Palestinian National Charter

Impact

The impact of the Palestinian National Charter and the formation of the PLO—and the reassertion of the PLO's role as representative of the Palestinians in the 1968 charter—would have profound effects in the decades that followed. The Six-Day War of 1967 took the military option for the liberation of Palestine off the table; the Arab countries' humiliating defeat made it clear that they could not defeat a heavily armed and determined Israel on the battlefield. This defeat cleared the way for the ascension of Yasser Arafat as chairman of the PLO, which became an umbrella organization for a number of political parties and factions, including Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Palestine Liberation Front. Arafat was an advocate of guerrilla warfare against the Israelis, and in 1969–1970 he launched cross-border artillery attacks on Israel and terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. But the PLO did not enjoy the support of other Arab Muslim nations, which saw the organization as too militant and too secular in its aims. The PLO was headquartered in Jordan, but the Jordanians expelled the PLO and took military action against its armed factions in an event known as Black September (1970). (This event is not to be confused with the armed faction of the Fatah Party called Black September, infamous for its slaughter of Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972.) The PLO relocated to Damascus, Syria, and then to Beirut, Lebanon, where it continued to sponsor attacks on Israel and Israeli civilians.

A breakthrough of sorts came in June 9, 1974, when the PLO approved the Ten Point Program, which appeared to call for a binational state occupied by Palestinians and Israelis. The program was rejected by the PLO's more militant factions, and Israel regarded the program with hostility, believing that it was a Trojan horse to gain Israeli concessions that would improve the Palestinians' ability to attack—a not unreasonable view given that point 2 of the ten points stated: “The Palestine Liberation Organization will employ all means, and first and foremost armed struggle, to liberate Palestinian territory and to establish the independent combatant national authority for the people over every part of Palestinian territory that is liberated.” The division between Palestinian moderates and the PLO's more hard-line factions marked the beginning of a tumultuous period for the PLO as it attempted to achieve the goals of its charter. The so-called Rejectionist Front opposed negotiations with Israel and rejected a 1976 UN resolution calling for a two-state solution.

Many Palestinians regarded the Camp David Accords, a peace agreement signed between Israel and Egypt on September 17, 1978, as a setback, for it appeared to them that Egypt was abandoning the Palestinians. Then the Palestinians became embroiled in civil war in Lebanon, the result of which was the death of thousands of Palestinians in that country's refugee camps. The Israeli government refused to negotiate with the PLO, regarding it as a terrorist organization bent on Israel's destruction. The PLO was exiled in Tunis from 1982 to 1991, Israel responded to Palestinian attacks with military force, the Arab community offered little support to the Palestinians, and many Palestinians saw little hope for liberation. The consequence was the First Intifada from 1987 to 1993, a period of resistance on the West Bank and Gaza marked by strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and violence.

Another breakthrough of sorts came in 1993 when the PLO negotiated the Oslo Accords with Israel, which led to the formation of the Palestinian Authority as the official representative of the Palestinians. The most noteworthy feature of the Oslo Accords was that the PLO recognized the right of the state of Israel to exist—a clear departure from the aims announced in the Palestinian National Charter. Questions arose as to whether those portions of the charter that call for the elimination of Israel were still operative. In 1998, Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat sent letters to U.S. president Bill Clinton and British prime minister Tony Blair in which he suggested that those portions of the charter bearing on Israel had been amended and were no longer in force. Yet in 1999 a Palestinian report on the charter's status made no mention of any changes to the charter. In 2001 the PLO Central Committee, the PLO's governing body, issued a draft of a new constitution that toned down the rhetoric of the 1968 charter. To this day there is debate about whether the Palestinians have revoked or annulled the provisions of the charter calling for the destruction of Israel.

Again, however, hard-liners rejected any proposal that recognized Israel's right to exist, so terrorist attacks and guerrilla warfare resumed in 2000, the start of the Second Intifada. Diplomatic efforts to secure a peaceful solution continued, with the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations formulating the “road map for peace” in 2003. The core of the road map was that the Palestinians had to renounce terrorism in exchange for a Palestinian state, another version of the “two-state” solution. As of 2009, however, hostilities continued, and the two-state solution had not taken effect.

In the four decades that followed the issuance of the charter, the issue of relations between the Israelis and the Palestinians has dominated newspaper headlines and foreign affairs discussions. Although numerous attempts have been made to resolve the conflict, notably through the creation of two separate states, no proposed solution has achieved peace. Israelis and Palestinians continue to live in mutual distrust and hostility, with intermittent terrorist acts by Palestinians and armed reprisals by Israel a fact of life in that troubled region of the world.