also called Abu Amar, “father of the movement” — established a headquarters in the Karameh refugee camp together with Khalilal-Wazir, who took the nom de guerre Abu Jihad. Their group perpetrated hit-and-run attacks on Israel. One, supported by Jordanian soldiers, killed 28 Israeli soldiers.
Abu Jihad, who became the PLO’s No. 2 leader, was gunned down in his home in Tunis in April 1988, apparently by Israeli commando troops.
In Jordan, other branches of the PLO heralded their messages: the Marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Nayef Hawatmeh, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Dr. George Habash.
In September 1970, Jordan’s army moved against the PLO in the bloody routing known as Black September. The PLO left for Lebanon and dug in there. Lebanese resented their presence.
In August 1982, the Arafat and 11,000 PLO troops were evicted from that entrenchment by the invading Israelis. The ousted PLO fighters dispersed, making headquarters in Tunis.
In May 1983, 9,000 PLO troops who had remained behind, mostly in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, revolted, claiming Arafat’s policy was too moderate. Arafat cut off food, fuel and money to the rebels. Abu Jihad blamed Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi for inciting the rebellion.
In December, Syrian-backed rebels pushed Arafat out of Tripoli, Lebanon, a last stronghold.
SPLIT INTO FACTIONS
By 1984, the PLO had splintered into a number of factions opposed to Arafat’s leadership. Supported by Syria and grouped together as the Palestine National Salvation Front, they include:
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, led by Capt. Ahmed Jabril, a former Syrian army captain.
National Alliance, led by Saed (Abu) Musa and his Fatah Uprising, composed of dissidents from Arafat’s Fatah.
As Saiqa, Palestinian branch of the Baath party of Syria, led by Issam al-Qadi, with approximately 1,000 members in Lebanon and Syria.
Popular Struggle Front, a small pro-Syrian group led by Samir Gosheh.
Palestine Popular Struggle Front, led by Talaat Yacub, a contingent of about 200 members in eastern and southern Lebanon.
Democratic Alliance, with ties to South Yemen and Algeria. This originally included Habash’s and Hawatmeh’s groups, which rejoined the PLO in 1987.
Other independent Palestinian liberation groupings, believed to receive support from outside states, include:
Fatah Revolutionary Council, infamously known as the Abu Nidal group. It is widely reported to be supported by Libya and Syria.
Abu Nidal, whose real name is Sabry al-Banna, broke from Arafat in 1974. Sporadic reports claim Abu Nidal dead. But the group is believed responsible for numerous incidents, including an attack on an Istanbul synagogue in 1986 that left 22 dead.
INCIDENTS SINCE CAIRO DECLARATION
The faction of the Palestine Liberation Front headed by Mohammed (Abul) Abbas. His group was responsible for the attack on the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, in which American Jew Leon Klinghoffer was killed. Abbas is a member of the Palestine Nationak Council. At its meeting last month in Algiers, he joked about Klinghoffer’s murder.
Arafat renounced terrorism outside Israel in his now famous Cairo Declaration of 1985. His Fatah wing of the PLO subsequently claimed credit for two bloody acts, both inside Israel: the 1986 attack on Israeli military cadets at a graduation ceremony at the Western Wall, which killed one soldier, and the hijacking of a bus this past year en route to Israel’s nuclear facility in Dimona. Three died in that ambush.
At its meeting in Algiers last month, the PNC, which serves as the PLO’s legislative body, formally renounced terrorism. Ironically, the man who beseeched the body to renounce terrorism and implicitly recognize Israel was Abu Iyad, former head of Black September, which masterminded the 1972 attack at the Munich Olympics.
The PLO, as usually referred to, is largely synonymous with Al Fatah, its mainstream military branch. Its elite commando Force 17 has claimed responsibility for several terror attacks on Israelis in recent years, including the killing of three Israelis aboard a yacht in Larnaca, Cyprus.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
