128-666: The Palestine Liberation Organization ( PLO ; Arabic : منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية Munaẓẓamat at-Taḥrīr al-Filasṭīniyyah ) is a Palestinian nationalist coalition that is internationally recognized as the official representative of the Palestinian people in both the Palestinian territories and the diaspora . It is currently represented by the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank city of Al-Bireh . Founded in 1964, it initially sought to establish an Arab state over
256-673: A two-state settlement on the pre-1967 borders. But the Rejectionist Front denounced the calls for diplomacy, and a diplomatic solution was vetoed by the United States. In 1975, the increasing tensions between Palestinian militants and Christian militias exploded into the Lebanese Civil War , involving all factions. On 20 January 1976, the PLO took part in the Damour massacre in retaliation to
384-562: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
512-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
640-662: A decree suspending the PLC and some sections of the Palestinian Basic Law , and appointed Salam Fayyad as prime minister. The PLO remains the official representative of the State of Palestine at the UN . On 4 February 1969, Fatah founder, Arafat, was elected Chairman of the PLO in Cairo . Since, Fatah has been the dominant factor within the PLO, which still continues in 2015. Under pressure from
768-1077: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
896-549: A group of Palestinian lawyers, jurists and legal scholars, due to lack of elections. They questioned the PLO's legitimacy to alter the status and role of the Organization in respect of their status within the UN. They demanded immediate and direct elections to the Palestine National Council to ″activate representative PLO institutions in order to preserve, consolidate, and strengthen the effective legal representation of
1024-648: A legitimate authority representing the Palestinian people. Despite the Israel–PLO Letters of Mutual Recognition (1993), in which PLO leader Yasser Arafat renounced violence against Israel, the PLO engaged in militant activities during the Second Intifada (2000–2005). On 29 October 2018, the PLO Central Council suspended the Palestinian recognition of Israel . As the officially recognized government of
1152-483: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
1280-677: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
1408-520: A number of mistakes made by the government and security forces, and made several recommendations. The DFLP tried a second time to take hostages at a hotel in Ma'alot in 1979 , but were killed by Israeli soldiers. In 2007, American filmmakers visited Ma'alot to film a documentary on the massacre. A memorial corner in the library of the Netiv Meir school displays photographs of the victims and archival footage on
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#17328447693481536-576: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
1664-532: A school in Israel and killed a total of 26 students and adults and wounded over 70 in the Ma'alot massacre . The 1975, Savoy Hotel hostage situation killing 8 hostages and 3 soldiers, carried out by Fatah. The 1978, Coastal Road massacre killing 37 Israelis and wounding 76, also carried out by Fatah. From 1967 to September 1970 the PLO, with passive support from Jordan, fought a war of attrition with Israel. During this time,
1792-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
1920-462: A secondary concern to Israeli military and other Lebanese factions. With ousting of the PLO, the Lebanese Civil War gradually turned into a prolonged conflict, shifting from mainly PLO-Christian conflict into involvement of all Lebanese factions – whether Sunni , Shia , Druze , and Christians . In 1982, the PLO relocated to Tunis , Tunisia after it was driven out of Lebanon by Israel during
2048-563: A senior Israeli diplomat by Lebanon-based Palestinian militants in Lebanon, Israel invaded Lebanon in a much larger scale in coordination with the Lebanese Christian militias, reaching Beirut and eventually resulting in ousting of the PLO headquarters in June that year. Low-level Palestinian insurgency in Lebanon continued in parallel with the consolidation of Shia militant organizations, but became
2176-465: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
2304-551: A third, and entered an apartment building in the town of Ma'alot , where they killed a couple and their four-year-old son. From there, they headed for the Netiv Meir Elementary School in Ma'alot, where in the early hours of 15 May 1974 they took hostage more than 115 people including 105 children. Most of the hostages were 14- to 16-years-old students from a high school in Safad on a pre-military Gadna field trip spending
2432-503: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
2560-499: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
2688-470: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
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#17328447693482816-727: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
