History Palestinian Liberation Organization 1. Can The Palestine Liber

History Palestinian Liberation Organization 1. Can the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) justifiably claim to be 'the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.'? The PLO was set up in 1964 by an Arab League decision in response to growing signs of Palestinian unrest. The Palestinians desired to reclaim the lands occupied by Israel, which they felt belonged to them, as said in the Bible. In 1964 the Arab states created the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). While it was supposed to represent the Palestinians, in reality it represented the views of President Nasser of Egypt, who guided the formation of the PLO. Its first leader made wild and irresponsible threats to drive Israelis into the sea, and had little support among Palestinians for he was seen as a puppet of the Egyptians. In the 1960s Palestinian students began to form their own organizations independent of control by Arab governments (although the Syrians, Libyans, and Iraqis continued to fu nd and control particular groups). Yasser Arafat founded an independent Palestinian-run party called Fatah. He is said to have the backing, for most of the recent past, of about 80% of the Palestinian people. The position of the Arab governments was that a PLO under Arab League supervision would be the best way of satisfying the demands made by an emerging Palestinian national consciousness. Also, it was felt that through such an organization Arab governments could control Palestinian political activities. Ten years after its founding, the PLO was raised to the status of government. And in 1988, the PLO's status was to be raised again, this time to a state in exile. After several negotiations, Arafat became a Terrorist leader and administrator of self-rule in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the 1967 Six Day War, the Arab armies did very badly against Israel, losing 67,000 square kilometres of land. Palestinians came to believe that if they were ever to have their land, they would have to do it themselves. After the 1967 war, the situation changed drastically. The resistance activities of various guerrilla organizations, in particular the Al-Fatah and the PFLP, gained the increasing support of the Palestinians. With Arafat at the helm from 1969 and a resistance-oriented leadership, the PLO was more effective and played a central role in mobilizing the Palestinians and in expanding its basis of support both at the local and international level. The PLO became an umbrella organization for the various guerrilla groups. This increase in support was made possible because of the Al-Fatah's ability to access to the growing numbers of volunteers from refugee camps which were freshly swollen due to the 1967 war. Most of these refugees suffered the frustration of having been displaced twice in a lifetime. This generated, especially among the young, a mood of defiance, as they were ready to question the credibility of the idea of relying on Arab governmen ts to liberate Palestine. Furthermore, as a consequence of the war a large proportion of the Palestinian community became territorially united. This brought the possibility of direct interaction between the various sections of the Palestinian community that had previously remained isolated from each other. On the other hand, the inability of the PLO's conservative leadership to promote any effective resistance operations culminated in the eventual transfer of power to the armed-struggle orientated guerrilla organizations. Thus initially, the PLO had a broad base of support and represented the desires of the majority of the Palestinian people. The origins of the Al-Fatah can be traced back to the mid-1950s to a group of Palestinians that had neither relinquished their national identity nor their belief in the necessity of liberating Palestine via Palestinian means, rather than relying on other Arab states. Yet, throughout the 1950s the attitude of the Palestinians remained large ly skeptical if not uncommitted to Al-Faith's ideology. It was in the 1960s that the situation began to change, enabling Al-Fatah to expand its organizational structure and base. Under the leadership of Arafat, Al-Fatah pursued an ideology which simply stresses the nationalist struggle to liberate Palestine without dwelling too deeply on any theoretical speculations about the nature and form of the future Palestinian society. This tactic was essential in gaining support against other movements,