Whatever Happened to the PLO?

Passed on: Yasser Arafat's grave site in Ramallah, the West Bank. Like the PLO, Arafat appears to have passed into history quicker than he intended. (Photo by Mike & Christine Gartner via Flickr).

You don’t hear much about the PLO anymore—the Palestine Liberation Organization that, in the 1970s, was exploding all over the headlines with acts of terrorism and promises of annihilation for Israel. Back then of course what the PLO promised, Israel executed even more spectacularly, launching wars of annihilation against the PLO in 1978 and 1982 in Lebanon, and targeted assassinations and bombings there and elsewhere.

After the 1993 Oslo agreement between Israel and Palestinians, the PLO began to be eclipsed by the Palestinian Authority, set up to administer the West Bank and Gaza as Israel withdrew. The withdrawal proved more theoretical than actual, and Yasser Arafat, who had represented Palestinians at Oslo, was (not for the first time) discredited. More recently, both Fatah , the political organization Arafat led until his death in November 2004, and the Palestinian Authority, have been losing power, authority and credibility in the Palestinian territories as Hamas Hamas, the militant Sunni organization, has risen in their stead.

In Dreams and Shadows , her compelling account of the post-9/11 Middle East, Washington Post reporter Robin Wright describes her visit to Yasser Arafat’s gravesite on a shabby lot in Ramallah, the West Bank city and Palestinian Authority headquarters:

On a drizzling February day, the gravesite seemed a forlorn place. It was inside a simple glass enclosure; plans were in the works to build a larger shrine and mosque around the grave. Three of the men who had protected Arafat in life stood at attention guarding his tomb. But there were no visitors. Arafat had quickly passed into history.

So, it may well be, has the PLO. Here’s my fuller account of the rise and fall of the PLO .