What if the PLO were Islamists?

The Palestinian Liberation Organization were, for the most part, a secular organization that sought the creation of a Palestinian state after the 1948 war.

But what if it had been founded as a strictly Islamist organization instead? (Mirroring some of the radical groups we see today.)

What effect would this have on its effectiveness in the ensuring conflicts its had with Israel from 1964 to Now?
 
The Palestinian Liberation Organization were, for the most part, a secular organization that sought the creation of a Palestinian state after the 1948 war.

But what if it had been founded as a strictly Islamist organization instead? (Mirroring some of the radical groups we see today.)

What effect would this have on its effectiveness in the ensuring conflicts its had with Israel from 1964 to Now?

It might make them less amicable to the other international left-wing guerilla movements that they allied with IOTL. Baader-Meinhof and the Japanese Red Army, for example.

There's a scene in the German movie about Baader-Meinhof where some members of the gang, mixed gender, go to train at a Palestinian camp, and outrage their hosts by sunbathing topless in public. You could probably expect more such cultural clashes if the PLO were outright Islamist. Actually, the European leftists probably wouldn't even hook up with the PLO at all, much less go to one of their camps.

Then again, devoutly Catholic Irish-Americans had no problem sending money to the Marxist IRA. Though they weren't actually going to Belfast and sitting around the war room listening to debates about class warfare.
 
Also, an Islamist PLO would alienate Christian Palestinians, who were a small but significant part of the Palestinian movement, especially among the diaspora.
 
my suspicion is that we would end up with a People's Front of Judea with it being one in a number of related groups against Israel but unable to agree on much else, instead of the Umbrella-type secular movement that PLO was.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Internationally it would be seen much less favorably. Making itself a purely religious based movement would deaden any sense of legitimacy that it achieved outside of the Middle East.

Had it persisted of course, post 9/11, the movement would have become a Category A target for the U.S. If the Palestinian movement thinks it is facing an implacable overpowered opponent in the IDF, it has no idea how bad things could be if Uncle Sugar came a callin'.
 

Ryan

Donor
Then again, devoutly Catholic Irish-Americans had no problem sending money to the Marxist IRA.

wasn't the main thing with plastic paddies that they didn't actually know anything about the situation in Ireland? they all thought that the northern Irish wanted to part of the republic but the evil imperialist English occupied them and kept them in the UK against their will.
 
wasn't the main thing with plastic paddies that they didn't actually know anything about the situation in Ireland? they all thought that the northern Irish wanted to part of the republic but the evil imperialist English occupied them and kept them in the UK against their will.

Well, in fairness, Sinn Fein, which supported the IRA, is now garnering over a quarter of the vote for Northern Ireland Assembly, somewhat negating the old British apologist line that "No one supports the IRA except Irish-Americans."

But yeah, that's still nowhere near the overwhelming majority that the Too Ra Loo Ra Loo crowd in Boston and New York were probably envisioning.
 
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