by Hugh Fitzgerald
The PLO Charter that calls for the destruction of Israel was adopted in 1964, that is, three years before there was a single Israeli in the West Bank, Gaza, or the Golan Heights. It was abundantly clear in the Charter that even within the pre-1967 lines — which are the same as the 1949 armistice lines – Israel was not to be allowed to exist. When the Oslo Accords were reached in 1993 and 1995, the Palestinians – presenting an image of having modified their views – with great fanfare added amendments that demonstrated their supposed transformation into a “partner for peace” with the Jewish state. One of the amendments even recognized a Jewish connection to the land. But in early March, the Palestinian television broadcast a program in which the PLO Charter was presented stripped of those amendments, reading just as it did in 1964.
A report on that program is here: “Palestinian TV broadcasts 1964 PLO Charter calling for Israel’s destruction,” Jerusalem Post, March 17, 2021:
Palestinian Authority television allegedly repeatedly broadcasted an educational series in early March highlighting the outdated 1964 Palestine Liberation Organization Charter that explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel, as reported by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) on March 17.
The broadcast did not make any mention of important amendments made in 1993 and 1995 that recognized Jewish connections to the land, in addition to forming the basis of acceptance of a two-state solution.
Rather, the television broadcast included a slide referring to Clause 16 of the charter, which calls for “the liberation of Palestine, from an international perspective, [as] a defensive operation necessitated by self-defense, as determined by the UN Charter.”
Given that Clause 16 was part of the PLO Charter adopted in 1964, the “Palestine” referred to is clearly Israel in the pre-1967 lines – which are the same as the 1949 armistice lines that Abba Eban once described as “the lines of Auschwitz.” Within those armistice lines, Israel had only a nine-mile wide waist at its narrowest point, from Qalqilya to the sea. An enemy’s armored columns invading from the east could slice Israel in two at that waist within less than an hour. The “liberation of Palestine” according to Clause 16 means not recovery of the West Bank (or Gaza – which in 1964 needed no “liberation” — but the destruction of Israel within its pre-1967 lines. This destruction of the Jewish state is claimed in the PLO Charter to be a “defensive “ measure, for the Jewish state’s very existence, on “stolen Arab land,” is the original “aggression” committed against the Palestinians. All efforts to push the Jewish state back, or ideally, to destroy it, are thus understood by the Arabs as “defensive.”
The narrator of the broadcast further added that the “The Charter… is based on the right to self-defense and to the return of the stolen homeland in its entirety; and it is a right that the international conventions and norms confirm.”
The narrator of that program about the PLO Charter does not mention the amendments to the 1964 PLO Charter, not even to suggest that they should no longer apply. He simply ignores them; they do not exist, not for him, and not for the PA, except when it is talking to the Americans, and presenting its mask of feigned moderation. The Jewish connection to the Land of Israel is not recognized in the unamended version of the Charter. Nor is the “two-state solution” to which the PA seemed to adhere in the amendments it added to the PLO Charter in 1993 and 1995. The television broadcast was aimed at presenting to its Palestinian audience the original, maximalist position of the PLO, as set out in its unamended version from 1964.
In addition, the segment discussing the PLO Charter did not take any notice of later discussions of a “two-state solution” and of the “peace process,” and claimed that the word “return” in the Charter was a reference to “the return of the stolen homeland in its entirety,” and emphasized the point by displaying a map on which Israel has been completely replaced with Palestine.
While the Americans may think the PLO is committed to the amended charter, they need to be informed that the PLO still uses the 1964 charter on its website, including Clause 22, which claims Israel is a threat to all of humanity. The broadcast, vetted by the PA, did not include the slightest mention of the amendments — and cancellations of existing clauses — that Yassir Arafat had solemnly promised would become part of the PLO Charter.
Clause 22, read out on the program, is the most unyielding of all the clauses in the PLO Charter:
Zionism is a political movement organically associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement, and geographical base for world imperialism placed strategically in the midst of the Arab homeland to combat the hopes of the Arab nation for liberation, unity, and progress.
Israel is a constant source of threat vis-a-vis peace in the Middle East and the whole world. Since the liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence and will contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East, the Palestinian people look for the support of all the progressive and peaceful forces and urge them all, irrespective of their affiliations and beliefs, to offer the Palestinian people all aid and support in their just struggle for the liberation of their homeland.
The television program makes no mention of the Oslo Accords or the major changes that were promised would be made to the charter, changes that contradict the very clauses that this broadcast focused on. The ideology and actions of the PA today reflect the extreme hostility and uncompromising insistence that the Jewish State must be destroyed. Clauses 16 and 22 deny Israel’s right to exist and state the PLO’s goal of destroying Israel.
The broadcast about the PLO Charter was one part of a series entitled “Lexicon of the Revolution.” The PA presenter chose to highlight the Charter’s declarations denying Israel’s right to exist, and the PLO’s goal of destroying Israel as a “defensive measure” sanctioned by the UN Charter.
