Palestine Liberation Army

From September 5 to September 11, 1964, the second summit of the League of Arab States was held in Alexandria , which officially recognized and approved the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization. At the same conference, PLO representatives expressed their desire to create an "Palestine Liberation Army." The Palestinian initiative met with serious support among the participants of the conference, at the end of which representatives of the Arab countries adopted a document in which all participants in the conference pledged to provide broad material and military-political support to the new Palestinian project to create their own armed forces ^[10]

One of the main goals of creating the AOP was the desire of the Chairperson of the PLO Ahmed Shukeyri create an alternative organization to the more radical, and due to the more popular Fatah movement. Shukeyri, seeking to strengthen his position in the PLO, whose real influence in the Middle East arena began to decline, sought to establish complete control over the AOP. However, the AOP quite quickly turned into a virtually independent organization with autonomous funding, training camps, personnel, etc. An example of this is the Civil War in Lebanon , during which the AIT Khitin brigade participated in the hostilities against the PLO on the side of Syria ^{[11 ]}

Among the Arab countries, Iraq and Egypt supported the organization and mobilization of Palestinians in the AOP. One of the conditions for assistance in the organization was the creation of a common Arab leadership, which was to control the activities of the formation. Lebanon sharply refused to place AOP on its territory; Palestinians living in Lebanon were forbidden to join the ranks of this organization, violating the ban were deprived of all rights and deported from the country. King of Jordan Hussein also banned AOP from deploying on its territory, as well as campaigning and mobilizing in its ranks. Several representative offices of AOP were opened in Jordan, but their role was purely symbolic ^[12]

In September 1964, the formation of units of the Palestine Liberation Army as the army units of the Palestine Liberation Organization began in Egypt, Syria and Iraq at the same time ^[13] .

The main command and general headquarters of the AOP were in Syria ^[14] . The personnel were manned from the Palestinians on a voluntary basis. Initially, a number of command posts and positions of technical specialists were held by the military personnel of the Arab countries; as the military personnel and technical specialists were trained, these positions were replaced by Palestinians.

AOP personnel were dressed in military uniforms, undergoing general-arms training, and at the turn of the 1960s-1970s, in addition to light small arms, AOP army units included T-34 tanks , BTR-40 and BTR-152 armored personnel carriers , several field and anti-tank artillery guns, mortars, small-caliber anti-aircraft guns and anti-tank weapons. The AOP was armed mainly with Chinese- made Soviet weapons, as the USSR refused to supply arms directly to Palestinian units ^[12] .

In mid-February 1967, the AOP commander was included in the PLO Executive Committee ^[13] .

In 1968, special operations units (“commandos”) were created as part of the AOP.

The Palestine Liberation Army included three (according to other sources, four ^[12] ) army brigades and several smaller units ^[15] :

• “Ayn Jalut” ( Ayn Jalut ) - was originally located in the Gaza Strip , subsequently - in Egypt;
• "Chitin" ( Hattin ) - formed in Syria.
• "Qadisiyyah" ( Qadisiyyah ) - the formation took place in Iraq, but in 1967 the brigade was transferred to the territory of Jordan.
• Badr squads
• Commando Units ( Kuwat al-Tahrir Al-Sha'biya )
• Partisan formations.

The peculiarity of these paramilitary formations was that they were part of the regular armed forces of the state in whose territory they were formed ^[12] .

By the time the Six Day War began , the number of AOPs was about 14,000 ^[12]

By the time of the conclusion of the Cairo Agreement - 4000, units based in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Algeria ^[9] . .

The Palestine Liberation Army took part in several wars and armed conflicts:

• in operations against the Israeli army in the Six Day War ;
• in military operations against the Jordanian army during the events of “Black September” ^[16] , where on September 16, 1970, Yasser Arafat ^{[17] [18]} becomes the “commander of the AOP”;
• during the Yom Kippur War , the Ain Jallut brigade fought on the Sinai front, while the Chitin and Cadizia fought on the Syrian front;
• in the civil war in Lebanon 1975 - 1976 - against Christian armed groups;
• in the Lebanon War of 1982 ^[9] - against the Israeli army, Christian militias and the Army of Southern Lebanon .

After the signing of the agreements in Oslo in 1993, part of the personnel returned to the territory of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) created as a result of them, they were partially equipped with units of the PNA security forces ^{[19] [20]} .

AOP units in Syria remain loyal to the Syrian government. On April 28, 2011, the Chief of Staff of the AOP General Staff, General Tarik Al-Hadraah, spoke in support of the Syrian government, condemning the information war and subversive activities against Syria by Western countries ^[21]

• Great Soviet Encyclopedia . / ed. A.M. Prokhorova. 3rd ed. M., "Soviet Encyclopedia". 1969 - 1978 year .

• Palestine Liberation Army (Global Security website)
• Palestine Liberation Army posters