ABSTRACT
The Palestinians, including the people of the West Bank, have traditionally accepted the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as their representative and have been inclined to treat it as their government in exile, even since it has been headquartered in far-away Tunisia. The growing restraint in the West Bankers' attitude towards the PLO is important and examining it tells a great deal about the feelings of the people who will ultimately determine the prospects for peace – as they are affected by the people of the West Bank. The PLO is an amalgam, a composite of the various Palestinian political groups founded in the sixties and seventies to do battle with Israel to recover Palestinian Arab rights. In the all-important area of selecting and appointing local leaders to deputize for it, the PLO appears to have worked in two ways. The conservative oil sheikhs wanted to work with fellow-Palestinian conservatives and made it plain that they resented the PLO's revolutionary corps.
