MembersTrump: Palestinian Authority Now Irrelevant to Peace

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat recently accused the Trump Administration of trying to topple the Palestinian Authority.He might not have been far off the mark.

By Ryan Jones |
David Friedman
Photo: Photo: Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy

The Palestinian Authority is the rebranding of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Though the rest of the world had already accepted the PLO as a political entity in 1974 (despite its constituent groups engaging in international terrorism, in addition to attacks on Israelis), up until the Madrid Conference of 1991, America still considered the PLO to be among the world’s premier terrorist organizations. Think Al Qaeda following 9/11.

The only reason Israel and the US agreed to let the PLO take control over local Palestinian Arab affairs was to establish a central authority with which to make peace.
In his historic letter to Yasser Arafat, then-Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin wrote that his government “has decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and to commence negotiations with the PLO” as a direct result of the PLO agreeing to be a unifying voice in curbing Palestinian violence against Israel.

If that’s the foundation for bringing the PLO from Tunis to the West Bank and establishing it as the Palestinian Authority, then is it still relevant as far as...

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