Palestinian Liberation Army

The Palestinian Liberation Army (PLA) was set up as the military wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964, with the mission of fighting Israel. However, it has never really been under effective PLO control, but rather it has been controlled by its various host governments.

History and structure

Immediately after its creation, the PLO (headed by Ahmad Shukeiri) was effectively under the control of the Arab states, especially Nasser's Egypt. The Palestinians would not gain independent control of the organization until Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction wrested it from Nasser-backed Palestinians in 1968-69, when the Arab states were discredited by the Six-Day War, and militant Palestinian organizations were rapidly gaining in importance.

The PLA was originally organized into three brigades:
* Ayn Jalut. Based in Egypt.
* Qadisiyyah. Originally based in Iraq, but transferred to Jordan in 1967.
* Hattin. Based in Syria.

These brigades were staffed by Palestinian refugees under the control of the host countries, who would perform their military service in these units instead of in their host countries regular armed forces. Formally, the PLA was under the command of the PLO's Military Department, but in practice, none of the governments involved relinquished control of the brigades.

At its largest, the PLA comprised eight brigades with a total of some 12,000 uniformed soldiers. They were equipped with small arms, mortars, rocket launchers, wheeled armored personnel carriers and T-34 tanks. However, the PLA was never deployed in the form of a single fighting unit for the PLO, but instead utilized battalion-size elements as an auxiliary force by its controller governments.

PLF

In 1968, the Popular Liberation Forces (Arabic, "quwat at-tahrir ash-sha'biyya") were established within the framework of the PLA to perform commando action against Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, occupied by Israeli forces the year before. Generally the PLA refrained from this kind of underground action, having been built up as something of a parade showpiece.

History of deployment

The fact that the PLA was formally Palestinian was used as political cover by the host governments. Syria, especially, would make great use of its PLA units. In 1970 it sent hastily repainted Syrian Army tanks under the command of the PLA into Jordan to aid the Palestinian guerrillas during the Black September fighting. After international pressures, and threats of intervention from both Israel and the USA, they were forced to turn back; an embarrassment which would contribute greatly to the overthrow of the regime of Salah Jadid by Hafez al-Assad.

During the Lebanese Civil War, Syria likewise made extensive use of the PLA as a proxy force, including against the PLO (the PLA however proved unreliable when ordered to fight other Palestinians, and suffered from mass defections). The PLA was largely destroyed as a fighting force during the 1982 Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon that started the 1982 Lebanon War. Its fighters in Lebanon left for Tunis when the PLO evacuated Beirut that year, in a US-sponsored cease fire agreement. The Egyptian PLA was also deployed in Lebanon in 1976, after Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat had approached the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, to mend relations damaged by Sadat's peacemaking attempts with Israel. Still, the Egyptian units never proved as important as the fully-deployed Syrian PLA.

The PLA today

PLA soldiers later became the core of the Palestinian Authority's (PNA) National Guard, after the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords, when they were allowed to enter the Palestinian Territories to take up positions in the PNA security services.

The Syrian PLA remains in operation, closely coordinated with the Syrian-controlled as-Sa'iqa faction of the PLO, although the importance of both has diminished. The PLA has been rebuilt and Palestinian refugees in Syria are still drafted to perform their military service in its ranks. Though completely staffed by Palestinians, it remains outside of the PLO's control, and is in effect integrated into the Syrian Army. Nevertheless, it poses as an independent entity, and occasionally organizes pro-government rallies celebrating Syrian commitment to the Palestinian cause.

ee also

* Arab-Israeli conflict
* Israeli-Palestinian conflict
* Foreign Legion