2944-585: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
3072-542: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
3200-469: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
3328-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
3456-468: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
3584-405: Is criticized for his autocratic rule and refusal to share powers and plans with other Palestinians. In the absence of a functioning parliament and Executive, he even began to issue his own laws. Senior representative of Abbas' Fatah faction and former Fatah minister of prisoner affairs, Sufian Abu Zaida , complained that Abbas appointed himself as the chief judge and prosecutor, making a mockery of
3712-462: Is criticized for not differentiating between combatants and civilians. Members of the PLO have claimed responsibility for a number of attacks against Israelis during the Second Intifada. The PLO has been sued in the United States by families of those killed or injured in attacks by Palestinians. One lawsuit was settled prior to going to trial. The other went to trial. The PLO was found liable for
3840-582: Is not in session, acting as a link between the PNC and the PLO-EC. The CC is elected by the PNC and chaired by the PNC speaker. The PNC serves as the parliament for all Palestinians inside and outside of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Jerusalem. The PLO is governed internally by its "Fundamental Law", which describes the powers and the relations between the organs of the PLO. Ahmad Shukeiri
3968-566: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
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4096-836: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
4224-559: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
4352-579: Is the belief that Zionists had unjustly expelled the Palestinians from Palestine and established a Jewish state in place under the pretext of having historic and Jewish ties with Palestine. The PLO demanded that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their homes. This is expressed in the National Covenant: Article 2 of the Charter states that ″Palestine, with the boundaries it had during
4480-584: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
4608-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
4736-516: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
4864-555: The de jure State of Palestine , it has enjoyed United Nations observer status since 1974. Prior to the Oslo Accords , the PLO's militant wings engaged in acts of violence against both the Israeli military and civilians, within Israel and abroad. The United States designated it as a terrorist group in 1987, though a presidential waiver has permitted American–PLO contact since 1988. At its first summit meeting in Cairo in 1964,
4992-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
5120-560: The 1982 Lebanon War . Following massive raids by Israeli forces in Beirut, it is estimated that 8,000 PLO fighters evacuated the city and dispersed. On 1 October 1985, in Operation Wooden Leg , Israeli Air Force F-15s bombed the PLO's Tunis headquarters, killing more than 60 people. It is suggested that the Tunis period (1982–1991) was a negative point in the PLO's history, leading up to
5248-754: The Arab League initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people. The Palestinian National Council convened in Jerusalem on 28 May 1964. After concluding the meeting, the PLO was founded on 2 June 1964. Its stated "complementary goals" were Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine . The PLO began their militancy campaign from its inception with an attack on Israel's National Water Carrier in January 1965. The group used guerrilla tactics to attack Israel from their bases in Jordan (which then included
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5376-555: The British mandate , is an indivisible territorial unit″, meaning that there is no place for a Jewish state. This article was adapted in 1996 to meet the Oslo Accords. Article 20 states: ″The Balfour Declaration , the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with
5504-536: The Cairo Agreement led the PLO to establish itself in Lebanon. In the late 1960s, and especially after the expulsion of the Palestinian militants from Jordan in Black September events in 1970–1971 , Lebanon had become the base for PLO operations. Palestinian militant organizations relocated their headquarters to South Lebanon, and relying on the support in Palestinian refugee camps, waged a campaign of attacks on
5632-608: The Executive Committee or ExCo has 18 members. The Palestinian Central Council or CC or PCC, established by the PNC in 1973, is the second leading body of the PLO. The CC consists of 124 members from the PLO Executive Committee, PNC, PLC and other Palestinian organizations. The EC includes 15 representatives of the PLC. The CC functions as an intermediary body between the PNC and the EC. The CC makes policy decisions when PNC
