Prof. Paul Eidelberg 

This is an untold story about the Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement, an agreement that surreptitiously heralded the advocacy of a “Palestinian” state in the Land of Israel.

It needs to be understood and emphasized that anyone, regardless of his subjective ideas or feelings, who supports the creation of an Arab-Islamic state in Judea and Samaria is OBJECTIVELY advocating Israel’s destruction. This applies even to an Israeli Prime Minister!

In support of this provocative statement, I offer certain demonstrable facts which indicate there is not a stitch of evidence that contradicts the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to destroy Israel.

This commitment, which is rooted in Islamic theology, is proclaimed in the PLO-Palestinian Charter. Any honest or decent human can see in that Charter the Muslim’s murderous hatred of Jews and Israel. This hatred permeates Palestinian propaganda. It is manifested in the education and military training of Arab children. This ghoulish hatred promises a continuation of the 20 years of Oslo terror that has murdered and maimed 15,000 Jewish women, men, and children.

What are we to say, therefore, of any Israeli or American statesman, who despite this horrendous evidence and bloodshed has the audacity to advocate the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria? Must we not deem this stance a confession of intellectual and moral decadence, as well as an insult to the intelligence of any decent human being?

The negotiations leading to the Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement dignified evil and thus made Israel’s government complicit in the evil consequences that followed—confirming the prophecy of Isaiah regarding those who call evil good, and good evil. Woe, therefore, to those who continue the immoral policy of Oslo—the capital of a country that is becoming Judenrein.”

 As to the rest of the “Palestinian” obsessed fetishists  (/adinakutnicki.com/2012/07/22/when-leftist-mega-rich-peace-obsessed-instigators-get-involved-what-can-go-wrong-everything-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki-111/), what else is there to say….other than to offer a re-reading of the PA/PLO Genocidal “Charter” – 

 Introduction

Before the Six day war, the Palestine Liberation Organization  (PLO), founded in 1964 and led by Ahmed Shukhairy, had been instrumental in helping to provoke conflict. Shukhairy himself gave a speech at the U.N. describing graphically what the PLO would do to Israel and its Jewish inhabitants if ‘it will be our privilege to strike the first blow.’

Shukhairy drafted a charter for the PLO that was ratified in 1964. In Arabic, the document is called “Al-Mithaq Al-Kawmee Al-Philisteeni.” Mithaq was at first translated as covenant, but later the word “charter” was adopted. Palestinians claim that “Al Kawmee” is untranslatable. It evidently implies that Palestinians are less than a nation in their own right, and are part of the Arab nation or Ouma. In later years, the Palestinians adopted the designation “Shaabi” for the Palestinian people.

Following the Six day war, the PLO was reorganized under the leadership of Yasser Arafat.  In 1968, delegates met to redraft the PLO charter. The decline of prestige of Arab states caused by the war caused a shift in Palestinian thinking and produced, for the first time, a clear and consistent demand for a Palestinian state, rather than conquest of Palestine by Arab countries. The PLO charter of 1964, not a moderate document, was amended by adding four paragraphs and changing others. The main additions concern the reiterated call for armed struggle to eliminate Israel (“liberate Palestine”) and the change in the attitude to Jewish rights. The original version stated somewhat equivocally:

Article 7: Jews of Palestinian origin are considered Palestinians if they are willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine.

It is unclear if the above refers to Jews descended from families that lived in Palestine before the advent of Zionism, or to any Jews born in Israel, or what the status of Jews who have only one Palestinian Jewish parent. 

The revised version was more explicit:

 Article 6:The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.

Most such Jews “of Palestinian origin” or who had “normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion” (probably about 1880 had already died by 1968. Many of their descendants married Zionists. In any case, they are a tiny minority. About 100,000 Jews had lived in the area before 1914. Evidently the majority of the Jews were to be expelled or murdered, but their fate is not specified.

The charter speaks for itself. It calls for destruction of a member state of the UN, in violation of the UN charter. Nonetheless, the PLO was subsequently given observer status in the UN. The major and noteworthy features of both the 1964 and 1968 versions of the charter are:

1. Declaration of intent to destroy Israel and “liberate” all of Palestine:

Article 2:Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.

Article 3: The Palestinian Arab people possess the legal right to their homeland and have the right to determine their destiny after achieving the liberation of their country in accordance with their wishes and entirely of their own accord and will.

2. Defiance of UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which called for partition of Palestine:

 Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland, and inconsistent with the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, particularly the right to self-determination.

The above is especially instructive given the Palestinian insistence on “international legitimacy.”

3. Denial of the historic connection of the Jews to the land:

Article 20: …Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood.

The above claim has been seconded by attempts of pro-Palestinian academics to erase or deny archeological and other evidence of Jewish habitation in Jerusalem and elsewhere in ancient times. For some reason, US President Clinton was surprised when PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat denied that Jews had lived in the land in ancient times. There was no occasion for surprise, as it is an article of the Palestinian charter and is central to the Palestinian national credo.

4. Denial of Jewish peoplehood and of the right to self-determination of the Jewish people:

Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

This statement should be borne in mind when considering the outraged and self righteous protests by Palestinian Arabs when some Israelis deny that there is a Palestinian people or that there was a Palestinian people before 1948.

5. Implicit call for expulsion (“ethnic cleansing”) or extermination of most of the Jewish population of Israel, as embodied in the two versions of Article 6.

