Former President Clinton presides over ceremonies marking the signing of the 1993 peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians on the White House lawn with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, left, and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, right | J. David Ake/AFP via Getty Images
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was born as the legitimate umbrella and sole representative of the entire Palestinian people—both within and outside the homeland—with a clear mandate: to lead the national liberation project, protect the inalienable rights of our people, and maintain the political unity of a nation dispersed by occupation, war, and exile.
However, today, more than half a century after its creation, the PLO faces a profound crisis. Not because its historical project has lost its relevance—on the contrary, it has never been more urgent—but because certain sectors of its leadership have abandoned, out of convenience, calculation, or personal interests, the program for which the PLO was created.
Why do some leaders no longer feel committed to the PLO?
The answer, though painful, is clear. A segment of the Palestinian political class has settled into the administrative structure of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), born from the Oslo Accords. This structure—limited, dependent, conditioned by the occupation, and designed to administer the fragments of sovereignty that Israel allows—offers privileges, positions, and spaces of power that did not exist in the struggle represented by the PLO.
Some leaders, caught between comfort and external pressure, have abandoned the national agenda to cling to bureaucratic positions. Among them, the commitment to the return of refugees, resistance in all its legitimate forms, and the genuine representation of the diaspora has weakened.
PLO and PA: Two Distinct Entities Often Confused
The confusion between the PLO and the PA has been one of the greatest successes of the Zionist project and certain international actors: diluting Palestinian national representation until it is reduced to a limited administrative entity.
The PLO represents the entire Palestinian people: Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, the refugees, the diaspora in Latin America, Europe, and the Arab world.
The PA represents only a local administration, without real sovereignty, restricted to fragmented territories, and subject to the control of the occupation.
While the PLO emerged to liberate Palestine, the PA was designed to manage the occupation, not to confront it. For this reason, the Palestinian diaspora—which constitutes more than half of our nation—remains under the umbrella of the PLO, not the PA.
The PLO’s original mission remains valid.
The PLO must reclaim its historical role:
Reorganize its leadership, moving away from personalism.
Open its institutions to genuine representation of the diaspora.
Reestablish a national program based on resistance, unity, and the right of return.
Protect the Palestinian project from external interests and Arab and Western pressures that seek to transform the cause into a humanitarian rather than a political issue.
The PLO has not failed; some of its leaders have.
The PLO has not failed to fulfill its mission due to structural incapacity, but because a faction of those who should be defending it abandoned it. Today, more than ever, it is necessary to remind the world that Palestinian legitimacy stems from the PLO and that any attempt to replace it with the PA is a political maneuver designed to neutralize our struggle.
From UPAL, we reaffirm that the representation of our people—in Palestine and in the diaspora—remains the PLO. Its original program is not only still valid: it is the indispensable compass for keeping the Palestinian cause alive and preventing the national project from being devoured by occupation, corruption, and resignation.
Palestinian Union of Latin America – UPAL
November 23, 2025