5760-618: The Karantina massacre . The PLO and Lebanese National Movement attacked the Christian town of Damour , killing 684 civilians and forcing the remainder of the town's population to flee. In 1976 Syria joined the war by invading Lebanon, beginning the 29‑year Syrian occupation of Lebanon , and in 1978 Israel invaded South Lebanon in response to the Coastal Road Massacre , executed by Palestinian militants based in Lebanon. The population in
5888-501: The Venice Declaration of 1980 had called for the Palestinian right of self-determination to be recognized by Israel. Opposition to Arafat was fierce not only among radical Arab groups, but also among many on the Israeli right. This included Menachem Begin , who had stated on more than one occasion that even if the PLO accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242 and recognized Israel's right to exist, he would never negotiate with
6016-616: The West Bank ), Lebanon , Egypt ( Gaza Strip ), and Syria . The most notable of what were considered terrorist acts committed by member organizations of the PLO were in the 1970s. The 1970 Avivim school bus massacre by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), killed nine children, three adults and crippled 19. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Popular Front for
6144-561: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
6272-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
6400-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
6528-760: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Ma%27alot massacre International incidents The Ma'alot massacre
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#17328447693486656-483: The 10,000 mourners who attended the funerals chanted "Death to the terrorists". The next day Israel Defense Forces planes bombed offices and training bases of the DFLP and PFLP. According to a BBC report, the bombing inflicted damage in seven Palestinian refugee camps and villages in southern Lebanon killing at least 27 people and leaving 138 injured. After an investigation Attorney General Meir Shamgar decided that
6784-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
6912-564: The 4.6 million Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT) are Palestinian Christian . Under President Arafat, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority adopted the 2003 Amended Basic Law, which stipulates Islam as the sole official religion in Palestine and the principles of Islamic sharia as a principal source of legislation. The draft Constitution contains the same provisions. The draft Constitution
7040-462: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
7168-603: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
7296-446: The Galilee and on Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide. Increasing penetration of Palestinians into Lebanese politics and Israeli retaliations gradually deteriorated the situation. By the mid-1970s, Arafat and his Fatah movement found themselves in a tenuous position. Arafat increasingly called for diplomacy, perhaps best symbolized by his Ten Point Program and his support for a UN Security Council resolution proposed in 1976 calling for
7424-401: The Israelis could meet the Palestinian guerrillas was on the field of battle." Until 1993, the only promoted option was armed struggle. From the signing of the Oslo Accords, negotiation and diplomacy became the only official policy. In April 1996, a large number of articles, which were inconsistent with the Oslo Accords , were wholly or partially nullified. At the core of the PLO's ideology
7552-452: The Jordanian assault on its armed groups, in the events known as Black September in 1970. The Palestinian groups were expelled from Jordan, and during the 1970s, the PLO was effectively an umbrella group of eight organizations headquartered in Damascus and Beirut , all devoted to armed struggle against Zionism or Israeli occupation, using methods which included direct clashing and guerrilla warfare against Israel. After Black September,
7680-403: The Liberation of Palestine , the second-largest PLO faction after al-Fatah , carried out a number of attacks and plane hijackings mostly directed at Israel, most infamously the Dawson's Field hijackings , which precipitated the Black September crisis. In 1972, the Black September Organization carried out the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes. In 1974, members of the DFLP seized
7808-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
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#17328447693487936-414: The Oslo Accords. Although many in the PLO opposed the Oslo Agreements, the executive committee and the Central Council approved the Accords. It marked the beginning of the PLO's decline, as the PA came to replace the PLO as the prime Palestinian political institution. Political factions within the PLO that had opposed the Oslo process were marginalized. The PLO managed to overcome the separation by uniting
8064-414: The Oslo negotiations and formation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PLO in exile was distant from a concentrated number of Palestinians and became far less effective. There was a significant reduction in centres of research, political debates or journalistic endeavours that had encouraged an energised public presence of the PLO in Beirut. More and more Palestinians were abandoned, and many felt that this
