IGCSE History

• Home
• Introduction to IGCSE
• The Road to Affluence: USA 1917 - 1941 (A9)
  • 1917 - 1929
    • The impact of the First World War
    • Immigration
    • Henry Ford and mass production
    • Farming in the 1920s
    • The Stock Market Boom
  • 1929 - 1941
    • The Wall Street Crash
    • The Depression
    • The policies of Hoover
    • Roosevelt and the New Deal
    • Reactions to the New Deal
• International Relations 1919-1939 (A8)
  • Collective Security
    • The Versailles Settlement
    • The Foundation of the League of Nations
    • Strengths and weaknesses of the League of Nations
    • Successes and failures of the League of Nations
    • Locarno and the Kellogg-Briand Pact
  • Appeasement
    • Manchuria
    • The Disarmament Conference
    • Abyssinia
    • Hitler and the League
    • Appeasement in action
• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
    • Reform under Liu and Deng
    • The reasons for the Cultural Revolution
    • The impact of the Cultural Revolution
    • China 1971 - 1976
  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
    • China under Deng Xiaoping
    • Reforms of the economy
    • The Democracy Movement
    • China in the 1990s
• South-East Asia 1945 - 1900 (A15)
  • Indo-China
    • The end of the French Empire
    • Vietnam 1954 - 1965
    • US involvement in Vietnam
    • The unification of Vietnam
    • Laos and Cambodia
  • South-East Asia
    • The struggle for control of Malaya
    • The creation of Malaysia
    • Singapore
    • Suharto and Indonesia
    • Sukarno and Pancasila
• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
    • The impact of the war of 1948 - 1949
    • The Suez Crisis
    • Superpower involvement in the Middle East
    • The Six Day War
  • 1967 - 1996
    • International terrorism
    • The war of Yom Kippur
    • The Palestinian Liberation Organisation
    • Lebanon and the occupied territories
    • Successes and failures from Camp David to Oslo
• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
  • Deadlock on the Western Front
  • Gallipoli
  • The Somme and Passchendaele
  • The War at Sea
  • The defeat of Germany
• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • Advertising and consumerism
  • New forms of entertainment
  • Prohibition
  • Gangsterism
  • Hollywood
• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
  • Communist society
  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
  • Land warfare
  • Sea and aerial warfare
  • Atomic and nuclear weapons
  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
• Links

The Palestine Liberation Organisation

The PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) was set up in 1964. Its charter called for the establishment of a 'democratic and secular Palestine' and for the 'elimination' of the state of Israel. The PLO was an umbrella organisation, which included a number of different groups; some of these were violent, like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, others, like Al-Fatah, were more moderate. Nevertheless, Al Fatah carried out major terrorist raids. In 1967 it killed 97 Israeli soldiers. In revenge in 1968 the Israelis attacked the Al Fatah base at Karameh and killed 200 Palestinians.

The PLO was based at first in Egypt, but was forced to leave in 1968 after the Six Day war and moved to Jordan. King Hussein of Jordan was in favour of a negotiated peace with Israel and did not want reprisals on his country as a result of PLO attacks. In September 1970 war broke out between the PLO and the Jordanian army. For a while it appeared that Jordan might be taken over by the PLO, because Syria sent tanks in its support. The USA, however, promised aid to the Jordanians and the Soviet Union ordered the Syrians to withdraw. Consequently the Jordanian army was able to defeat the PLO, and force it to move to Lebanon and Syria. The defeat of the PLO led to the creation of a new and much more violent organisation, Black September. This assassinated the Jordanian prime minister in 1971 by way of reprisal.

In October 1974 the PLO was recognised by the Arab governments as the only organisation that could speak on behalf of the Palestinians. It was then recognised by the United Nations and Arafat addressed the UN General Assembly. He was essentially a moderate, who tried to keep together the different wings of the PLO. During the 1970s and 1980s he gradually shifted the aims of the PLO from an Arab state comprising all of pre-war Palestine, to a Palestinian state occupying whatever territory Israel would give up.

Arafat’s attempts to change the aims of the PLO resulted in factions appearing in the organisation and he lost influence. In 1983 the PLO bases in Lebanon were broken up by Israeli attacks and the organisation was dispersed. Arafat moved his headquarters to Tunisia, but retained control of the greater part of the organisation.

In 1985 Arafat, along with King Hussein of Jordan, recognised the state of Israel and in 1988 persuaded the PLO to accept the right of the state of Israel to exist. The PLO subsequently renounced violence and also amended its charter so that it no longer called for the elimination of Israel. This led to official contacts between the USA and the PLO for the first time and increased international support for the PLO. These changes in time made possible the agreement between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister in 1993. This eventually resulted in the creation of Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.

Lebanon and the occupied territories

Links