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It was one of the most dramatic handshakes of the 1990s decade. There was a grinning, keffiya-clad PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat reaching across a stage on the White House South Lawn in September 1993 to shake hands with a shy-looking Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The greeting was immensely symbolic. For the first time since its founding in 1964 in East Jerusalem, the PLO was recognized by Israel as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and a partner with whom Israel was prepared to enter into serious peace negotiations. For an organization that had been depicted for years in harsh terms by Israel as a ‘terrorist organization’ bent on the utter destruction of Israel, the turnaround was astonishing. How did this transformation come about, and how real was it anyway? Beginning in 1999, AIM International’s team interviewed dozens of Palestinians and Israelis alike, probing the history of the PLO’s early years and gaining fascinating, firsthand insights into the personality and habits of Yasser Arafat, with the resulting documentary offering striking and fresh insights into the nature of the PLO, along with information and footage about it that has never previously been aired.