cover image Inside the PLO: Covert Units, Secret Funds, and the War Against Israel and the United States

Inside the PLO: Covert Units, Secret Funds, and the War Against Israel and the United States

Neil C. Livingstone. William Morrow & Company, $21.95 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-688-09335-8

The authors here gather an impressive array of new information about the Palestine Liberation Organization, its origins, governing structure, internal power struggles, covert foreign relations, funding and operations. Livingstone, a former Time correspondent, and Halevy, an acknowledged antiterrorist authority, analyze the PLO's recent policy change involving recognition of Israel and formal renunciation of terrorism, and warn that this posture of compromise should be viewed with skepticism: ``The eventual destruction of the State of Israel still appears to be . . . the PLO's ultimate goal.'' The elusive figure of Yassir Arafat, chairman of the PLO and commander-in-chief of its largest faction, Fatah, is brought into clear clearer than what?/than previous books, but let's just make it clear.gs focus in his various roles as spokesman, roving ambassador and ``chief energizer of the Palestinian movement.'' The authors convincingly argue that the intifada uprising has resuscitated the PLO but has also probably accelerated its decline by forcing into the political arena a younger generation of Palestinians with goals different from those of Arafat and other PLO leaders. Photos. (Mar.)