PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION

(PLO) Arabic Munazzamat at-Tahrir Filastiniyah umbrella political organization claiming to represent the world's estimated 4,450,000 Palestiniansthose Arabs who lived in mandated Palestine before the creation there of the state of Israel in 1948, as well as their descendants. It was formed in 1964 to centralize the leadership of various Palestinian groups that previously had operated as clandestine resistance movements, but it came into prominence only after the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967. The movement is dedicated to the creation of a democratic and secular Palestinian state. After the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 the Arab states, notably Egypt, took the lead in the struggle against Israel. The Palestinians themselves had been dispersed among a number of countries, and they lacked organized leadership; as a result their political activity was limited. After the defeat of the Arab states by Israel in the Six-Day War of June 1967, the PLO came to be recognized as the representative of the Palestinians and the promoter of a distinctively Palestinian ideology. Major factions within or associated with the PLO include Fatah (q.v.), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (q.v.; PFLP), and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (q.v.; DFLP). Terrorist organizations connected with the PLO have included the Black September group of Fatah and the PFLP-General Command. Membership within the PLO has varied with the reorganizations and internal disagreements of its constituent bodies. Moderate factions within the PLO have proved willing to accept a negotiated settlement with Israel that would yield a Palestinian state. Other, more radical factions are steadfast in their goals of the destruction of Israel and its replacement with a secular state in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians would participate as equals. Funding for the PLO has been received from sympathetic nations and from taxes levied on the salaries of Palestinian workers. In 1969 Yasir 'Arafat, leader of Fatah, the largest Palestinian group, was named chairman of the PLO. From the late 1960s, the PLO organized and launched terrorist attacks against Israel from its bases in Jordan. The PLO came into growing conflict with the government of King Hussein of Jordan in 1970, however, and in 1971 was forcibly expelled from Jordan by the Jordanian army. It shifted its bases to Lebanon. From 1974 'Arafat advocated the PLO's withdrawal from international terrorism outside of Israel and the world community's acceptance of the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In 1974 the Arab heads of state recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinians. The PLO was admitted to full membership in the Arab League in 1976. The PLO was excluded from the negotiations between Egypt and Israel that resulted in 1979 in a peace treaty; the treaty returned the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, but the negotiations failed to win Israel's agreement to the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Continuing PLO attacks on Israeli territory from Lebanon led Israel to invade Lebanon on June 6, 1982. After several weeks of fighting, Israeli troops surrounded the Lebanese capital of Beirut, which for several years had been the PLO's headquarters. As a result of negotiations, most Palestinians evacuated Beirut for transportation to sympathetic Arab nations. Increasing dissatisfaction with 'Arafat's leadership arose in the PLO after his withdrawal from Beirut to Tunis, Tunisia, and in 1983 Syrian-backed PLO rebels supported by Syrian troops forced 'Arafat's remaining troops out of Lebanon. 'Arafat retained the support of some Arab leaders and eventually was able to reassert his leadership of the PLO. On Nov. 15, 1988, the PLO proclaimed the State of Palestine, a kind of government-in-exile; and on April 2, 1989, the PLO's governing body, the Palestine National Council, elected 'Arafat president of the new quasi-state. The PLO during this period also recognized United Nations resolutions 242 and 338, thereby acknowledging Israel's right to exist. It thus abandoned its long-standing goal of eliminating Israel in favour of a policy accepting separate Israeli and Palestinian states, with the latter occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In April 1993 the PLO under 'Arafat's leadership entered secret negotiations with Israel on a possible peace settlement between the two sides. The resulting Israel-PLO accords, signed on Sept. 13, 1993, by 'Arafat and the leaders of the Israeli government, included mutual recognition and outlined a gradual transfer of governing authority to the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip over a five-year period. After a further agreement between 'Arafat and the Israeli government in 1995 that provided for the expansion of Palestinian self-rule, the election of a right-wing government in Israel in 1996 served to slow down the peace process. The land Of the coastal lowlands the most northerly is the Plain of 'Akko (Acre), which extends with a breadth of 5 to 9 miles (8 to 14 kilometres) for about 20 miles (32 kilometres) from the Lebanon border in the north to the Carmel promontory, in Israel, in the south, where it is a mere 600 feet (180 metres) wide. Farther southward it opens out rapidly into the Plain of Sharon, about 8 miles wide and extending south to the latitude of Tel AvivYafo. Once covered with marshes, the Sharon plain was reclaimed in the post-Exilic and Hellenistic period and is now a settled area. Fields and fruit groves are laid out between scattered sandstone ridges, on