In 1968, a ragtag group of Palestinian guerrillas burst onto the world stage as part of a global offensive that combined controversial armed operations, diplomacy, and revolutionary politics. In the following years, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) forced the question of Palestine to the forefront of the world's attention and cement its status as the sole legitimate representative of a nation of people striving for statehood. While their spectacular acts of revolutionary violence - hijackings, guerrilla attacks, suicide operations - seized headlines and made the PLO the face of 'international terrorism' in the 1970s, it would be the organization's diplomatic campaign that would propel it to prominence in the global arena. By the middle years of the decade, the PLO would stand beside Vietnamese, Cuban, Algerian, and South African guerrilla fighters at the vanguard of a new generation of revolutionaries in the Third World. More than just a subplot in the Arab-Israeli