8192-425: The PLC , held in the Territories in 2006, with Hamas as the big winner while not even a member of the PLO, "underlined the clear lack of a popular mandate by the PLO leadership", according to PASSIA . Individual elected members of the PLC representing Hamas, however, are automatically members of the PNC. The representative status of the PLO has often been challenged in the past. It was for example doubted in 2011 by
8320-545: The PLO changed significantly. In 1968, the Charter was replaced by a comprehensively revised version. For the first time, the PLO called for the establishment of a Palestinian state (to replace Israel) in which Christians, Muslims and Jews would have equal rights, thereby tacitly accepting Jewish presence in Palestine. The goal was akin to forcing regime change in Israel, as opposed to a drastic redrawing of borders. The Palestinian National Council also insisted upon greater independence from Arab governments. In 1974, PLO accepted
8448-410: The PLO launched artillery attacks on the moshavim and kibbutzim of Bet Shean Valley Regional Council , while fedayeen launched numerous attacks on Israeli forces. Israel raided the PLO camps in Jordan, including Karameh , withdrawing only under Jordanian military pressure. This conflict culminated in Jordan's expulsion of the PLO to Lebanon in July 1971. The PLO suffered a major reversal with
8576-426: The PNC, nor for the EC, the PCC or the President of the State of Palestine . The executive committee has formally 18 members, including its chairman, but in past years many vacant seats in the Executive remained empty. Moreover, Hamas , the largest representative of the inhabitants of the Palestinian Territories alongside Fatah , is not represented in the PLO at all. The results of the last parliamentary elections for
8704-460: The Palestinian judicial system. There appeared reports of widespread corruption and nepotism within the Palestinian Authority. Only Hamas-ruled Gaza has a more or less functioning parliament. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
8832-406: The Palestinian people as a whole″, before changing the status within the UN. The 1993–1995 Oslo Accords deliberately detached the Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from the PLO and the Palestinians in exile by creating a Palestinian Authority (PA) for the Territories. A separate parliament and government were established. Mahmoud Abbas was one of the architects of
8960-474: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
9088-413: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
9216-541: The West Bank and Gaza Strip saw Arafat as their best hope for a resolution to the conflict. This was especially so in the aftermath of the Camp David Accords of 1978 between Israel and Egypt, which the Palestinians saw as a blow to their aspirations to self-determination. Abu Nidal , a sworn enemy of the PLO since 1974, assassinated the PLO's diplomatic envoy to the European Economic Community , which in
9344-467: The area can live in security"), while Israel recognized the PLO as a legitimate authority representing the Palestinian people. Despite the Israel–PLO Letters of Mutual Recognition (1993), in which PLO leader Yasser Arafat renounced "terrorism and other acts of violence" against Israel, the PLO continued to engage in militant activities, particularly during the Second Intifada (see next subsection). The Second or Al-Aqsa Intifada started concurrently with
9472-462: The army, stood near the base of the tall concrete water tower not far from the school building to get a closer view of what was going on. One of the militants opened fire on him, hitting Zerach in the neck. Zerach later died in the hospital. At an emergency session of the Knesset , a decision was reached to negotiate, but the hostage-takers turned down a request for more time. At 17:25 the commander of
9600-544: The beginning, the PLO was designed as a government in exile, with a parliament, the Palestine National Council (PNC), chosen by the Palestinian people, as the highest authority in the PLO, and an executive government (EC), elected by the PNC. In practice, however, the organization was rather a hierarchic one with a military-like character, needed for its function as a liberation organization, the "liberation of Palestine". The Palestinian National Charter describes
9728-408: The breakdown of July 2000 Camp David talks between Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak . The Intifada never ended officially, but violence hit relatively low levels during 2005. The death toll, including both military personnel and civilians, of the entire conflict in 2000–2004 is estimated to be 3,223 Palestinians and 950 Israelis, although this number
9856-412: The building at 4 am, and took the 102 visiting teenage students hostage. The teenagers were spending the night in the school building as part of a three-day trip. They were students from a high school in Safad . Allegedly one of the parents of the slain teenagers had begged the headmaster to cancel the trip after learning that militants had entered the area. By then it was considered too late to cancel
