DFLP/FIDA Split
During the 1980s, Abd Rabbu moved closer to the position of Yassir Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and supported his attempts to negotiate a two-state solution. This led to friction within the DFLP, and as Arafat gave his blessings to the Madrid Conference of 1991, the organization split. Abd Rabbo, supported by Arafat, headed a faction mainly based in the West Bank, that backed these negotiations, and he became one of the Palestinian leader's main advisors; Hawatmeh's Syria-based DFLP faction resisted the talks. The Abd Rabbo faction reformed as FIDA, the Palestine Democratic Union, dropping the Marxist-Leninist platform of the DFLP and rescinding armed struggle. Abd Rabbo became FIDA's representative on the PLO Executive Committee. In 1993, however, Abd Rabbo left his post at the Madrid delegation in protest, when he discovered that Arafat had initiated another round of talks without informing him (these parallel negotiations eventually led to the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Read more about this topic: Yasser Abed Rabbo
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