PLO Founded
The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in 1964 at an Arab League summit in Cairo to represent Palestinian Arabs and coordinate their political and military activities. Its initial leadership under Ahmad al-Shuqairy was closely aligned with the Arab states, particularly Egypt, which used the PLO as an instrument of Pan-Arab politics rather than as an autonomous Palestinian national movement. The Six Day War (1967) transformed the PLO: Israel's destruction of the Arab armies demonstrated that Palestinian national ambitions could not depend on state Arab actors. Yasser Arafat's Fatah organisation, which had begun guerrilla operations independently, took control of the PLO in 1969, transforming it into a genuinely Palestinian-led organisation that combined political representation with armed resistance and eventually secured UN observer status (1974) as the recognised representative of the Palestinian people.
- Year: 1964 CE
- Category: Political
