Palestinian National Charter

Context

The roots of the Palestinian National Charter and the formation of the PLO can be traced to hostility between Muslims and Jews that extends back hundreds of years. Beginning in the late nineteenth century and throughout much of the twentieth century, however, a number of significant events took place that laid the foundation for the charter and modern manifestations of that hostility. In 1896 an Austro-Hungarian journalist, Theodor Herzl, published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). The publication of this book marked the beginning of the movement called Zionism, which called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The core concept of Zionism was that Jews should return to their biblical homeland in and around the city of Jerusalem—territory that Muslim Arabs claimed as their own. The Zionist movement began a process of Jewish immigration to Palestine. During World War I, the British occupied Palestine, and on November 17, 1917, the British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour, in the Balfour Declaration, pledged to an organization called the Zionist Federation that the British would ensure a safe homeland for Jews in Palestine. After the war, the newly formed League of Nations (the predecessor to today's United Nations) designated Palestine as a British mandate, or territory that would fall under British administration. In a resolution dated July 24, 1922, establishing the British Mandate for Palestine, the League of Nations specified Britain's responsibilities in Palestine: to “secure the establishment of the Jewish national home” but also to protect “the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine,” including those of Muslims.

Jews and Muslims lived side by side in relative peace throughout most of the 1920s, but that changed in August 1929 when rioting broke out over disputes about access to the Wailing Wall, a holy site in Jerusalem. Charges and countercharges, all fueled by rumor, led to outbreaks of violence, particularly in the city of Hebron, resulting in a death toll of 133 Jews and 116 Arab Palestinians. The Shaw Commission, led by Sir Walter Shaw, arrived in Palestine from England to report on the causes of the unrest. The commission's March 1930 account, “Report of the Commission on the Palestine Disturbances of August, 1929,” laid the blame for the unrest primarily on the Arab community. The report did, however, note that Jewish immigration to Palestine was increasing tensions between Arabs and Jews. Accordingly, on October 1, 1930, a document called the “Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development,” referred to informally as the Hope-Simpson Report, recommended that Jewish immigration to Palestine be halted. At the same time, a 1930 document called the Passfield White Paper reinforced the policy that the rights of Arabs in Palestine were coequal with those of the Zionists. In 1936, Britain recommended that Palestine be divided into Jewish and Arab areas, but by this time militancy among Arabs and Jews had increased. Both sides rejected the proposal, and the Palestinian Arabs launched three years of terrorist activities against Jews, known as the Great Uprising (1936–1939). In response, Britain, acting on the recommendations of a report called the White Paper, issued on May 17, 1939, limited Jewish immigration to Palestine for a period of five years. This restriction ensured an Arab majority in Palestine, and some observers regarded it as an act of appeasement. The effect of this restriction was to trap many Jews in Europe during World War II and the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust.

World War II muted tensions between Muslims and Jews (and between Jews and the British, who the Jews believed were selling them out). After the war and the Holocaust, which left many European Jews homeless and displaced, calls for the establishment of a Jewish homeland grew louder, particularly after the British Mandate for Palestine ended in 1948. In anticipation of British withdrawal, the United Nations adopted Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947. The resolution, relying on a report by the United Nation's Special Committee on Palestine, called for partitioning Palestine into a Jewish zone and an Arab zone, with Jerusalem as a corpus separatum, or “separate body.” In effect, Jerusalem was internationalized. Jews accepted the plan, but the Arabs rejected it. On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its existence as an independent state.

The next day, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon attacked Israel, beginning the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. To give Arab forces a free-fire zone, some seven hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs fled, but the Arab states' failure to defeat the Israelis left these refugees trapped, unable to return to their homes in Israel. Today's Palestinian refugees, numbering some 4.25 million (of a total Palestinian population of about 10.6 million), include these refugees as well as their descendants and refugees from the 1967 Six-Day War. While these refugees, many of whom live in refugee camps, are scattered across the Middle East, the bulk live in Jordan (1.8 million), Gaza (nearly one million), and the West Bank (nearly seven hundred thousand); ironically, Egypt, which led the fight against Israel in the 1940s and 1950s, is home to only about seventy thousand Palestinian refugees. Meanwhile, from 1948 to 1952 roughly seven hundred thousand Jews immigrated to Israel, many of them from other Arab countries, and by 1970 the number of Jewish immigrants to Israel had increased to some 850,000.

Throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, the Arab world continued its resistance to Israel. Jews were expelled from Arab countries. Egypt closed the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping in 1956. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser spearheaded a pan-Arabist movement, which was an effort to unite Arab states into a single political entity that would encompass the Middle East and North Africa—and that called for the destruction of Israel. It was this movement that provided the immediate spark for the original Palestinian National Charter in 1964. The charter was amended in 1968 as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel delivered a stunning defeat of the Arab forces arrayed to attack, consolidating its hold on additional portions of Palestine. The Six-Day War and its aftermath, with Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Sinai Peninsula, continue to shape Palestinian-Israeli relations in the region.