Palestine Analysis: The PLO and the Crisis of Representation (Masri)

Mazen Masri writes for Muftah:

Today, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is experiencing an internal dilemma.  Long viewed as the “legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian People”, many years of failed negotiations with the Israeli government, a growing democratic deficit and alienation of its grassroots base have inexorably lead to a crisis of legitimacy for the organization.  As the Israeli government continues its refusal to extend a limited freeze on settlement building, calls for the PLO to abandon negotiations by Palestinian leaders inside and outside the Occupied Territories place the organization in a precarious position and highlight a growing sense of disillusionment with the PLO’s ability to act credibly on behalf of Palestinian interests. 

Admittedly, the PLO’s position as representative of the Palestinian people has often been subject to challenges in the past. In the 1960s and 1970s, for example, the surrounding Arab countries, particularly Jordan and to some extent Syria and Egypt, claimed the mantle of Palestinian representative. The PLO ultimately prevailed in this contest, consolidating its position and status particularly after Israel’s recognition of the organization as the sole representative of the Palestinian people in the 1993 Oslo Accords.  In fact, the Oslo Process, which created the Palestinian Authority, ultimately marked the beginning of the PLO’s decline, as the PA came to replace the PLO as the prime Palestinian political institution.  However, when the PA fell into the hands of Hamas in 2006, as a result of its landslide win in that year’s elections for the Palestine Legislative Council (PLC), the PLO reemerged after a long period of dormancy. 

Despite the constancy of these ebbs and flows in the PLO’s relevance, the current threats to the organization’s legitimacy are markedly different and more troubling than their predecessors.  Whereas in the past, external factors accounted for the PLO’s decline, the current threats to its credibility have in large part been created by the PLO itself, a disturbing development that may signal the group’s ultimate demise as the “legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian People”.   

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