A national charter that is based primarily on negation of another people’s rights is remarkable in itself. But the revision of 1968 added another unique feature – express commitment to armed struggle. The Palestinians defined themselves and their national movement as a violent movement directed at destroying the nation state of another people:

Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase. The Palestinian Arab people assert their absolute determination and firm resolution to continue their armed struggle and to work for an armed popular revolution for the liberation of their country and their return to it…

Article 10: Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war. This requires its escalation, comprehensiveness, and the mobilization of all the Palestinian popular and educational efforts and their organization and involvement in the armed Palestinian revolution.

Below is the complete and unabridged text of the original 1968  Palestinian National Covenant, as published officially in English by the PLO.* The charter was soon followed by a program for a “secular democratic state.” The word “secular” is significant, because it refers to the Palestinian assertion that the Jews are only a religion. In a “secular democratic state” the Jews, as a religion, would therefore have no political standing whatever.

The PLO program called for exile from Palestine of all Jews who had arrived after 1917 and their descendants.  In PNA offices there is a plaque commemorating the original 18 signers of the Charter or Covenant, many of whom were eventually killed by the Israeli secret service after planning or participating in massacres such as that of the Munich Olympics in 1972, or at the hand of rival organizations.

Obviously these charters are incompatible with a peace agreement with Israel, and it was agreed between the parties to change them following  The Oslo Declaration of Principles in 1993.

Under the leadership of the PNA and the Fatah, and under extreme pressure from Israel and the U.S.,  the PLO in fact held several meetings in which evidently some of  the offending articles were repealed, with disputed legality.

In his letter of September 9, 1993 to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Fatah leader and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat stated:

In view of the promise of a new era and the signing of the Declaration of Principles and based on Palestinian acceptance of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel’s right to exist, and the  provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid. Consequently, the PLO undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant.

In April 1996, the Palestine National Council, the legislative body of the PLO, met in Gaza and voted 504 to 54 to annul sections of the Palestinian National Charter that denied Israel’s right to exist, The meaning of the Palestinian vote and the importance attached to it is at best dubious:

The Palestinian National Council (PNC) finally did convene on 24 April 1996 and passed a resolution in which it “amended by canceling the articles that are contrary to the letters exchanged between the PLO and the Government of Israel” and assigned to a legal committee the task of redrafting the charter within six months. [Amendment Palestinian Covenant-Arafat Letter & Text – 4 May 1996, Information Division, Israel Foreign Ministry.] As of yet no so such body has fulfilled this task, and there have been no reports of such a committee meeting or working.

As explained by the speaker of the PNC, Salim Zaanoun, to the PNC during the April 24 session, structuring the resolution as it did was an attempt to “fulfill the commitment demanded at the lowest possible price.” [Jon Immanuel, “Fatah Report: Covenant Frozen, not Amended,” Jerusalem Post (22 May 1996).] It put off making the hard decisions until the legal committee completed its work. Although Palestinian leaders have continually proclaimed to Israel and the Western press that they fulfilled their obligation and nullified the articles at issue, in their internal documents and statements in Arabic they have suggested otherwise. An apparently authoritative internal publication issued by the “Research and Thought” division of Fatah in Ramallah in April 1996 clarifies that: “The text of the Palestinian National Covenant remains as it was and no changes whatsoever were made to it. This has caused it to be frozen but not annulled.” [Fatah, Research and Thought Department, “The Palestinian National Covenant¾Between Renewal and Being Frozen,” Fatah Publication #8, April 1996. Document provided by Peace Watch.] (Seehttp://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/books/oslo/osloap2.html)

The charter itself was not been formally changed or re-drafted. Some members of the PLO contended that the vote is invalid. On May 4, 1996, PNA Chairman Arafat sent a letter about the nullification of the charter provisions to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres supposedly affirming the invalidation of the offending parts of the charter.

In January of 1998, Yasser Arafat wrote a letter to President Clinton, again claiming that the charter had been nullified. The letter was quite specific about what parts of the charter were nullified (see  Letter of Assurance from PNA Chairman Yasser Arafat). The letter stated in part:

…The Palestine National Council’s resolution, in accordance with Article 33 of the Covenant, is a comprehensive amendment of the Covenant. All of the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the P.L.O. commitment to recognize and live in peace side by side with Israel are no longer in effect.

As a result, Articles 6-10,15, 19-23, and 30 have been nullified, and the parts in Articles 1-5, 11-14, 16-l8, 25-27 and 29 that are inconsistent with the above mentioned commitments have also been nullified…

In December 1998,  the PLC met again in Gaza to meet the demand of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuthat the offending parts of the charter be formally revoked. US President Clinton attended the meeting. By acclamation, it reaffirmed the cancellation of those parts of the Charter which denied Israel’s right to exist, but it did not formally change or re-draft the Covenant. Farouk Kaddoumi, Foreign Minister of the PLO, stated in April of 2004 that the Covenant was never amended. (see http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=20533)

The revisions that were supposed to admit the legitimacy of Israel  are not shown in any  version of the Charter published by the Palestinian National Authority or the PLO. Palestinian Authority publications. PLO officials still insist that the Jews are not a people but a religion, and Palestinian educational programs teach, for example,  that Haifa is the largest port in Palestine. The Web site of the Palestinian mission to the UN features a statement concerning the changes in the charter but it also displays the 1964 version of the Palestinian National Charter on a separate page, without comment as of December 2009. If the charter has been nullified and replaced by the Palestinian constitution, as some claim, it is highly irregular that charter is still displayed at an official PLO Web site. The PNA Basic Law or Palestinian constitution does not mention the Palestinian National Charter or claim that it is intended to replace or supersede it. The Web site of the Palestinian National Authority is non-functional at this date.    

Ami Isseroff

Revised, December 29, 2009

Still yet, in answer to those who bray, yes, they “revised” their “Charter”, well, think again! – www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1991to_now_plo_charter_revise.php.