9984-535: The building. During the takeover, the hostage-takers killed children with grenades and automatic weapons. Ultimately, 25 hostages, including 22 children, were killed and 68 more were injured. Ma'alot , located on a plateau in the hills of the Galilee region of Israel, 6 miles (9.7 km) south of the Lebanese border, is a development town founded in 1957 by Jewish immigrants, mainly from Morocco and Tunisia . The attack
10112-567: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
10240-421: The creation of a "national authority" in the West Bank and Gaza as a first step towards liberating Palestine. This tacit recognition of Israel caused the Rejectionist Front to break away. In 1976, PLO accepted an "independent state" in the West Bank and Gaza, which was widely interpreted as accepting Israel's permanent existence. Shortly after that, the PLO established contacts with the Israeli left. PLO's proposal
10368-476: The death and injuries of US citizens in a number of terrorist attacks in Israel from 2001 to 2004 and ordered to pay a judgment of $ 655.5 million. The verdict was overturned on appeal for a lack of US federal jurisdiction over actions committed overseas. The ideology of the PLO was formulated in the founding year, 1964, in the Palestinian National Covenant . After the 1967 war , the ideology of
10496-458: The elite Sayeret Matkal special forces group was given the 'green light' to storm the building. The assault force was divided into three units; two to break in from the entrance while a third was to climb a ladder and enter from a window facing north. The squads moved into position from the blind side to the east, from the frames of some apartment buildings under construction. The operation was to have been coordinated with simultaneous sniper fire on
10624-577: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
10752-449: The entire territory of the former Mandatory Palestine , advocating the elimination of Israel . Mediated talks between the Israeli government and the PLO in 1993 (the Oslo I Accord) resulted in the PLO recognizing Israel's legitimacy and accepting United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 , which mandated Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories, while Israel recognized the PLO as
10880-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
11008-432: The executive committee. The document further states that "the PNC represents all sectors of the Palestinian community worldwide, including numerous organizations of the resistance movement, political parties, popular organizations and independent personalities and figures from all sectors of life, including intellectuals, religious leaders and businessmen". The PLO has published various newspapers and magazines first of which
11136-531: The eyes of Israeli hard-liners, "the Palestinians posed a greater challenge to Israel as a peacemaking organization than as a military one". After the appointment of Ariel Sharon to the post of Minister of Defense in 1981, the Israeli government policy of allowing political growth to occur in the occupied West Bank and Gaza strip changed. The Israeli government tried, unsuccessfully, to dictate terms of political growth by replacing local pro-PLO leaders with an Israeli civil administration. In 1982, after an attack on
11264-593: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
11392-448: The facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong″. This article was nullified in 1996. Article 3 reads: ″The Palestinian Arab people possess the legal right to their homeland and have the right to determine their destiny after achieving
11520-462: The floor at gunpoint, with explosive charges between them. In the morning the militants demanded the release from Israeli prisons of 23 Arab and three other prisoners , including Kozo Okamoto – a Japanese national involved in the 1972 Lod Airport massacre . Unless these conditions were met, they declared that they would kill the students. The deadline was set for 6:00 pm the same day. At 10am 27-year-old Sylvan Zerach, at home on leave from
11648-501: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
11776-457: The home of Fortuna and Yosef Cohen, two of them who were Israeli-Arabs said in Hebrew that they were police searching for terrorists. When the door opened the militants burst in and killed the couple, their 4-year-old son Eliahu and wounded their 5-year-old daughter Miriam. Fortuna, seven months pregnant, tried to flee the intruders, but she was also shot. The only one in the family who survived unhurt
11904-450: The ideology of the PLO. A constitution, named "Fundamental Law", was adopted, which dictates the inner structure of the organization and the representation of the Palestinian people. A draft Constitution was written in 1963, to rule the PLO until free general elections among all the Palestinians in all the countries in which they resided could be held. The Constitution was revised in 1968. The Palestinian National Council has 740 members and
12032-526: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
