Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION • 52314 December 1998 by show of hands in the presence of PresidentBill Clinton.In 2007 the growing rift between Palestinian President MahmoudAbbas, who became the head of both al Fatah and the PLO followingthe death of Arafat in 2004, and Ismail Haniyah, the Hamas memberelected as Palestinian prime minister, led to Abbas dismissing Haniyahfrom the PA government on 14 June 2007. With the subsequentoutbreak of civil war between the PA, dominated by al Fatah’sMahmoud Abbas, and Hamas, which seized control of the GazaStrip from Palestinian forces loyal to al Fatah and the older PLOleadership, al Fatah has asserted its authority over the PA and soughtthrough both the Arab League and the United Nations to denounceand isolate Hamas.While the creation of the Palestinian Authority would have seemedto be the prelude for the members and functions of the PLO to havebeen absorbed and replaced by the new PA institutions, the effectivecivil war between the Islamic fundamentalist Palestinian groupsand the secular groups that make up the PLO could lead either to arevival and strengthening of the PLO, as a core group distinct fromthe PA structure, or else to its demise if it proves unable to maintainits control over the West Bank and its influence within the Palestiniandiaspora. Although the U.S. State Department does not list the PLOas a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), nor has placed it on anexclusion list, the U.S. Congress on 2 January 2006 declared the PLOto be a terrorist organization according to the definition of terroristorganization given in Title 22, U.S. Code, Chapter 61, citing as evidencesix PLO-sponsored attacks in the period 1970–1985, includingthe 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking. The U.S. ambivalence toward thePLO exists not only between its executive and legislative branchesbut also within the executive branch; the U.S. State Department haskept the PFLP listed as an FTO even though the PFLP forms thesecond-largest faction of the PLO, which itself is not designated asan FTO. The 27 November 2007 meeting in Annapolis of PresidentGeorge W. Bush with PA President Mahmoud Abbas and IsraeliPrime Minister Ehud Olmert indicates the recognition by the UnitedStates and Israel that keeping the PA government under PLO controlis necessary both to keep the Israeli-Palestinian peace process aliveand also to prevent the takeover of the rest of the Palestinian territoriesby the more intransigent Hamas movement.