The PLO in Inter-Arab Politics

Abstract

The relationship of the Palestinians to the multi-faceted Arab-Israeli conflict is at the same time the most intimate, the most tragic, and the most complex. While the other entities involved in the controversy seek to achieve a variety of political and economic goals from the vantage point of established sovereignty, the Palestinians have been thrust by circumstance into the role of a victimized people struggling to re-establish their right to self-determination in the land where they once comprised the overwhelming majority. For them, what is at stake is their very existence as a collective identity. As the designated representative of this dispossessed populace, the PLO is charged with the difficult task of protecting the interests of the Palestinians in the intricate power game that has come to surround the conflict. The international actors it has to deal with in this context represent a variety of other interests, most of which are either in conflict with or unrelated to those of the Palestinians. These concerned parties include the Israelis and their supporters in world Jewry, the superpowers, the European Community, the non-aligned bloc, and the Arab states. The Israelis, of course, are the principal adversaries of the Palestinians. The Zionist movement which spawned modern Israel was exclusively