Abstract

The P.L.O. Grapples With New Realities

This article presents information regarding Middle East Crisis. Today, the main fear pervading the citadels of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) authority is of marginalization and irrelevance. The malaise that has taken hold over the past year is convincing many of the organization's detractors that the twenty-three-year rule of its grizzled patriarch, Yasir Arafat, may be nearing its end. Even the PLO's spokesmen, whose pronouncements have lost the brash, pro-Iraq boosterism they carried during the early days of the Persian Gulf crisis, speak sullenly of the future, disparaging both the proposed Middle East peace conference, from which the PLO seems certain to be excluded, and their sometime Arab allies, whose resolve to press for a just solution to the Palestinian conflict appears to be flagging.