12160-482: The international community led by Israel and US, and from inside his own party Fatah, Arafat partially transferred some of his strongly centralized power in 2003, causing strong tensions within the Palestinian leadership. Arafat appointed Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister, but this resulted in disputes about the transfer of tasks and responsibilities. Abbas was strongly supported by the US and the international community, because he
12288-608: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
12416-599: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
12544-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
12672-553: The liberation of their country in accordance with their wishes and entirely of their own accord and will″. The PLO and its dominating faction, Fatah, are often contrasted with more religious-orientated factions like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). All, however, represent a predominantly Muslim population. Practically the whole population of the Territories is Muslim, mostly Sunni . Around 50,000 (c. 1%) of
12800-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
12928-444: The militants, Linou, stood on the roadway and opened fire on the vehicle, instantly killing one woman, and wounding both the driver and other workers, one of whom later died of her wounds. The driver turned off the headlights and drove backward up the hill towards Moshav Tzuriel . Israeli soldiers were called to the scene but failed to catch them. Reaching Ma'alot, the militants knocked on the doors of several homes. When they came to
13056-721: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
13184-573: The next night in the orchards near the Druze village of Hurfeish . A border patrol unit discovered their footprints but were unable to track them down. Proceeding to Ma'alot up the winding road, the militants encountered a van driven by a Druze resident of Hurfeish bringing Arab Christian women from the village of Fassuta home from work at the ATA Textile Works in the Haifa Bay area. The leader of
13312-468: The night in Ma'alot. The hostage-takers soon issued demands for the release of 23 Palestinian militants and 3 others from Israeli prisons, or else they would kill the students. The Israeli side agreed, but the hostage-takers failed to get an expected coded message from Damascus . On 15 May, minutes before the 18:00 deadline set by the DFLP for killing the hostages, the Sayeret Matkal commandoes stormed
13440-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
13568-711: The organization. This contradicted the official United States position that it would negotiate with the PLO if the PLO accepted Resolution 242 and recognized Israel, which the PLO had thus far been unwilling to do. Other Arab voices had recently called for a diplomatic resolution to the hostilities in accord with the international consensus, including Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat on his visit to Washington, DC in August 1981, and Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia in his 7 August peace proposal; together with Arafat's diplomatic maneuver, these developments made Israel's argument that it had "no partner for peace" seem increasingly problematic. Thus, in
13696-599: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
13824-718: The power in PLO and PA in one individual, Yasser Arafat . In 2002, Arafat held the functions of Chairman of the PLO/Executive Committee; Chairman of Fatah , the dominating faction within the PLO; as well as President of the Palestinian National Authority . He also controlled the Palestinian National Security Forces . Only during the Hamas -led PA Government in 2006–2007 did the PLO resurface. After Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, Abbas issued
13952-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
14080-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
14208-453: The second team led by Amiran Levine, which had been ordered to take out Linou, at that time posted at the third floor window where he had shot Zerach. When they broke into the classroom where the students were being held, Harbi grabbed a student, Gabi Amsalem, and held him at gunpoint on the floor. Rahim was shot dead but Linou managed to reach the classroom, grab several magazines from the teacher's desk and reload his weapon. He then sprayed
14336-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
14464-556: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
14592-455: The students with machinegun fire and tossed grenades out the window. When a burst of fire broke his left wrist, he threw two grenades at a group of girls huddled on the floor. Several students leaped from the windows to the ground, some 10 feet (3.0 m) below. Beside the three DFLP militants, twenty-two high school students were killed in the attack and over fifty were wounded. The student victims were buried in their hometown, Safed. Some of
14720-412: The three hostage-takers. At 17:32 the first squad entered the building through the main entrance on the first floor, which was blocked with tables and chairs. The first three-man team, led by Yuval Galili of Kibbutz Geva , was hit by gunfire on the stairs leading to the second floor. Galili threw a phosphorus grenade into the second floor hallway to create a smokescreen. The smoke from the explosion blinded
