Has It Really Changed Essay, Research Paper

When I first started trying to think of a topic to discuss, I wanted to address the terrorist issue that permeates the Middle East region. This has been a popular topic that has been extensively covered in both media and literature. This is a topic that has brought the media much criticism for covering the Middle East in such a way that holds uneducated readers confused with the idea that this area is only associated with terrorism. Siding with the media, I have to ask where would you begin? Palestinians justify their raids because they claim that Israelis stole their land and Israelis justify their counterattacks because they feel that they deserve a homeland. It is difficult to decide who is right when both have good reasons to be upset. Jews deserve a country of their own but with this independence, millions of Palestinians are displaced from their homes. Because of this displacement, Palestinians lent their voice to guerrilla groups.

These guerrilla groups, forming the Palestine Liberation Organization and other militia groups, would bring negative worldwide attention to this issue. With every terrorist act that happens, not much effort is put into finding why it happened but on finding who did it. And most of the ones who did it were found in the Middle East, except for the Oklahoma bombing, whose expert opinions did not come in very helpful. This was then, is it still now?

The Palestine Liberation Organization in its birth in 1964 called for the destruction of Israel in its charter. More than thirty years later, Palestinian President Yasir Arafat seems close to arriving at a peace settlement with Israel. How can this political group that was responsible for the civil war in Lebanon (according to some literature) and blamed for various attacks on the Israeli population allowed to be involved in the Middle East peace process? Have they changed their tactics of killing to more diplomatic means of obtaining peace? My main quest is to know if the PLO has changed and how has it changed since its birth in 1964 until now?

In trying to answer this question, I looked at various published works, newspaper articles and Internet sites. I wanted to follow the course of the PLO and how they ended up here where they are right now, appealing to the President of the United States for help in reaching an agreement with the current Israeli Prime Minister. It is important to know this because perhaps knowing the course of the PLO s tactics can help determine if they are serious about a long-term peace resolution with the Israelis.

The Arab League formed the PLO in 1964 under the authority of Nasser. The formation of the PLO was part of Nasser s plan to create a strong Arab world that would eventually be powerful enough to defeat Israel. Later that same year, Syria began to form their own Palestinian organization and started training Palestinians to be fedayeens. Yasser Arafat was involved in the Palestine National Liberation Movement at the time. Al-Fatah was later formed and would try to provoke Israel into retaliation. Meanwhile, Nasser was using the PLO to crush the Jordanian government. The PLO demanded to maintain its own army within the Hashimite dynasty. Since Nasser was more concerned with using the PLO to topple Jordan, Syria stepped up raids on Israel by fedayeen actions, which meant a rise in the Israeli death toll. There were numerous raids on Israel from the borders of Jordan and Lebanon in an effort to coerce Israel into starting a war. This led to the Six-Day War of 1967 that left Israel victorious and embarrassed Nasser s military. By 1967, the PLO transformed itself into into an independent resistance organization devoted to the armed struggle against Israel. (Cleveland 349) The Palestine National Congress gained newly elected powers in 1968 and chose Yasser Arafat as their first elected chairman. By 1970, the PLO delayed the peace process between Egypt and Israel, and also threated King Hussein s power once again. However, the fedayeens in Jordan were completely driven out of the kingdom by the summer of 1971. King Hussein s action led to the formation of the Black September, Fatah s terrorist organization, and was responsible for numerous terrorist acts around the world. These terrorist acts included the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic games in 1972. The purpose of this act was to prove the existence of the Palestinian People.

Along with terrorism, Arab states used their economic muscle on the United States and on others who supported Israel. Arab states launched an economic war in 1973 against the whole world. Saudia Arabia starts to cut oil production on November 18, 1973 and other Arab states soon followed. They wanted to curb the support of foreign aid to Israel. The Arab League soon recognized the PLO in 1974 as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Soon after, the United Nations invited Arafat to address its General Assembly. The PLO was involved in assassinations, hijackings, and bombings, which elevated the power of Arafat and the PLO. Arafat used Lebanon as a base, which the Israelis invaded in 1982. Arafat fled and his power was reduced.

