Thanks to Ocean Guy for bringing attention to this fascinating essay, first of a series, it seems.
This part, while the details aren't new, is especially worth keeping in mind.
And consider this: The PLO was created at an Arab summit meeting in 1964.[10] The date is quite significant. In 1964, Israel did not control the disputed Judea-Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza territories. Not a single Jewish settlement existed in those areas. So, we can ask the question: in its original, 1964 founding Charter, what was the position of the PLO towards those territories?
“Article 24: This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area.”[11]
In other words, when Egypt and Jordan owned, respectively, Gaza and the West Bank, the PLO stated that these countries were the rightful owners of those two territories. This means either (1) that the PLO did not consider these lands to be Palestinian lands, or (2) that it did not mind foreigners ruling Palestinian lands.
It is only after 1967 that the PLO ‘discovered’ that these territories were supposedly Palestinian. The Charter was amended in 1968, as Arafat’s forces were taking control of it (Arafat was elected PLO chairman in 1969).[12]
What happened? In 1967, Israel’s Arab neighbors provoked a war that had the goal of genocide against the Jews,[13] but they lost, which resulted in Israeli control of the Gaza strip and the West Bank. In a spectacular move, unprecedented in history, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, though victorious against a genocidal provocation, offered to return those territories in exchange for a mere promise of peace. The Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, however, refused to talk.[14] Israel was left with no choice but to keep those territories. And it was then that the PLO decided these had now become Palestinian lands, which needed to be liberated.
[footnotes omitted here, but they're also quite instructive]
