Word: plo
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...Hamas different from Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO...
...PLO is an umbrella organization that has been overwhelmingly secular since its inception. Today it remains dominated by the secular nationalists of Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization. Before Oslo, the PLO's affiliate organizations, which included smaller leftist groups such as the PFLP and DFLP, operated from exile in the Arab world. The PLO's various factions maintained small guerrilla wings that periodically carried out terror attacks against Israeli targets, and also operated illegal underground structures in the West Bank and Gaza...
...Hamas emerged as a direct rival to the secular in PLO in the West Bank and Gaza in 1987. Whereas the Israeli military authorities had banned PLO organizations from operating openly there, it consciously allowed Hamas - whose activities did not at that time include armed actions - to flourish as an alternative to Arafat, who remained Israel's primary enemy at the time. But Hamas's active role in the first intifada led to Israel banning the organization in 1989 and imprisoning its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin...
...Before the Bin Laden group emerged, terrorist organizations in the Mideast depended on states to sponsor their activities. The notorious PLO dissident Abu Nidal, for example, might carry out attacks on behalf of Syria, Libya or other sponsors, as would the notorious Venezuelan "Carlos the Jackal," currently in prison in France. Similarly, the Lebanese Hezbollah militia has depended on backing from Iran and a nod and a wink from Syria. Hezbollah, of course, has primarily waged a guerrilla war against Israel in southern Lebanon, but it has also been a suspect in terrorist attacks both inside Lebanon and abroad...
...insurgency. Oslo has given the Palestinians guns, plenty of them, and zones of control in which their enemy enters only for short periods in heavily-armed contingents. That, together with a civilian population overwhelmingly supportive of the anti-occupation cause has created perfect conditions for guerrilla warfare - something the PLO never had in exile. In the 70s and 80s, there were isolated terrorist attacks and the occasional kamikaze guerrilla sent across the border on a hang-glider; while in the West Bank and Gaza militant youths were confined to stones and gasoline bombs and the occasional handgun. Oslo has brought...