Jillian Becker, author of The PLO: the rise and fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization , is highly critical of the PLO. Becker lays out the history of the PLO and does not fail to mention how Egypt s Nasser and Syria used the guerrilla groups for their own political gain. The history of the PLO is a chronicle of wrong judgments, of repeated mistakes, of lessons never learnt, of faith in wishes. It is full of cruelty, wretchedness, atrocity, violent deaths and the destruction of a country, all proceeding from the follies of fanaticism and self deception. (Becker 5) Nasser founded the PLO in 1964 for the purpose of crushing the monarchy of Kingdom of Jordan, but King Hussein successfully expelled the guerrilla groups from his country. Nasser s goal was to bring all Arab nations under Egypt control. The cruelty of the PLO was also demonstrated through the use of units of fedayeen who raided Israel from Lebanon and Jordan. The PLO proved successful in not only bringing attention to the Palestinian question but it also succeeded in putting Arabs against Arabs. Terrorist raids that were meant to frighten the Israelis instead threatened the very lives that the PLO claimed to be fighting for. Becker argues that peace is not possible with PLO involvement. If hope lay anywhere it was in the very dissolution of the PLO. From its inception the Organization had been nothing but a savage instrument of Arab politics. It had not been designed or used as a means to liberate the Palestinians. Its business was to keep them in misery and to waste their lives, generation after generation. (Becker 228) It seems apparent that the very existence of the PLO would hinder any peace that may be found between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Becker would have been surprised with the PLO s change in tactics. Yasir Arafat has recently spoken to both the United States and Egypt s current Prime Minister to speed up the peace process. It seems apparent that Becker was sure that the PLO s only means of getting a Palestine State would only be through terror. PLO power was free of all checks and accountability, secular or religious. (Becker 141) However, by 1988 the PLO accepted Resolution 242 that recognized Israel s right to exist. The PLO is finally recognizing more diplomatic means of negotiating.

In 1988, Arafat renounced military opposition to Israel and recognized Israel as a legitimate state. Since 1988, the Palestinian Liberation Organization was converted into the Palestinian National Authority, which was established in 1993 by a peach agreement between Israel and the PLO. This marked the beginning of Arafat s transition from terrorist to peacemaker. The 1993 peace agreement allowed limited self-rule for the Palestinians in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In return for this small independence, the Palestinian Authority handles the security in the Gaza Strip and in cities of the West Bank. According to the United State Departments overview of the Middle East, they have concluded: Palestinian Authority continued its efforts in cooperation with Israeli authorities to counter the threat posed by Palestinian terrorist groups and succeeded in 1997 in thwarting several planned terrorist attacks. At the same time, more effort is needed by the PA to enhance its bilateral cooperation with Israel and its unilateral fight against terrorism. First of all, the State Department is commending the Palestinian Authority for combating terrorism, but on the other hand, says that they should do more. Being a unilateral fight seems to imply that the Palestine Authority is responsible for keeping the peace alive with Israel.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization found immense power in the beginning stages of its existence but that power has slowly eroded away. The PLO prospered through the support of various Arab states that had a vested interest in getting back some of the land Israel had taken from them in war of 1967. The PLO misused its power when it tried to crush the Jordanian government and when it sparked a civil war in Lebanon. Arafat is still determined to establish a state for Palestinians but is doing so in more diplomatic ways. I feel that Arafat is moving the Palestine Authority in the direction that is more favorable to United States policies. Arafat s constituents are no longer targets of the media s attack on terrorism. Instead, are seen as collaborators through the State Department s report that the Palestinian Authority are following through with the 1993 memorandum that calls for their cooperation with Israeli authorities in combating Palestinian terrorist groups. The Palestine Authority has put its militant ways to rest and has partnered with Israel and the United States to establish the State of Palestine. This is based upon the Palestine Authority s dependence on economic aid from the United States. Arafat s position depends on how successful he is in maneuvering not only diplomatic relations with the U.S. and Israel, but also with other Palestinian terrorist groups. Peace is possible because U.S. has a lot of influence over Israel, which is why Arafat has turned to Clinton and Albright for help when talks turn sour with the Israeli Prime Minister.

Even though Arafat seems to be on the right, but extremely slow, path to peace with Israel, David Bar-Illan argues otherwise. True, the PLO may not have done enough to combat terrorism, but with a little pressure from Israel and the U.S., it will undoubtedly come to realize where its own interests lie and act accordingly. In the meantime, continuing the negotiations, and bringing them to a successful conclusion, will eliminate the terrorist threat altogether. By contrast if Israel were to deviate from the Oslo process, the Palestinians as a whole would revert to violence. In this case, the success of the peace process depends more on how Israel handles the 1993 memorandum than on U.S. economic influence toward the Palestinian Authority.

I began this research in discussing how the Palestinian Liberation Organization has changed since its birth in 1964. I thought of this group that was and will always be a terrorist group bounded on the idea of destroying Israel. However, recent articles suggest that Arafat is serious about establishing a Palestinian state through peaceful negotiation. This is evident in the way that he waited a year from his self-proposed deadline of declaring a Palestine state in May of 1999, due to the encouragement of the U.S. In the beginning of the research, I wondered why Arafat was not arrested for being the head of the most notorious terrorist group in the world. In the end, I came to understand that he stood as a symbol for the Palestinian people. Arafat is their state-less president. Israel needs him to maintain a cease-fire within the other terrorist groups such as the Hamas. Arafat needs Israel because he needs his land back.

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