ABSTRACT
As soon as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership achieved Israeli recognition and was accepted as negotiations interlocutor, it took on a different style of negotiating and changed its delegation composition. This chapter will demonstrate how the credibility of the PLO as the leader and legitimate representative of the Palestinian struggle, combined with the achievement of the Declaration of Principles (DOP) agreement, now enabled the PLO leadership in exile to co-opt the inside leadership and create a ‘new’ elite. This elite, on the one hand, had invested heavily in, and was dependent on, the relationship with Israel, and on the other hand was influential in the subsequent negotiations over the implementation of the DOP. The new elite, the way it shaped the Palestinian Authority, its performance in subsequent negotiations, as well as the transformation of Israel from an international lawbreaker to a party in peace talks all meant that Israel had a more advantageous position in those subsequent negotiations. The result was again a poor performance by the Palestinian negotiators, and agreements which did little to achieve the Palestinian ultimate aims. This chapter will examine the Palestinian response to the Oslo Agreement,
as embodied in the DOP, including the response of the PLO, the Palestinian public, and the opposition. Palestinian public opinion will be examined, as well as violent reactions to the agreement, to demonstrate the scale of the ‘room to manoeuvre’ which was now open to Arafat’s ‘kitchen’ in negotiations in terms of Palestinian public opinion. It will also focus on the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations that followed the
signing of the Declaration of Principles, the purpose of which was to reach agreement on the mechanisms for implementation of the DOP. This will include changes in the composition of the delegation, the style of negotiations, and the decision-making process, in addition to the effects of these changes on inside-outside leadership relations. This discussion will highlight the structural weaknesses of both the Palestinian negotiating strategy and the negotiations format itself. The DOP was supposed to be implemented in two stages; the first stage
was embodied in the ‘Agreement on the Gaza Strip and Jericho Area’
(Gaza-Jericho Agreement), because the DOP was to be implemented in the Gaza Strip and the small West Bank town of Jericho. The second stage was specified in the ‘Interim Agreement on Self-Government Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip’ (Interim Agreement). The Palestinian Authority established by these agreements employed an
elite class; the composition of that elite, its effect on the negotiations and the implementation of the agreements will also be looked at in this chapter. This helps to explain the behaviour of the Palestinian negotiators and its effect on the nature of the agreements, their implementation, and the subsequent weakening of the leadership. With the PLO leadership’s return to the OPT, and the establishment of a
political system based on elections, public opinion began to carry important weight. This chapter will present data on and analyses of the basic trends in public opinion after each agreement and after implementation, as well as these trends’ impact upon the positions of the leadership.
