---
category: Country
created: 2026-05-14
location: Ramallah / Gaza City
summary: Palestine is the name used for the territory comprising the West Bank, Gaza
  Strip, and East Jerusalem claimed for an independent Palestinian state; Palestinian
  organizations including the PLO, Black September, and PFLP figure extensively in
  the vault's Mossad operations and Israeli intelligence subjects, as do the CIA's
  relations with Palestinian intelligence.
tags:
- Country
- Palestine
- Mossad
- PLO
- BlackSeptember
- Israel
updated: 2026-05-17
---

Palestine refers to the territory claimed by the Palestinian people as the basis for an independent state, comprising the [West Bank](/places/west-bank/) (including East [Jerusalem](/places/jerusalem/)) and the [Gaza Strip](/places/gaza-strip/). The question of Palestinian statehood derives from the British Mandate period (1920-1948) and the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel, which displaced approximately 700,000 Palestinian Arabs in what Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe). The West Bank was held by [Jordan](/places/jordan/) from 1948 to 1967 and occupied by [Israel](/places/israel/) following the [Six-Day War](/events/six-day-war/); the Gaza Strip was held by [Egypt](/places/egypt/) and similarly occupied by Israel in 1967.[^1]

### PLO and Palestinian Organizations

The [Palestine Liberation Organization](/organizations/palestine-liberation-organization/) (PLO) was founded in 1964 as an umbrella organization for Palestinian political and military factions. Under [Yasser Arafat](/people/yasser-arafat/)'s leadership following the 1967 war, the PLO's Fatah movement became dominant. The PLO established itself in Jordan, conducting cross-border operations against Israel, until it was expelled following [Black September](/organizations/black-september/) 1970 - when King Hussein crushed PLO forces in Jordan. The PLO relocated to [Lebanon](/places/lebanon/), from which it conducted operations until Israel's 1982 invasion forced its departure to Tunis.

Palestinian factions active in the period covered by this vault include:
- Fatah - Arafat's mainstream nationalist faction
- Black September - a PLO-affiliated clandestine unit responsible for the [Munich massacre](/events/munich-olympic-massacre/) of September 5-6, 1972
- PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) - Marxist faction that conducted hijackings including the 1976 [Entebbe](/events/entebbe-hijacking/) operation
- [Abu Nidal Organization](/organizations/abu-nidal-organization/) - breakaway faction that conducted attacks in multiple countries, allegedly with connections to [Iraq](/places/iraq/) and [Libya](/places/libya/)

### Mossad Operations

[Mossad](/organizations/mossad/)'s response to the 1972 Munich massacre - in which Black September killed eleven Israeli athletes - was Operation Wrath of God, a long-running assassination program targeting those responsible. Mossad teams tracked and killed multiple PLO operatives across Europe and the [Middle East](/places/middle-east/) over the following years. The operation was dramatized in Steven Spielberg's 2005 film *Munich* and documented in George Jonas's *Vengeance* (1984). A mistaken assassination in Lillehammer, Norway in 1973 - in which Mossad killed a Moroccan waiter believing him to be a PLO operative - led to arrests of Mossad officers by Norwegian police.[^2]

Palestinian intelligence organizations - including Force 17 and the PLO's intelligence branch under Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf) - maintained connections with Arab intelligence services and, through back-channels, with Western intelligence agencies seeking information on Palestinian operations. The CIA maintained contacts with PLO representatives despite the U.S. government's official refusal to deal with the organization.

### PA and Oslo

The 1993 [Oslo Accords](/events/oslo-accords/) between Israel and the PLO established the Palestinian Authority (PA), which assumed limited self-governance authority in parts of the West Bank and Gaza. The PA's intelligence apparatus, the Preventive Security Service (Amn al-Wiqaiya), maintained security cooperation with both the CIA and Israeli [Shin Bet](/organizations/shin-bet/) from the Oslo period onward as part of coordinated counterterrorism programs targeting Islamist factions.[^1]

[^1]: "Palestine," *Encyclopaedia Britannica.* https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine
[^2]: Jonas, George. *Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team.* Simon & Schuster, 1984.