The Palestine Liberation Organization, its military infrastructure annihilated by Israeli forces in Lebanon, may revert to its original guise of a purely terrorist organization engaging in terrorist activities in Israel, the occupied territories and abroad, on Israeli expert warned today.
Prof. Amnon Cohen of the Hebrew University, a former Arab affairs advisor to the Military Governor of the West Bank, said in a radio interview that it was too early to write the PLO’s obituary. The terrorists are broken and their response so far to Israel’s conditions for ending the war in Lebanon indicate that their “spirit was shaken.” But even if they withdraw from Lebanon they could continue to exist as a political entity and to some degree as a military factor, Cohen said.
He noted that the PLO retained “hard cores” in Lebanon and in other countries. Several Arab states have offered to “adopt” them and new elements could emerge inside the PLO as a result of the war, he said.
According to Cohen, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is following the line toward the PLO adopted by the late President Anwar Sadat. He is not deserting the Palestinians but is trying to persuade them to resort to political rather than military means to solve the Palestinian problem, Cohen said.
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