ABSTRACT
To understand the development of the Israeli-Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) mutual recognition and the decision to move from armed confrontation to political negotiation, one must have a grounding in both the historical background and the sociopolitical dynamics that form the environment of this development. The taboo of communication between the PLO and Israel has been broken, and the mutual demonization that reigned for so many years has been swept aside. In the Palestinian community, the failure of the Intifada, the popular uprising against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, to produce a radical improvement of the lives of the population and an end to the presence of Israel in the territories generated a frustration and a weariness that were compounded by some of the concomitant phenomena of the uprising. In addition to this basic cognitive dissonance, Israelis are becoming conscious of having achieved a new and different status as a society.
