The PLO's Road to Peace: Process of Decision-Making

By Allon Groth
18 Jun 2004

This Whitehall Paper argues that PLO policy has not been determined solely by ideology and external pressures imposed by regional and global powers. Rather, the key to understanding PLO decision-making on the road to peace has been the relationship between policy and organisational structure.

The first chapter of this paper introduces an analytical framework for the entire thesis, provides an overview of PLO decision-making between 1967 and1991 and the context for the two subsequent chapters. The second and third chapters, based mainly on publicly available sources, give a more detailed account of PLO decision-making procedures behind the Washington and Oslo negotiations. Whereas the second chapter concentrates on the first year of the Washington negotiations, during which the Washington track was the only one available for the PLO, the third chapter follows the parallel Oslo and Washington tracks and provides a comparison. The fourth chapter is devoted to an analysis of the trends emerging from the three previous chapters. Finally, the epilogue looks at the implications for the future of the PLO in the light of the agreement reached in September 1995 initiating the interim phase of Oslo DOP.

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