Palestine Liberation Organization - Terrorist Activities

Terrorist Activities

The PLO began their militancy campaign from its inception with an attack on Israel's National Water Carrier in January 1965. The PLO was designated a terrorist organization by the United States in 1987., but in 1988 a presidential waiver was issued which permitted contact with the organization. The United States attempted to prosecute Yasser Arafat for his complicity in the assassination of two U.S diplomats. Israel considered the PLO to be a terrorist organization until the Madrid Conference in 1991. Most of the rest of the world recognized the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people from the mid-1970s onwards (after the PLO's admission to the UN as an observer.)

The most notable of what were considered terrorist acts committed by member organizations of the PLO were:

• 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 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 in Jordan crisis.
• In 1972, the Black September Organization carried out the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes.
• In 1974, members of the DFLP seized 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.