which villages have grown up. South of the spur of low hills that approaches the coast about Yafo, the maritime plain widens into the fertile region of Philistia, a district of orange groves, irrigated orchards, and fields of grain. The Plain of Esdraelon ('Emeq Yizre'el), formed by subsidence along lines of faults, separates the hills of southern Galilee from the mountains of Samaria. The plain, 16 miles wide at most, narrows to the northwest, where the Qishon River breaks through to the Plain of 'Akko, and to the southeast, where the river (the modern Harod), which rises at the Well of Harod ('En Harod), has carved the plain into the side of the Jordan Valley. Covered with rich basaltic soils washed down from the Galilean hills, Esdraelon is important both for its fertility and for the great highway it opens from the Mediterranean to the lands across the Jordan. The maritime plain connects with Esdraelon by the pass of Megiddo and several lesser routes between the mountain spurs of Carmel and Gilboa'. The hill country of Galilee is better-watered and more thickly wooded than that of Samaria or Judaea. North of the Plain of Asochis, Upper Galilee, with heights of 4,000 feet, is a scrub-covered limestone plateau and is thinly peopled. To the south, Lower Galilee, with its highest mountain, Tabor (1,929 feet), is a land of east-west ridges enclosing sheltered vales like that of Nazareth (Nazerat), with rich basaltic soils. Samaria, the region of the ancient kingdom of Israel, is a hilly district extending from the Plain of Esdraelon to the latitude of Ramla. Its mountainsCarmel, Gilboa', Ebal, and Gerizimare lower than those of Upper Galilee, while its basins, notably those of the 'Arrabah Plain and Nabulus (Shekhem), are wider and more gently contoured than their equivalents in Judaea. Samaria is easily approached from the coast over the hills of Ephraim and from the Jordan by the Fari'ah valley. The city of Jerusalem has expanded rapidly along the mountain ridges. From Ramla in the north to Beersheba in the south, the high plateau of Judaea is a rocky wilderness of limestone, with rare patches of cultivation, as around al-Birah and Mount Hebron (al-Khalil). It is separated from the coastal plain by a longitudinal fosse and a belt of low hills of soft chalky limestone, about 5 to 8 miles wide, known as ha-Shefela. The Judaean plateau falls abruptly to the Jordan Valley, which is approached with difficulty along the wadis Kelt and Mukallik. The Jordan Valley is a deep rift valley that varies in width from 1.5 to 14 miles. In its northern section the bed of the drained Lake Hula and Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee) are blocked by natural dams of basalt. Descending to about 1,310 feet below sea level, the valley is exceedingly dry and hot, and cultivation is restricted to irrigated areas or rare oases, as at Jericho or at 'En Gedi by the shore of the Dead Sea. The Negev, a desertlike region, is triangular in shape with the apex at the south. It extends from Beersheba in the north, where 8 inches (200 mm) or more of rain falls a year and grain is grown, to the port city of Elat on the Red Sea, in the extremely arid south. It is bounded by the Sinai Peninsula on the west and the Great Rift Valley on the east. William Charles Brice The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica The people The social geography of Palestine in the 20th century, especially the area west of the Jordan River, has been greatly affected by the dramatic political changes and wars that have brought this small region to the attention of the world. In the early 1990s Jews constituted more than four-fifths of the population west of the Jordan, Muslims about one-seventh, and Christians, Druze, and various other minorities the rest. The Jewish majority is increasingly composed of persons born in Israel itself, although hundreds of thousands of immigrants have arrived since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. The Arab minority is descended from Arabs who lived in the area during the mandate period and, in many cases, for centuries before that time. The majority of both Jews and Arabs are now urbanized. East of the Jordan the population is overwhelmingly Arab. According to Jewish nationalists (Zionists), Judaism constitutes a basis for both religious and national (ethnic) identity. Palestinian nationalists usually emphasize that their shared identity as Arabs transcends the religious diversity of their community: thus, both Muslim Arabs, constituting about 14 percent of the Israeli population, and Christian Arabs, about 3 percent, identify themselves in the first instance as Arabs. The Arab majority resident in the West Bank, west of the Jordan River, and the Gaza Strip, along the Mediterranean coast, and the still larger number of Arab Palestinians living outside the area (many in nearby countries such as Lebanon) have strongly opposed Israeli control and have feared an eventual annexation of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel. Most Jewish Israeli settlers living in the occupied territories would like to have this annexation take place; they think the land ought to be part of Israel proper. Both Zionists and Palestinian Arab nationalists have at various times in recent history claimed rightful possession of the area west of the Jordan River. The rivalry between the two groups and their claims have been major causes of the numerous Arab-Israeli Wars and the continuing crises in the region. Some members of each group still make such sweeping and mutually exclusive claims to complete control of the area, while others are now more willing to seek a peaceful compromise solution. The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica