The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (203 page)

 
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Latin for ‘ordinance of the people’, resurrected by
Voltaire
to describe the
referendum
in Switzerland. In the nineteenth century, ‘plebiscite’ was used in English as a derogatory term to describe referendums called by Napoleon I and Napoleon III to boost their personal authority, but the term is no longer regarded as derogatory.

 
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(1856–1918)
Intellectual leader of Russian
Marxism
. Formed the Emancipation of Labour group in exile (1883), active in the Russian Social Democratic Party and an editor of
Iskra
(1900). Initially supported Lenin over the 1903 split but then went over to the
Mensheviks
. Highly critical of the October 1917 Revolution ( see
Bolshevism
; Russian Revolution of October 1917).
GS 

 
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See
civil rights
.

 
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PLO
(Palestine Liberation Organization)

The PLO was created in 1964 at the suggestion of President Jamal Abd al-Nasir of Egypt at an Arab Summit meeting, with the object of creating a state for Palestinian Arabs and removing the state of Israel. King Hussein of Jordan was fearful that the idea could imply a ‘Palestinian entity’. The West Bank was Palestinian land which had been annexed by his grandfather, the Amir Abdullah, in 1948 as a result of the first Arab-Israeli war. In the end, the word ‘entity’ was not used in the Constitution of the PLO but instead, the term the ‘liberation of Palestine’. The PLO was supposed to play an effective part in liberating Palestine while in practice, Arab governments and, in particular, President Nasir intended that it should channel the energies and hopes of Palestinians away from the independent use of violence. The fear was that Palestinian guerrilla activity directed at the territory of Israel, which began to emerge in the late 1950s and would become a factor in regional politics in the 1960s, would lead to Israeli retaliation against the Arab countries and drag Arab governments into a war for which they felt unprepared.
The National Covenant states that the Palestinian Arabs ‘are part of the Arab nation’ and have a legal right ‘to their homeland’; that Palestinians are the Arab citizens who were living permanently in Palestine until 1947. Their descendants are also Palestinians. Jews of Palestinian origin are also Palestinians if loyal to Palestine. It declared null and void the partition of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel. The Covenant states that all Palestinians shall form a united front to achieve the liberation of Palestine.
During its early years, the PLO set about establishing the organizational framework within which all Palestinian activities—social, economic, political, cultural, educational, and military—could be pursued. It built an army, parts of which were attached to various Arab national armies. Despite a lack of sovereign territory, the PLO eventually worked to provide many of the complex needs of the dispersed population. Its aim was to prepare for, and achieve, statehood in Palestine.
The growing loss of confidence in the ability of Arab governments to retrieve Palestinian land began in the 1950s and was confirmed in the humiliating Arab military defeat in the Six Day War in June 1967. In the aftermath, many of the Palestinian guerrilla groups—fedayeen—which had emerged in the previous decade or more, coalesced into: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) under the leadership of Dr George Habash ; the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) led by Nayif Hawatmeh ; the People's Party; and the most important guerrilla group, Fatah (The Palestinian National Liberation Movement), founded in 1957–8 led by Yasir Arafat .
At the PLO Congress in May of 1964, Fatah was pressing the doctrine of the necessity of armed struggle in order to recover Palestine. As the numbers attracted to the fedayeen grew, they came to dominate the PLO by 1968. At the next session of the Palestine National Council (PNC) in 1969, Yasir Arafat was elected Chairman of the Executive Committee. From this point on, the PLO drew under its umbrella many of the fedayeen organizations whose leaders were appointed to the Executive Committee and the strategy of PLO became that of ‘armed struggle’.
This change of the PLO occurred in the aftermath of the Six Day War of June of 1967 which left an expanded Israel in control of the Golan Heights, the West Bank including all of Jerusalem, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, and in an uneasy cease-fire facing Egypt across the Suez Canal. All sides dug in, rejecting negotiations. It became clear that the fedayeen had created a state within a state in Jordan further weakening the position of King Hussein. This was soon followed by civil war in Jordan (‘Black September’), when King Hussein with a newly formed military government attacked the fedayeen. In the aftermath of the war, the fedayeen were expelled from Jordan. Throughout the civil war, the King's appeals to the US for military support were co-ordinated with Israeli preparation to come to his assistance if needed.
With the election of Yasir Arafat as chairman of the Executive Committee, the PLO had become an independent actor, no longer under the control of any Arab government. The predominant view in the PLO was that of armed struggle but there was a lack of agreement among the fedayeen as to strategy and tactics. Though the PLO had gained an international profile, its ability to play a role in the solution to the Palestinian problem was further away than ever. In the Jordanian crisis, it is clear that Arab governments were not inclined to be drawn into confrontation with Israel unless of their own choosing. The Jordanian crisis also set in place for the first time a relationship between the US and Israel which led to the strategic relationship with increased aid and arms sales to Israel. This presented the Palestinians with new conditions more hostile than ever to the achievement of their aims.
The role of the PLO was either peripheral or non-existent in the war and peace process during the 1970s and 1980s. Each Arab government had a different strategy as regards Israel and expected the PLO and Palestinians to be compatible with its strategy and whatever tactics it would be pursuing at the time. The PLO, having been declared a terrorist organization by the Israeli government, was unable to become a negotiating partner. The US and the PLO were reduced to quiet or secret intermittent back channels in their diplomatic contacts and negotiations.
This situation changed after King Hussein relinquished legal and administrative ties to the West Bank in 1988. Yasir Arafat then declared the existence of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and himself as president. Soon after, to the US government's satisfaction, Yasir Arafat confirmed the PLO's recognition of the right of the state of Israel to exist in the region, accepted UN Resolutions 242 and 338, and renounced all forms of terrorism, at which point the US lifted the ban on dealing with the PLO.
Though the US government accepted the undertakings of Yasir Arafat , when it came to launching the Madrid Peace Process, the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir still would not negotiate with the PLO. To do so would be to legitimize the PLO's position calling for a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees. Several covers had to be constructed before the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators could sit in the same room together. These consisted of a Joint Jordanian–Palestinian delegation with all the Palestinians coming from the Occupied Territories, all of whom were selected by the PLO. It appointed an advisory group to support the negotiating team which included those members which the Israeli government would not allow: one from East Jerusalem, and one member of the Jordanian team from the Palestinian Diaspora. In this way, the Palestinians had a representative negotiating team and the Israelis could say that they were not dealing with the PLO nor had they recognized East Jerusalem as part of the Occupied Territories.
Amid reports in 1993 of an impoverished PLO in the aftermath of the Gulf War when it had lost the funding of the Gulf states, due to its support of Iraq during its invasion of Kuwait, the Israeli government proposed to the PLO that initially Gaza and the town of Jericho in the West Bank would be given self-governing autonomy. Yasir Arafat and a majority of the PLO Executive Committee supported this proposal, but many Palestinians including members of the negotiating team did not. None the less, on 13 September 1993 in Washington, DC, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat witnessed the signing of a historic agreement for peace and recognition of each side and for the implementation of limited autonomy first in the two areas of the Occupied Territories. Palestinian self-rule in Jericho and Gaza began shakily in the spring of 1994.
BAR