Hanan Ashrawi’s resignation was evidence that the PLO is no longer important
Hanan Ashrawi
Daoud Kuttab writes in Middle East Monitor:
For decades, the focus of the Palestinians and world powers supporting the Palestinian people has been on accepting the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the sole legitimate representative of them and their struggle. However, the Palestinian leadership’s move inside Palestine and the establishment of an entity under Palestinian leadership removed the PLO from the equation. Despite the division and the decline in the possibility of establishing an independent Palestinian state, though, the PLO has remained a framework that provides the Palestinian president with a stamp of legitimacy, while not actually having any role itself.
Politically, the PLO’s role became devoid of any meaning, especially with regard to the right of return for Palestinian refugees, which was one of the most important and contentious points in negotiations with Israel. The PLO was following this issue carefully, but then it was no longer prioritised on the Palestinian agenda. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s statements about his lack of desire to return to his home town of Safad and giving his Israeli visitors assurances that the Palestinian people do not intend to swamp the state with refugees are the best examples of the decline in the importance of the refugee issue as far as the leadership is concerned.
In practice, the organisation’s role in representing all Palestinians in the world has also declined, as the reference points have become embassies, representatives and the foreign ministry. The word “expatriates” was used when the Palestinian communities file was taken away from the PLO’s Executive Committee and transferred to the PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ramallah.
When holding negotiations with Israel and signing the Declaration of Principles in 1993, the Palestinian leadership made sure that it was signed between the PLO and Israel, and in all of the official documents it put the name of the Palestinian National Authority. After 2014, the leaders put the state of Palestine under the name of the PLO to indicate the leadership of the organisation. However, the truth is that things have changed, and the position of the President of the nominal State of Palestine (which is neither recognised by the Israeli occupation authorities nor the UN Security Council) is much more important than the position of the Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee. Despite this, the PLO remained a tool in the hand of the PA president, who used it to obtain blessings for any decision he wanted, without any attention to the role of the Chairman of the National Council (absent from any matter) Salim Zanoun, 87, or its independent members