Palestine Liberation Organization

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), of which Fatah is a part, formally recognized Israel in 1993. The PLO is an umbrella group effectively acting as the name of a coalition of parties in the Palestinian Authority, the significant exception being Hamas. Fatah, however, never recognized Israel.

First established in 1964, notably before the capture of the West Bank and Gaza, its founding declaration declared the "right of the Palestinian Arab people to its sacred homeland Palestine and affirming the inevitability of the battle to liberate the usurped part from it, and its determination to bring out its effective revolutionary entity and the mobilization of the capabilities and potentialities and its material, military and spiritual forces". <ref name=PNC>Statement of Proclamation of the Organization, Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations, 28 May 1964<ref> In other words, its initial focus was on regaining the land assigned to the State of Israel, by UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine.