ABSTRACT
Before the 1990s, the United States had little direct involvement in the Israel-Palestinian dispute. Successive presidents refused to consider formal relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which Arab states had declared the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, on the grounds that it was a terrorist organization. Coupled with this, from the early 1970s the US developed progressively closer ties with the state of Israel, to the extent that by the 1980s it was widely viewed as one of the US’s closest and most entrenched international allies and partners.
