The Plo as a methodological problem for Israeli researchers, 1985–1993

Israeli academics disagree with respect to the scope of the change that has transpired within the PLO. Proponents of the first approach are convinced that leaders in the PLO mainstream have indeed changed the organization's basic orientation. Advocates of the second orientation, on the other hand, contend that the putative transition does not represent anything more than the potential for real revision of historic objectives. In this article, I outline the broad theoretical framework within which this interpretative argument has taken place. After elaborating the theoretical framework, I propose a methodological direction which differs from the one traced by these two opposite approaches. I claim that an arbitration mechanism that negotiates a middle ground between the fundamental and operative ideology has developed within the PLO. These three dimensions exist within the PLO at one and the same time; and since its crystallization in the mid‐1980s, the middle ground has become the dimension that dominates the PLO's activities.