This book explores the development of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from a liberation movement to a national authority, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

Based on intensive fieldwork in the West Bank, Gaza and Cairo, Nigel Parsons analyzes Palestinian internal politics and their institutional-building by looking at the development of the PLO. Drawing on interviews with leading figures in the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, delegates to the negotiations with Israel, and the Palestinian political opposition, it is a timely account of the Israel/Palestine conflict from a Palestinian political perspective.

Contents

1. Conceptualizing Palestinian Institutions: Structure, Agency, and Transition 2. From PLO to PA and on toward Statehood: Palestinian Institutional Development from 1964 to 2003 3. Authoritative Leadership and the New National Project: The Politics of Palestinian Diplomacy in Madrid, Washington, and Oslo 4. PLO-Israel Agreements of the Oslo Process 5. The Bureaucracy and Security Apparatus of the National Project 6. Socio-Political Foundations: Civil Society, the Legislative Council, and Fatah as Party of State 7. Oslo Implodes 8. After Arafat, on to al-Aqsa: Palestinian Institutions Face the Future