Palestinian National Charter

Audience

The Palestinian National Charter is from one perspective a manifesto, and as such it had a number of audiences. The first was the Palestinian people. At the time it was issued and in the decades that followed, no “Palestine” existed as a separate, independent nation. The Palestinians are an Arab people, but they lacked a national identity, and they were scattered about the Middle East. Those who continued to live in Israel believed that they lived under an occupying force—that Israel was an illegitimate state that had seized land from the Palestinians illegally. Thus, the purpose of the charter was to reinforce a sense of a national identity among the Palestinians—to foster among them the belief that Palestine was a nation with its own history, culture, aspirations, and future. It was a rallying cry.

Another audience, of course, was the state of Israel. The charter was in effect a “declaration of independence” from the Israelis. It sent the message that the Palestinian people regarded the state of Israel as illegitimate and the Israeli regime as brutal, Fascist, and imperialistic. It sent the further message that the Palestinians were prepared to fight for what they regarded as their homeland and that they would take whatever steps necessary to defeat the Israeli regime—in effect, to eliminate the state of Israel as a political entity. In this sense, the audience for the charter was the world. As a declaration of independence, it informed the world of the Palestinians' goals and appealed to “progressive movements in the world” to support its struggle for “liberation” from Israel.