Abstract

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) has for decades claimed to embody the national aspirations of the Palestinian people. The 1993 Oslo Accords conducted between Israel and the PLO, and the ‘Middle East peace process’ which resulted, seemed only to cement this claim. However, the 2006 electoral victory of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and their subsequent formation of a majority government within the Occupied Territories, shocked much of the world, as well as Palestinian observers. While the stipulations of the Oslo Accords allowed for a much sought-after degree of Palestinian self-governance within the Occupied Territories, the PLO’s performance was far from stellar. This paper aims to explore the difficulties inherent in the post-Oslo ‘state-building’ process, and the complex process by which Hamas came to provide the PLO with the first significant political opposition of its four-decade history.

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