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PLO CHARTER |
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PLO CHARTER |
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Terrorist Bombing Strikes Jerusalem, March 21, 2002 |
The Palestinian National Covenant is the founding charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), adopted at the PLO's founding congress in May 1964. The Covenant sets forth the organization's stated aims and goals. Almost all of the articles in the Covenant explicitly or implicitly deny Israel's right to exist and reject any peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
For example, these articles:
The Covenant also denies the existence of the Jewish people as a nation and any ties that it might have to the Land of Israel [Article 20: "Nor do Jews constitute a single nation"]. It declares in Article 9 that "armed struggle is the only [emphasis added] way to liberate Palestine".
The bottom line is that the Palestinian National Covenant calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. The Israelis, quite naturally, thought that the inflammatory language should be changed before they could consider the PLO to be a serious "partner for peace".
In a letter dated September 9, 1993 -- part of the Oslo Accords -- signed by Yasser Arafat as Chairman of the PLO, Arafat agreed that:
But nothing was done to change the Covenant. The requirement was restated in another letter from Arafat to Rabin which accompanied the May 4, 1994 Agreement on the Gaza Strip and Jericho Area (the Cairo Agreement), but no action was taken by Arafat and the PLO.
Because the changes were not made, the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement (Oslo II) made the requirement even more specific:
The Oslo II agreement was signed on September 24, 1995 but the change was not made within the time period specified. On April 24, 1996 there was a vote by the PLO's Palestine National Council. The vote was widely reported in the media as having repealed the clauses of the PLO Charter which deny Israel's right to exist and call for its destruction through violence. The governments of the United States and of Israel welcomed the vote, stating that it marked the fulfillment of the Palestinian obligation on the Covenant.
But, again, that was not actually the case. The PNC action, which has not been officially fully disclosed, only stated an intention to make changes at a future date and did not specify, in detail, the changes that would be made. The matter was referred to a legal committee for study. No specific anti-Israel clauses in the Covenant were declared officially abrogated. Moreover, the process was incomplete because the PNC did not draft a new Covenant. After winning the election in May 1996, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu declared the failure to revise the Covenant to be a violation of the agreements by the Palestinians.
In the 1997 Hebron Agreement, it was specifically noted, again, that the PLO was commited to, "Complete the process of revising the Palestinian National Charter." Thereafter, Arafat and the PLO governing bodies insisted that they were in compliance based on the PNC vote in 1996, but legal analysts do not agree. In January 1998, Chairman Arafat sent letters to President Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair purporting to "put to rest" concerns about the PNC resolution and setting out a list of articles supposedly canceled or amended by the decision. But personal statements by Arafat have no legal effect; only a vote of 2/3 of the PNC can ammend the Covenant (Article 33). On December 14, 1998, the Palestinian National Council, in accordance with the Wye Memorandum, which required compliance with the earlier agreements, convened in Gaza in the presence of US President Clinton and voted to reaffirm their decision to amend the Covenant. But, again, this was insubstantial window dressing. Their action didn't actually amend the Covenant and the Palestinian Authority remained in violation of the lengthening series of agreements.
Although the Palestinian National Council (PNC) has twice taken formal decisions to revise the Palestinian National Covenant (1996 and 1998) calling for Israel's destruction, the PNC Chairman, Salim Za'anoun, stated on February 3, 2001, in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper, that the Palestinian Covenant remained unchanged and was still in force [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, 3 February 2001, as translated by MEMRI].
Former CIA Director James Woolsey said:
This saga of the Covenant revision is an example of the lack of good faith on the part of Arafat and the Palestinian Arabs in the course of the Oslo peace process. But, it probably does not make a difference whether the Covenant is actually revised or not. The hatred and violence directed against Israel by the Palestinian Arabs does not originate with the piece of paper called the Palestinian National Covenant.
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