YASSER ARAFAT AND THE PLO

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What is the background of Yasser Arafat and the PLO?

Yasser Arafat

On October 10, 1959, a group of about 20 Palestinians met in Kuwait and secretly formed Fatah. Fatah (or al-Fatah) is an acronym standing for Harakat Al-Tahrir Al-Watani Al-Filastini—the Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine. Yasser Arafat, who had been working as a construction engineer in Kuwait, soon emerged as the leader of Fatah.

With Fatah, Arafat recurited terrorists and led fedayeen raids into Israeli territory. Among the offshoots of Fatah was the infamous "Black September" who murdered the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

When the PLO was founded in 1964, as an umbrella organization for various Arab terrorist factions, Fatah was the largest group. It was, and still is, the military arm of the PLO. By 1968 Arafat was PLO's leader and he has been chairman of the PLO since then.

The PLO was guided by the Palestinian National Covenant, a document adopted in 1968. It is filled with anti-Israel hostility and calls for "commando action" as "the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war". The objective is clearly stated:

• ... to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine.

In case there was any doubt about the PLO policy toward Israel, the Covenant states:

• The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time ...
  
  
• Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

And a few words about Zionism:

• Article 22: Zionism is a political movement organically associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement, and geographical base for world imperialism placed strategically in the midst of the Arab homeland to combat the hopes of the Arab nation for liberation, unity, and progress. Israel is a constant source of threat vis-a-vis peace in the Middle East and the whole world.
  
  
• Article 23: The demand of security and peace, as well as the demand of right and justice, require all states to consider Zionism an illegitimate movement, to outlaw its existence, and to ban its operations, in order that friendly relations among peoples may be preserved, and the loyalty of citizens to their respective homelands safeguarded.

The decades-long campaign of terror and war against Israel by the PLO is based on the words in the Palestinian National Covenant. At a 1974 meeting in Cairo, the Palestinian National Council adopted a "phased plan" to eliminate Israel that sought to establish some territory under Palestinian control and then use that as leverage to continue to fight and ultimately to have an all-out war that would destroy Israel forever.

In the 1980s the PLO started to moderate its public statements -- at least in English as opposed to militant statements still being made in Arabic speeches -- and looked to diplomacy for gains against Israel.

In 1988 the PLO announced that it recognized Israel's right to exist and Yasser Arafat "renounced" terrorism in a speech to the UN. These steps were required by the United States so that the PLO could have a role in peace talks that ultimately developed into the Oslo Accords and the Peace Process of the 1990s. For this progress toward peace, Yasser Arafat, master terrorist, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

During the 1990's it became abundantly clear that Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority were less than fully committed to the peace process, which ultimately failed at Camp David and resulted in the bloodshed of the al-Aqsa intifada starting in September 2000.

In addition to Arafat's role in continuing terrorism against Israel, and his sabotaging of the peace agreements, there was widespread corruption and financial irregularities within the Palestinian Authority along with Arafat-sanctioned criminal activity. By 2000, conditions in the areas under the administration of the PA were worse than when the PA took over in the wake of the Oslo agreements. Unrest among Palestinian Arabs, stimulated by the corruption, was diverted by Arafat after Camp David into anger at Israel, producing the al-Aqsa intifada.

Yasser Arafat died at age 75 in Paris, November 11, 2004.

Sources and additional reading on this topic:

• How did Yasser Arafat become involved with the PLO?
• The Arafat I Knew
• The PLO: Background Briefing
• The PLO Charter
• The PLO between Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism, Background and Recent Developments
• The Israel-PLO Negotiations
• A Brief History of Yasir Arafat
• Yasser Arafat and the Myth of Legitimacy
• Yasir Arafat: Psychological Profile and Strategic Analysis