14848-494: The three teachers who escaped and abandoned their students had done no wrong. Parents of the victims angrily rejected the report. The massacre led to the creation of the Yamam special police unit. Amos Horev , President of Haifa's Technion – Israel Institute of Technology , headed a Commission of Inquiry in May 1975 that investigated the massacre. The subsequent Commission Report listed
14976-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
15104-512: The trip because all the arrangements had been made. The militants had intended to lie in wait for children arriving the next day and had not expected to find so many students lodging there. Three of four teachers escaped by jumping through the window, and abandoned their 90 pupils, which created a great deal of bitterness among the parents. The teachers were immediately suspended from their posts by local authorities. 85 students and several teachers were held hostage. The students were forced to sit on
15232-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
15360-453: Was Falastinuna and pamphlets. During the late 1970s its publications increased consisting of twenty-nine dailies, eighteen weeklies, thirteen biweeklies, sixty-two monthlies, sixteen quarterlies, and twenty-one annuals. Some of them are Falastin Al Thawra and Shu'un Filastiniyya . Its official news agency is Wafa . As of 2015, there have not been elections for many years, neither for
15488-427: Was 16-month-old Yitzhak, a deaf-mute . From there, the militants headed for the Netiv Meir Elementary School where students on a school trip were lodged. On the way, they met Yaakov Kadosh, a sanitation worker, and asked for directions to the school. They then shot and injured him. Netiv Meir Elementary School was a three-story concrete building with apartment buildings under construction nearby. The militants entered
15616-428: Was a Palestinian terrorist attack that occurred on 14–15 May 1974 and involved the hostage-taking of 115 Israelis, chiefly school children, which ended in the murder of 25 hostages and six other civilians. It began when three armed members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) infiltrated Israel from Lebanon . Soon afterwards they attacked a van, killing two Israeli Arab women while injuring
15744-603: Was carried out by three members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) dressed in Israel Defense Forces uniforms. The DFLP terrorists infiltrated through the Nahal Mattat Nature Reserve from south of the Lebanese village of Rumaysh . The group entered Israel near Moshav Zar'it on Sunday night, 13 May. They were armed with AK-47 assault rifles, grenades , and plastic explosives of Czechoslovakian manufacture. They hid until
15872-464: Was formulated by a Constitutional Committee, established by Arafat in 1999 and endorsed by the PLO. The PLO incorporates a range of generally secular ideologies of different Palestinian movements "committed to the struggle for Palestinian independence and liberation," hence the name of the organization. It's formally an umbrella organization that includes "numerous organizations of the resistance movement, political parties, and popular organizations." From
16000-444: Was similar to the one given by Egyptian Prime Minister Ismail Fahmy , in 1976, where he promised Israel peace on the basis of withdrawing to the 1967 borders, creation of State of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza, and a nuclear weapons free Middle East. The PNC also authorized Palestinian representatives to meet Israeli officials at an Arab-Israeli peace conference. In response, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin responded, "the only place
16128-461: Was supposed to be more willing to give far-reaching concessions to Israel. While Arafat had retained most of his power and a power struggle within Fatah continued, the leadership was criticised for corruption and nepotism. After Arafat's death , Abbas increasingly gained exclusive powers within both PLO and PA as well as in Fatah, until he had acquired the same power as was previously held by Arafat. Abbas
16256-445: Was the beginning of the end. Mediated talks between the Israeli government and the PLO in 1993 (the Oslo I Accord ) resulted in the PLO recognizing Israel's right to exist in peace and accepting United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 ("inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East in which every State in
16384-423: Was the first Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee from 1964 to 1967. In 1967, he was replaced by Yahia Hammuda. Yasser Arafat occupied the position from 1969 until his death in 2004. He was succeeded by Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen). According to an internal PLO document, the PNC continues to act if elections are not possible. In absence of elections, most of the members of the PNC are appointed by
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