The PLO’s Professor - June 8,1982, the NYTarticle identified Khalidi as “a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa.”
…While living in Lebanon from the early 1970s through 1983 (where the PLO was based at the time), Khalidi was frequently cited in the press as being close to the organization, and he even used the word “we” while speaking on the group’s behalf. He was described as a “director” of Wafa, the PLO’s official news agency, and he thanked Arafat for research assistance in the preface of one of his books. In 1991, Khalidi was part of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid peace talks with Israel — by his own account, he did so at the request of the PLO.
…ON JUNE 11, 1979, the New York Times ran an article explaining that the PLO was worried that the Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt would undermine Palestinians. The article quoted Khalidi opposing the deal for that very reason, and identified him as somebody “close to Al Fatah,” an arm of the PLO.
It read:
One view shared by the Palestinian leadership and the rank and file, down to armed youths who guard doorways and intersections, is that the goal of an independent state will be foreclosed if the Camp David accords succeed. “We are in a make-or-break-it period,” asserted Rashid Khalidi, a professor of political science who is close to Al Fatah. “If we don’t turn the tide, if what (Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat is doing is not decisively repudiated, if the idea that Sadat had brought peace is allowed to stick without regard to Palestinian rights, then we are done in. Israel doesn’t need to sign with us. They already control the land.”
…For instance, a January 6, 1981 Christian Science Monitor article that refers to Khalidi as “a Palestinian with good access to the PLO leadership,” reads: ..
…But the evidence for the connections between Khalidi and the PLO are much more explicit than that. Thomas Friedman, in a June 8, 1982 New York Times piece about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, referred to Khalidi as “a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa.”
..Khalidi recounts in his 1997 book Palestinian Identity: The Construction