The text of Clause 16 was read out on the broadcast, accompanied by a slide on the screen showing Israel replaced by Palestine. “PA presents the PLO Charter as currently calling for Israel’s destruction,” by Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch, Palestinian Media Watch, March 16, 2021:
“Clause 16 states that the liberation of Palestine, from an international perspective, is a defensive operation necessitated by self-defense, as determined by the UN Charter” alongside the old Fatah logo that includes crossed rifles and the map of “Palestine” that includes all of Israel, together with this text: “Al-Asifa – the Palestinian National Liberation Movement”
What was left out of the PA TV broadcast is just as significant as what was included. Most specifically, there is no reference to the fact that the PA obligated itself to cancel all the clauses of the PLO Charter calling for Israel’s destruction, under the terms of the Oslo Accords.
The narrator’s introductory explanation likewise denies Israel’s right to exist – saying Israel exists on Arab “stolen homeland” and therefore “returning it”– that is, recovering it — is an act of “self-defense”:
“The Charter… is based on the right to self-defense and to the return of the stolen homeland in its entirety
To eliminate all doubt that all of Israel is defined as the “stolen homeland,” the accompanying map depicts the Middle East without Israel and all of Israel as “Palestine.” The narrator continues:
“The clauses of the National Charter include a number of issues: The first clause states that: Palestine is an Arab land and is connected with a national connection to the other Arab lands, which together with it form the great Arab homeland, and that the Palestinian Arab people is the one with the legitimate right to its homeland, and it is an inseparable part of the Arab nation… The other clauses deal with the Palestinian identity… and the importance of the Palestinian cause for Arab existence.”
While the program makes a point of mentioning that amendments were made to the Charter in 1968, it ignores the fact that other amendments were to have been instituted following the signing of the Oslo Accords and that those amendments were to cancel all the clauses denying Israel’s right to exist, including the ones cited in this TV program.
In a letter accompanying the 1993 Declaration of Principles addressed to then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat wrote:
“[T]he 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.”
The September 1995 Interim Agreement between Israel and the PLO, reiterated the PLO obligation to change its charter:
“The PLO undertakes that, within two months of the date of the inauguration of the Council, the Palestinian National Council will convene and formally approve the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant, as undertaken in the letters signed by the Chairman of the PLO and addressed to the Prime Minister of Israel, dated September 9, 1993 and May 4, 1994.” [Article XXXI(9)]
The PA TV has thus been hiding from its viewers the fact that the PLO was to have canceled those sections of its Charter that denied Israel’s right to exist and called for Israel’s destruction. This is consistent with current PA messaging to its people that include the same ideology found in the original PLO charter. Whatever it says to the outside world, and especially to the Americans, the PLO – and now the PA — clearly hews to its original charter, which is the only version it provides to its own people. The PA continues to distribute in its schoolbooks maps that show Israel as “Palestine.” Israeli cities are still referred to as “Palestinian.” The PA still rejects – though the Biden administration may not realize this – the very notion of a Jewish nation. It continues to insist that Israel and Zionists are responsible for all the instability in the Middle East and the world. The PA supports, when politically expedient, the “armed struggle.” The PA financially rewards terrorists and their families with its “Pay-For-Slay” program. It honors terrorists by naming streets and squares after them.
Finally, the PLO website still today presents the full PLO Charter with all the provisions denying Israel’s right to exist, that were long ago supposed to have disappeared as part of the emendation of the Charter. These provisions include:
Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal.
Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void.
The PLO Charter posted at the PLO website also includes the call for Israel’s destruction through terror:
Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine.
Article 10: Commando action (i.e., the PA euphemism for terror) constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war.
Article 21: The Arab Palestinian people, expressing themselves by the armed Palestinian revolution, reject all solutions which are substitutes for the total liberation of Palestine.
Article 22: Zionism is a political movement organically associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement, and geographical base for world imperialism placed strategically in the midst of the Arab homeland to combat the hopes of the Arab nation for liberation, unity, and progress. Israel is a constant source of threat vis-a-vis peace in the Middle East and the whole world. Since the liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence and will contribute to the establishment of peace in the Middle East, the Palestinian people look for the support of all the progressive and peaceful forces and urge them all, irrespective of their affiliations and beliefs, to offer the Palestinian people all aid and support in their just struggle for the liberation of their homeland.
Only after presenting the complete 1964 version of the PLO Charter does the PLO website mention that articles 9, 10, 19, 20, 21 and 22 were canceled in 1998 and that others were amended, without specifying which ones and without presenting an alternate text. This information is presented almost as an afterthought; some readers may even miss it. What the PLO ought to have done is post at its website not the original charter, but a version that has deleted the canceled articles, so that viewers will be clear as to what constitutes the latest version of the Charter. This it very deliberately did not do.
In the overview of the PLO Charter currently being broadcast on PA TV, the clauses denying Israel’s right to exist and calling for its destruction are presented front and center, while the fact that they were “canceled” is hidden from the viewers. This was not an oversight, but intentional. The PA is telling its own people that the “real” version of the PLO Charter is the original one, calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. The other version, the one that supposedly cancelled a half-dozen of the Charter’s provisions that call for Israel’s destruction, is the one the PA presents to the outside world, and especially to the trustful Americans.
“War is deceit,” said Muhammad in a famous Hadith. So which PLO Charter do you believe?
First published in Jihad Watch.
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
