Yep. King Assad died in 2000. I knew he was sick, but not that sick! Thanks.
Also, I just read that Syria was against the PLO. What a mess. I think Sharon was right, he had a chance 20 years ago.
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Sharon Is Sorry Israel Didn't Kill Arafat in the 80's (The New York Times)
... JERUSALEM, Jan. 31 The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said in an interview published today that Israel should have killed Yasir Arafat when it had...
story.news.yahoo.com
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IINTRODUCTION Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), political body working to create a state for Palestinian Arabs in Palestine, a historic region now comprised of Israel and the disputed Palestinian-populated areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The creation of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent wars between Israel and Arab nations displaced many Palestinians. Founded in 1964 as a channel for Palestinian demands for a state, the PLO grew in prominence after Israel gained control of the largely Palestinian-inhabited West Bank and Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War of 1967. After years of animosity between Israel and the PLO, the two sides signed a series of agreements between 1993 and 1997 that transferred almost all Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Palestinian administration. The agreements created an interim body, the Palestinian Authority (PA), to administer these Palestinian areas until their final status has been determined. The PA has taken over many of the PLO's administrative and negotiating roles with respect to these territories, while the PLO continues to act as an umbrella group representing Palestinian interests both inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip and elsewhere in the world.
IISTRUCTURE The PLO is made of three main bodies: the 15-member Executive Committee, which makes decisions and which includes representatives of the PLO's major fedayeen (guerrilla) forces; the 60-member Central Committee, an advisory body; and the 599-member Palestine National Council, which has historically been seen as an assembly of the Palestinian people. Before the creation of the PA, the PLO also had departments and affiliated agencies that provided military, health, information, finance, education, and other services to the dispersed Palestinian population. Since 1994, however, the PA has taken over these functions for the Palestinian population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
IIIHISTORY In 1947 the United Nations (UN) adopted a resolution to partition the disputed region of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Arabs rejected the plan but Jews accepted it, declaring the independent state of Israel in 1948. War broke out between Arabs and Jews after the creation of Israel. When the fighting ended in 1949, Israel had gained more land than had been allocated to it by the UN resolution. After armistice agreements, Egypt (which had fought on the side of the Palestinians) retained control of the Gaza Strip (an area just north of Egypt), and Jordan (also a Palestinian ally) kept the West Bank, a territory west of the Jordan River that it annexed in 1950. Palestinians in the West Bank thus became Jordanian citizens, and those who stayed in Israel eventually became Israeli citizens. Palestinians who stayed in the Gaza Strip or fled to other countries became refugees.
In June 1964 the PLO was founded at a summit meeting of the Arab League, an association of Arab-speaking countries, in Jerusalem. The PLO was established to provide a more legitimate and organized channel for Palestinian nationalism than was offered by independent Palestinian guerrilla groups. Later some of these groups would join the PLO, including Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Saiqa, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). Professional, labor, and student groups also joined the PLO, but over time the fedayeen proved dominant. The PLO was dedicated to organizing Palestinian people "to recover their usurped homes" and, according to its charter, to replacing Israel with a secular Palestinian state. The PLO's fedayeen were divided between those who, like Fatah, thought these goals should be achieved by Palestinians only and others who, like the PFLP, believed Arabs from all parts of the Middle East should unite to liberate Palestine.
In its early years the PLO was based mostly in Jordan, and it sponsored many guerrilla and terrorist acts both in Israel and internationally. Although proven otherwise, the PLO denied, however, taking part in some dramatic terrorist raids by Arab fedayeen, such the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. In March 1968 PLO fedayeen won fame by repelling an Israeli attack on the PLO's Jordanian bases, less than a year after Arabs had suffered a devastating defeat by losing control of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights region of Syria to Israel during the Six-Day War. In 1969 Yasir Arafat, the leader of Fatah, was elected chairman of the PLO. PLO raids into Israel drew increasingly devastating reprisals on Jordan, and by late 1970 Jordan and the PLO entered a short, bloody war, after which most PLO fedayeen fled to Lebanon. As in Jordan, the PLO soon became a state within a state, raiding Israel and heightening tensions that culminated in the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). Syria, originally supportive of the PLO, feared that a victory by Lebanon's radical Muslim left (with whom the PLO was allied) would provoke Israel and lead to a full-scale Arab-Israeli war. Wanting to prevent regional warfare, Syria invaded Lebanon in 1976, attacking the Muslim-PLO forces. As a result, the PLO was often on the defensive throughout the late 1970s.
The PLO did, however, achieve several diplomatic victories. In 1974 Arab nations at an Arab League summit meeting in Rabat, Morocco, recognized the PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." Previously the Arab countries had considered themselves the Palestinians' representatives. In another important victory, in December 1974 Arafat addressed the United Nations (UN), where the PLO was granted status as an observer despite the objections of Israel.
