---
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](/places/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](/places/jordan/), conducting cross-border operations against [Israel](/places/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](/organizations/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 - 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 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 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.