Soviet and East German support for the Arab states expanded at the high point of détente in Europe. West Germany had opened diplomatic relations with the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, including with what it now was willing to call publicly the German Democratic Republic. In Vietnam, the United States was withdrawing its troops. What the Communists called the global “correlation of forces” appeared to be shifting in their favor due to the combined impact of the growth of Soviet military power and the success of Communist and leftist armed movements in the third world. The radicalism of 1969, evident in Stoph's “Support Order” and formation of the Weiss Committee to coordinate arms shipments to third-world states and movements, was also apparent in East Germany's deepening support of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1973, East Germany became the first country in the Soviet bloc to permit the PLO to open an office in its capital. That decision should be placed in the global context of the Communists’ perceptions that the global balance of power was shifting in their favor.

The elevation of the PLO's status in East Berlin took place following two official visits to East Berlin in 1973 by delegations led by Yasser Arafat. The first took place from February 17–22 and the second from July 27 to August 8. The Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee served as host. In February Arafat and the delegation met a unit of the National People's Army and participated in a press conference with journalists from East German print, radio, and television. Arafat met for several hours with Politburo member Herman Axen. In July and early August, Gerhard Grüneberg greeted Arafat and his delegation at Berlin-Schönefeld airport. Grüneberg's political career traced a path from that of worker skilled in stonemasonry to the top reaches of the Communist Party. He fought in the German army in World War II and spent some of the years between 1941 and 1945 in Soviet captivity. He joined the KPD and then the SED in 1946 upon his return to East Berlin. He rose through the ranks of the latter to become a member of its Central Committee in 1959. He joined the Politburo in 1966. He was a regular presence at the key meetings with the PLO leadership in the formative decade of the relationship in the 1970s.