ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)/Fatah complex represented a progressive force in its apparently arcane and clannish system of politics, inspiring political turmoil by its mere presence. It examines the internal Lebanese context that allowed for the PLO's entrenchment whilst challenging the assumption that this represented the need for a vanguard in a class war. The chapter examines the internal parameters of Lebanese society which allows the entrenchment of the guerrilla movement. An associated trope often encountered in the narratives that explain the PLO/Fatah entrenchment is that the Palestinian national movement attempted to survive the idiosyncratic parochialism of Lebanese communal politics and resisted being pulled into the fray of competing sectarian groups. Hanf, el-Khazen and Khalaf demonstrates that in a comparative context, Lebanon's standard of living, politically liberal environment and vibrant civil society were unmatched in the region.
