Did the Oslo Accords Contribute to the Marginalization of the PLO?

RAMALLAH – On this day in 1993, secret and public contacts between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) culminated in the "Palestinian-Israeli Declaration of Principles" known as the "Oslo Accords", marking a pivotal shift in its course from "liberation" to "seeking a settlement," as a prominent Palestinian politician believes.

Three decades after the agreement, the Palestinian scene appears to be more fragmented, with the PLO marginalized, called "when necessary" and "banned" from entering the PLO, while the West Bank and Gaza have been deeply divided since 2007.

Al Jazeera Net interviewed two prominent Palestinian figures about the extent to which the agreement contributed to the disruption of the PLO and its institutions, and whether the agreement hindered the entry of active Palestinian forces such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

From editing to leveling

Dr. Hassan Khreisheh, former deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said that the PLO "began as an organization in name and essence for liberation, and with time its role and political program changed to the search for a settlement."

Khreisha added to Al Jazeera Net that the organization looks like "a coalition framework for political forces, but the main actor in it was and still is the Fatah movement."

According to the Palestinian parliamentarian, there are those who were angry, protested and left the organization, but returned to the same framework, "and then after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the organization was dwarfed and marginalized to become a simple number in parallel with the Palestinian Authority."

Regarding the emergence of differences after the establishment of power and the election of the PLC in 1996, Khreisha said, "Members of the PLO Executive Committee and the ministers began to fight with members of the PLC, while the origin was that all of them were subject to monitoring and accountability by the legislature."

He believes that the approval of the amendment to the National Charter in 1996 was tantamount to canceling it based on the agreements signed with the Israelis, "and in 1998 the National Council met in the presence of former US President Bill Clinton, and the amendments and changes were confirmed in a meeting in which hands were raised in standing and applause."

Thus, "the National Pact has been abolished, and the PLO no longer has a charter to which it is bound," according to the Palestinian politician.

Fatah and Hamas have been through waves of reconciliation and division for 16 years (Getty Images)

Negotiation and normalization

"Instead of being a liberation organization, it has become a negotiation and normalization organization, and there is a committee to communicate with Israeli society and is led by an important leader," Khreisheh said.

He added that the active and influential forces in the Palestinian arena, not in the organization, "are prohibited from entering it because it is the monopoly of certain people, namely Fatah, and has set conditions for Hamas and Islamic Jihad to enter the organization, including their recognition of the settlement and the obligations of the PA".

Khreisheh believes that the PLO "does not represent today the majority of the Palestinian people, despite everyone's adherence to it as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and it must be reformed."

In his view, the organization is "hijacked by an influential group whose institutions are used when the organization's leadership is in crisis."

"The PLO has lost much of its essential role, the only solution and way out is to elect a new national council that elects an executive committee that chooses a president for all the Palestinian people, thus ending the division and everyone entering the PLO," Khreisha said.

Marginalization of the organization

Political activist Omar Assaf and coordinator of the Palestinian People's Congress "14 Million" (a reference to the number of Palestinians in the world), said the Oslo Accords negatively affected the role and status of the PLO.

Assaf added that the organization was absent from the Palestinian people and did not return to him to take his opinion on the Oslo agreement at the time of its signing, "and this deepened the gap between them."

He considered that the organization's bodies "were not democratically elected, neither before nor after Oslo, and that the organization's signing of the Oslo Accords and its recognition of the Jewish state and its right to exist reduced its status among the Palestinian people, especially since the agreement does not meet the minimum Palestinian national program on the basis of which people rallied around the organization."

Assaf confirmed to Al Jazeera Net that the Palestinians rallied around the organization pillars of its program: the return of refugees, the independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, and resistance to the occupation "and this practically all abandoned by the organization signing the Oslo Agreement."

He pointed out that Israel did not recognize the Palestinian people and their right to exist, but recognized the Organization as a "representative" and not a "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people.

Assaf asserts that the organization "was marginalized after the Oslo agreement to the extent that it became one of the circles of power, and since then it has been dealt with in a user-friendly manner that calls for when necessary."

Oslo Accords divided the land and confined the Palestinians to isolated and separate cantons in the West Bank and Gaza (Al Jazeera)

Unique Driving

"The unique and influential leadership used to say that it was elected and gained legitimacy through the organization, but after the establishment of power, the talk shifted to the legislative council as a representative of the people and the organization's institutions, departments and representations abroad were marginalized," Assaf said.

After Hamas' victory in the 2006 PLC elections, the organization was reused to contest the movement by the Oslo team and the organization's leadership, saying that they were legitimate and that the organization considered everything because Hamas was not present in it, he said.

The Palestinian politician points out that there is a fear of PLO leaders about the entry of new forces into the PLO, and stresses the need to hold elections for the Palestinian National Council with the participation of all the Palestinian people "so that the PLO regains its representation of all the Palestinian people."

In Assaf's opinion, "a group of individuals representing the PA party control everything, confiscate the rights of the people and speak on behalf of the Palestinian people without any legitimacy."