A resolution calling on Fatah to renounce its purported charter is circulating in the U.S. Senate. The resolution introduced April 3 apparently is based on a Zionist Organization of America initiative last year targeting the party headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, currently in U.S.-sponsored peace talks with Israel. A version introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives last year has garnered only 18 co-sponsors. Whether the mid-1960s charter cited in the resolutions is authentic or in force is unclear. It calls for the “demolition” of Israel, and “the eradication of the Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.†The charter also endorses “armed struggle” as “a strategy and not a tactic, to uproot the Zionist existence.”
The resolution was introduced by Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and two co-sponsors, Sens. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
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