ABSTRACT
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the forced evacuation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from West Beirut will profoundly influence the future of the Palestinian national movement. Analyzing the PLO’s development since the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty offers a partial explanation. The PLO’s perennial problems have resulted primarily from its unique structure and its highly vulnerable position in a volatile Middle East. The PLO was created in 1964 partly as an Egyptian effort to control the Palestinian movement and to break Syrian trusteeship over the Fedayeen. The internal constraints of dealing within the inter-Arab system are compounded by the PLO’s position vis-a-vis Israel. Yasir Arafat’s immediate goal is to maintain control of the PLO and to preserve as unified a structure as possible. Anwar Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem in November 1977 and the Camp David Accords that followed a year later struck a severe blow against the PLO’s regional and international position.
