Hard to revive the PLO

In mid-July, more than a month after the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) convened the PLO Central Council in Ramallah. The meeting began at dusk in the hall of the famous muqataa in the presence of a few journalists, mostly Palestinian. I asked them why representatives of the local and foreign media were not attending in larger numbers as I d witnessed at similar meetings in Ramallah. The reply was that this meeting was not interesting. One of the journalists spoke out more bluntly: Abu Mazen is trying to revive the dead body of the PLO but it won t work, therefore this is not important.
Indeed? Above the presidential dais of the Central Council, where its chairman Salim Zaanoun sat next to Abu Mazen, hung a large cloth sign that proclaimed Homeland Unity Meeting . The objective of the meeting was to announce publicly that the Palestinian homeland, the West Bank and Gaza, was united under the banner of the PLO, the national movement whose institutions are of higher status than those of the Palestinian Authority. In other words, Hamas, having taken over Gaza by force, could perhaps boast of having won elections to the Palestinian parliament but it must not forget that this parliament represents only the residents of the West Bank and Gaza, or about half the Palestinian people, whereas the PLO s institutions represent the entirety of the people wherever they are dispersed.
Hamas, of course, is not a member of the PLO. Hence the Ramallah gathering could present the image of unity among all national factions - as against the subversion and rebellion represented by the Islamist fanatics of Hamas.
Abu Mazen and his followers will have a hard time reviving the PLO and its institutions. One reason is that since the PA was established in the West Bank and Gaza, the PLO s stature has declined. This is evident, for example, in the declining frequency of meetings of PLO institutions. The Palestine National Council with its 700 members, the highest ranking body, used to meet once every year or two; in recent years it has not been convened at all, with the exception of 1998 when it was pressured by Israel and the US to meet in Gaza to amend the National Charter. The Central Council too, with over 100 members, has seldom met. Only the PLO Executive Committee, the effective government of the organization, meets frequently - but with the notable absence of the left-wing organizations that have boycotted many meetings.
The PLO s place in the Palestinian political reality has been taken by the Palestinian Authority with its Legislative Council or parliament, a series of governments, and additional institutions established under the Oslo accords - all attempting to function as the instruments of a sovereign government. There is no room for misjudgment here: the PA, which rules a major part of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has become the dominant element in the Palestinian national collective. The PLO represents the past, whereas the PA symbolizes the present and future.
The PLO retains a few formal functions. It deals with issues like refugees in Lebanon and maintains embassies all over the world. In particular, it is in charge of negotiating a final status agreement with Israel. Yet it may be symptomatic that all of these functions have become problematic. In Lebanon, the Palestinian refugee problem is becoming more acute: witness, for example, the recent clashes at the Nahr al-Bared camp. Many PLO embassies have been closed or have ceased functioning. And most important, negotiations with Israel deteriorated to a point where the peace process collapsed entirely.
An Israeli observing these developments in Palestinian politics cannot escape the comparison between what happened to PLO institutions after the establishment of the PA and what transpired with the Zionist movement s institutions after the establishment of the state of Israel. In both instances, the veteran national institutions became anachronistic and failed to keep up with the pace of new political realities emerging in the homeland.
Against this backdrop, it is only a successful political process leading to a peace agreement that can both rescue the unity of the Palestinian national movement and enable Israel to avoid a serious crisis. Without such a process and agreement, neither the PLO nor the PA has a chance of success; nor does Israel have a bright future.
Danny Rubinsteinis a member of the editorial board of Haaretz and teaches at Ben Gurion University in the Negev. Published 2/8/2007 © bitterlemons-international.org