In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon to stop PLO raids across its northern border. The invasion severely weakened the PLO, intensified splits among its factions, and forced some 12,000 PLO members in Beirut to flee once more, this time to several Arab countries. PLO members loyal to Arafat made their headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia, where an Israeli bombing raid severely damaged the main buildings in October 1985. After the 1982 invasion, several thousand Palestinians, including members of the PLO, stayed in Lebanon in refugee camps. After Israel withdrew most of its forces from Lebanon in 1985, some of these Palestinian refugees and other Palestinians who returned to Lebanon tried to reestablish a foothold for the PLO there. These efforts led to several confrontations between the PLO and Muslim forces loyal to Syria.
In 1987 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip began a spontaneous uprising, known as the intifada, against Israeli occupation. The PLO and other groups supported the uprising, which quickly spread to the West Bank. At the same time several events led the PLO to reverse its call for the end of Israel. First, the United States, which had led several peace efforts in the Middle East, reiterated that before it would include the PLO in peace talks, the PLO would have to accept Israel's existence and renounce terrorism. Second, in 1988 Jordan's King Hussein relinquished to the PLO all claims to the West Bank, which Jordan had lost to Israel in 1967. Arafat seized the opportunity to call for a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories (the West Bank and Gaza Strip) and Jerusalem (a city that straddles the border between the West Bank and Israel). Arafat did not call for a Palestinian state in Israel itself, which was seen as an important shift in PLO objectives. In November 1988 the PLO's assembly, the Palestine National Council, officially recognized the sovereignty of Israel, and the following month Arafat renounced the use of terrorism, in keeping with U.S. demands. The United States and the PLO could thus begin direct "diplomatic dialogue," the first step toward a negotiated settlement with Israel and the first step toward Palestinian self-rule. In the meantime, the intifada had intensified. On the one hand, this created pressure for Israel to negotiate with the PLO. On the other, the clear demonstration of Palestinian unrest gave several fundamentalist Islamic groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a powerful position from which to accuse Arafat of making too many concessions.
In early 1991 the PLO's relations with the United States and pro-Western Arab states deteriorated when Arafat publicly supported Iraq during the Persian Gulf War. When a U.S.-led international coalition defeated Iraq, the PLO lost some of its bargaining power. Arab states in the Persian Gulf region withdrew financial support for the PLO and deported many Palestinians as punishment for Arafat's support of Iraq, causing severe financial difficulties for thousands of individual Palestinians and the PLO. In July 1991 the PLO's negotiating position was further weakened when the Lebanese army, backed by Syria, forced the PLO to abandon its strongholds in southern Lebanon near Israel's border. Secret negotiations between the PLO and Israel began in late 1992 following an Arab-Israeli peace conference in Madrid, Spain, in 1991 and during further talks in Washington, D.C. In January 1993 Israel, in a major policy shift of its own, repealed its ban on official contact with the PLO.
Several months later Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin concluded a surprise accord. Signed in Washington, D.C., in September 1993, this accord, known as the Declaration of Principles, opened the way for limited Palestinian self-government in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho. The declaration also established the interim Palestinian Authority, headed by Arafat and staffed with many PLO members, to administer self-rule. Many Palestinian nationalists objected to the PLO's recognition of and negotiations with Israel. In November 1994 the police force of the PA clashed with and killed at least 12 Muslim fundamentalists who were protesting further talks with Israel. Fundamentalists responded with several terrorist actions against Israel over the next several months, to which Arafat responded by arresting numerous suspected terrorists.
In September 1995 the PLO signed a second agreement with Israel extending Palestinian self-rule to almost all Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank. The agreement also provided for the PA's first elections, which were held in January 1996. Arafat was elected president by a wide margin; Hamas and other fundamentalist groups boycotted the elections. In April 1996 Arafat led the Palestine National Council in voting to abolish the sections of the PLO's charter calling for Israel's destruction. However, removal of these sections was delayed after peace negotiations stalled following Benjamin Netanyahu's election as Israel's prime minister in May. Netanyahu's call for fewer compromises with the Palestinians-as well as continued Palestinian terrorist attacks, and tensions surrounding continued Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories-caused a drastic slowdown in negotiations over implementation of the Declaration of Principles and its subsequent agreements.
In July 1998 the UN, over the objections of Israel and the United States, voted by a wide margin to upgrade the status of the Palestinian delegation, known officially as Palestine since 1988. Seen largely as a symbolic step toward statehood, the new status allows the Palestinians to participate in UN General Assembly debate and to cosponsor draft resolutions on Middle East issues. In December, as part of an accord providing for further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank in return for Palestinian security guarantees, the Palestinian National Council removed from its charter the sections calling for Israel's destruction. Nevertheless, that same month Israel froze the implementation of the accord, claiming that the Palestinians had not met other conditions of the accord.
Reviewed by:
Kenneth W. Stein
"Palestine Liberation Organization," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2000. © 1993-1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. |
