Arafat becomes PLO leader

On 3 February 1969 Yasser Arafat was elected chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Over the next 35 years he had great influence on setting the PLO’s goals and strategies. 

For some he was a liberator, for others a national leader and for some a terrorist. Though all seem to agree that he was the clearest symbol of the Palestinian struggle. He held the position as chairman until his death in 2004.
What happened before 1969 is a less known, but to me interesting chapter of the story. 

Yasser Arafat speaks at the World Economic Forum in 2001.

Background

Yasser Arafat, born in 1929 of Palestinian parents, participated in the 1948 war. He went on to study civil engineering in Cairo and became the leader of the Palestinian Student Union in 1952. Many students became motivated by him to give their lives to liberate Palestine. The Egyptian leader Nasser promised the Palestinians restoration of their national rights, but controlled their activities tightly. Arafat sympathized at the time with the Muslim Brotherhood, and was jailed after the organization’s assassination attempt on Nasser in 1954. Later he completed his studies and served in the Egyptian army in the 1956 Suez crisis. The Palestinian students spread out to different countries, and started to organize small groups. Arafat went to Kuwait; Mahmoud Abbas, the current president of the Palestinian Authority, got work in Qatar ¹⁾. In October 1959 Arafat, Salah Khalaf and twenty other activists founded Fatah in Kuwait. They looked to the FLN which had success in their armed struggle to drive out the French settler-colonizers in Algeria. Fatah drew parallels to the Zionist settlers in Palestine and dedicated themselves to armed struggle. They started to recruit new members.

 



Arafat (second from right) with other civil engineering students in Cairo University, September 1951

Formation of PLO

In January 1964 Arab leaders met in Cairo for their first summit of the Arab League. They called for an organization for Palestinians “to play their role in the liberation of their country and their self-determination”¹⁾. They called it the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), but the Palestinian people had not been consulted.  Nasser put a lawyer Ahmad Shuqayri to lead PLO. He had been a member of the Arab Higher Committee and the Saudi Arabian representative to the UN. Arafat and his people saw PLO as an organization to control the Palestinians rather than involve them in their work. But they cooperated and participated at the founding of PLO in May 1964 in East-Jerusalem. The 422 delegates reconstituted as the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the highest decision-making body of the PLO. They adopted the Palestinian National Charter, the constitution of the PLO on 28 May 1964.

Fatah starts armed struggle
Fatah was marginalized at the meeting and left. They started the armed struggle against Israel sending in 3 commando teams. Two teams were arrested by Egyptian and Lebanese forces. The third team planted explosives in Israel, which the Israelis disarmed, but was arrested in a shot-out with Jordanian authorities. One Palestinian was killed by the Jordanians, the first martyr. The whole operation was militarily unsuccessful. But Fatah issued a communique on 1 January 1965 and many Palestinians around the world were electrified. “On 1 January 1965 Fatah opened a new era in modern Palestinian history” wrote Leila Khaled, a militant who‘s family had been driven from Haifa in 1948. For the next 18 months Fatah conducted 200 raids into Israel. But they were marginal in scope, and posed no real threat to Israeli security.

Palestinians get control of PLO
Then came the Six-day war of 1967 which Israel won and captured the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and the Golan Heights. The Arab defeat was as Eugene Rogan writes “ironically a moment of liberation for the Palestinian armed struggle. With Gaza and the West Bank now under Israeli occupation rather than under Egyptian and Jordanian rule, as they had been between 1948 and 1967, the Palestinian people could claim to speak on behalf of Palestinians in the occupied territories for the first time”. Nasser who suffered a great defeat could no longer limit the Palestinians. The weakened King Hussein of Jordan let the different Palestinian groups set up their headquarters in Amman, and Jordan became the principal centre of their military operations. The Israeli army attacked a base at Karamah in March 1968 and retreated under heavy Jordanian artillery fire. Although the Palestinian (116) and Jordanian (61) casualties were much higher than the Israeli (28), it was treated as a victory. For the first time since 1948 an Arab army had fought and proven that the Israelis were not invincible. Arab media inflated the significance of the battle, and money, arms and thousands of volunteers came to Fatah. Shuqayri resigned as leader of PLO, and Arafat became the new leader, and Fatah the dominant group in PLO. 

Arafat with Fatah officials in public meeting with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser for the first time in Cairo, approximately eight months after Arafat becomes Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, 1969.

Splits and start of terrorism

The other Arab states had for years spoken for the Palestinians, but taking care of their own interests. They had not let the Palestinians lead themselves, or even co-ordinated on even level with them. Finally the Palestinians themselves would lead their struggle. Soon Fatah’s military operations increased, but the Israelis killed many and took more as prisoners. Meanwhile other groups like the PFPL under George Habash started to hijack airplanes. The abovementioned Leila Khaled was one of them. They got the world media’s attention and saw it as a success. But the Palestinians got a reputation for terrorism, and many in the West became very sceptical or turned against them. Worse was to come with Black September, and the expulsion of PLO from Jordan and Lebanon. The use of violence as a philosophy and strategy have not served the Palestinians or their opponents well in my opinion. There are lessons from Gandhi that might serve them. Not an easy task, but a more fruitful and life-serving way. More of this will come in later articles.

Sources and more information

1) The Arabs, Eugene Rogan, Basic Books New York 2009 page 333-54.

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Bjarte Bjørsvik