Subject: THE PLO CHARTER HOAX
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 21:55:52 +0000
To: "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
From: Boris Shusteff
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: THE PLO CHARTER HOAX
THE CHARTER HOAX
by Boris Shusteff
After meeting with the American President on January 23,1997, Yasser
Arafat told reporters that he had given Clinton a letter to show that
the Palestine National Council had nullified calls for Israel's
destruction. "So far as we are concerned, that was put to rest," he
declared. Secretary of State Madeline Albright said in a press
conference that the letter "for the first time identified specifically
and by number all the articles annulled by the PNC's April 1996 action,"
and she believes that this letter "addresses the concerns about the
ambiguities of the PNC's decision." The reporters who were lucky to be
present at James Rubin's U.S. State Department press briefing on
January, 22, 1998, were able to learn which articles were affected.
Rubin read from Arafat's letter which listed twenty eight out of thirty
three articles that "were completely or partially nullified."
After Rubin finished the enumeration, to anyone familiar with the PLO
Covenant (or charter how it is often called) two things became
absolutely clear. First, that Arafat knows extremely well which
articles must be amended, and, second, that this amendment did not
really happen. Article 33 - one of the five articles left intact -
quietly testifies to this. It still reads as follows, "This charter
shall not be amended save by [vote of] a majority of two thirds of the
total membership of the National Congress of the Palestine Liberation
Organization [taken] at a special session convened for this purpose."
The PLO Covenant was not written as a letter to the American President
or to the British Prime Minister. Arafat's letters to Bill Clinton as
well as to Tony Blair do not change anything. It is a legally binding
written document. It is the declaration of an absolute, unconditional,
destructive intent by the PLO of the total annihilation of the State of
Israel. The PLO is a federation of different groups, and the charter
was assumed to be the fundamental basis for the often controversial
cooperation of these groups. It is the glue that keeps them together.
Y. Harkabi, in The Palestinian Covenant and its Meaning, quoted Ahmad
Shuqairy, the first PLO President, the man who drafted the charter. He
said, "More than once I spent two or three nights over one single word
or phrase, as I was facing generations of Palestinians who read between
the lines more than they read the lines themselves." It is exactly in
order to make changes almost impossible that Article 33 was included in
the charter.
Arafat has played the charter card for many years. On May 2, 1989,
speaking on French television from Paris, he stated that the covenant
was "null and void" ("c'est caduque"). In his September 9, 1993 letter
to Yitzhak Rabin he wrote that 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 Counsil [PNC] for formal approval the necessary
changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant." Although the above
statement and letter sounded encouraging, they were completely empty
from the legal point of view. Arafat put the cart in front of the
horse, well aware that the horse would decline to pull it; the
declarations of the charter's amendments might have been valid only
after the PNC's decision to amend it.
Forced to call the Palestinian National Council in April 1996, Arafat
used another trick. Instead of changing any specific articles, the PNC
declared its readiness in principle to change the document. PNC
Chairman Salim Zaanoun told the assembled delegates prior to the vote,
"We must fulfill the commitment demanded at the lowest possible price.
.If we amend those articles whose amendment is demanded, it will mean
that we have paid a very high price, and if we prepare a new proposal it
will be less damaging that we could submit. It gives us an extension of
six months until the Central Council convenes."
As the charter was not amended it was not a surprise that the PNC
members reported a mishmash of numbers of amended articles. One of
amendment's chief opponents Khaidar A. Shaffi understood that changes
would affect only 2 articles; the head of the PNC's Judicial Committee
Faisal Hamdi Husseini announced that 21 articles would be changed;
Sufian Abu Zaidah, head of the PA's Israel desk, claimed that all 33
articles were replaced; PA planning Minister Nabil Shaath said that 16
articles had been altered.
On May 7, 1997 Yehoshua Porat wrote in Ma'ariv that "at a meeting with
Libyan ruler Muammar Qadafi, Yasser Arafat denied that the Covenant had
been canceled and claimed that nothing happened." "Peace Watch," an
independent apolitical organization, reported in its May 23,1996 press
release on Fatah's internal document published in Ramallah entitled "The
Palestinian National Covenant Between Renewal and Being Frozen." This
document declared that "the PLO Covenant was frozen, but not annulled,
and that no changes were made to the document at the recent session of
the PNC."
However, nothing testifies better to the fact that the charter was not
amended than the following detail. At the end of its work, on April 25,
1996, the PNC published a concluding document of the session. The
statement included nineteen specific resolutions and decisions, but
contained no reference to any decision to amend the charter. So much
for a "special session convened for that purpose."
Tayseer Qaba, the Deputy Chairman of the PNC, proclaimed in 1995 that
"The PLO will adhere to the Covenant until our last breath since it
embodies the essence of our demands." Through the Covenant the PLO is
constitutionally tied to the idea of Israel's destruction. Benjamin
Netanyahu wrote in A Place Among the Nations, that if one were "to
remove that idea there would be no more PLO."
When Arafat wrote to Rabin in September, 1993 that the PLO recognizes
Israel and some "provisions of the Covenant are no longer valid" he knew
that these were empty words. While on the surface the Oslo agreement
looked like the "land for peace" deal, in essence it was a "land for
empty words" one. Now, when it appears that Netanyahu has finally
managed to assemble more supporters under his reciprocity banner, it is
very important for Israel to get the charter/recognition facts straight.
It is not enough for the PLO simply to state that it recognizes Israel.
This recognition should be unequivocal. It is a must to include in the
recognition formula the following slightly changed wording, borrowed
from the April 24, 1920 San-Remo Conference decision. It must state
that "recognition is hereby given to the historical connection of the
Jewish people with Palestine, and to Israel that is the reestablished
national home of the Jewish people in that land."
Only this kind of recognition, made in Arabic and printed in all the
Arab newspapers, can be considered a valid one. Only a Charter that is
amended by a two-thirds majority of the total membership of the National
Congress of the PLO in a special session convened for that purpose could
be considered amended.
Madeline Albright is right. Arafat's letter removes the ambiguities of
April 1996, PNC's decision. It proves that the Covenant has remained
untouched.
1/25/98
(Boris Shusteff is an engineer in upstate New York. He is also a
research associate with the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies)
*************************************************************************