Nearly two years after the Palestine National Council voted to draft a new charter, the subject is still creating a bitter controversy.
For months, the charter seemed all but forgotten in the delicate back-and-forth of the peace process.
But last week, on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, the Israeli Cabinet spelled out the conditions it was demanding from the Palestinians — in the name of reciprocity — before Israel would authorize a further redeployment from rural areas of the West Bank.
The total annulment of the Palestinian Covenant topped the list of demands.
On April 24, 1996, the PNC, by a vote of 504-54, with 14 abstentions, passed a vaguely worded resolution that, in effect, canceled the clauses in its charter that call for the destruction of Israel.
The PNC, the supreme body representing all Palestinian political parties, also adopted a resolution calling on a legal committee of the organization to draft a new charter within six months.
Then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres hailed the vote, calling it “the most important change in the last 100 years.”
Netanyahu, then the opposition leader, was more cautious, saying the vote was only a vague mandate giving a “committee the power to amend clauses sometime in the future.”
Palestinian officials explained in the months immediately after the vote that no new covenant had been drafted because their Israeli counterparts had informally requested that the move be delayed.
Their reasoning was purely practical. A new charter, the aides speculated, might recognize Israel, but it could also give voice to the Palestinian goal of sovereign statehood with Jerusalem as the capital.
And last year, too, the Netanyahu government appeared to have all but put questions regarding the covenant on a back burner.
Last May, Cabinet Secretary Danny Naveh, one of the key negotiators with the Palestinians, said in an interview, “There are more immediate issues on the agenda, and I just don’t know how practical our demand is” regarding any changes in the covenant.
But last week, that view changed. Indeed, it was Naveh himself who put together the list of Palestinian violations that needed to be corrected before Israel would agree to hand over any additional West Bank lands.
According to Naveh’s recommendations, Israel was now demanding that the Palestinian legal committee be convened to redraft the charter — and that some 95 percent of it be scrapped.
Moreover, Israel demanded that the PNC convene once again to approve the new charter by at least two-thirds.
The Palestinian Covenant surfaced more than 33 years ago, on June 2, 1964.
The political manifesto of the Palestinians, it contains such sections as Article 9: “Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine;” and Article 19: “The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the State of Israel are entirely illegal.”
It took a lengthy and painful process, stained with many bloody clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, before Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat announced in Paris in 1989 that the covenant was “caduc,” French for null and void.
The declaration was hailed as a sign of moderation, and it undoubtedly paved the way to the historic Declaration of Principles that Israel and the Palestinians signed Sept. 13, 1993, on the White House lawn.
Four days before that ceremony, in an exchange of letters of mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, Arafat wrote then- Premier Yitzhak Rabin that the articles in the Palestinian Covenant that negate Israel’s right to exist “are no longer practical and therefore invalid.”
Arafat repeated his commitment to change the covenant in the May 4, 1994, Cairo Agreement that ratified the transfer of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho to Palestinian self-rule.
In the Interim Agreement that was signed Sept. 28, 1995, in Washington – – whereby Israel agreed to transfer six additional West Bank population centers to self-rule — the Palestinians again agreed to draft a new covenant.
The Palestinian Authority also agreed to “complete the process of revising” the charter in the Note for the Record attached to the Hebron Agreement reached almost exactly one year ago.
In the wake of last week’s Cabinet demands, the Palestinians gave no indication that they would budge an inch regarding the charter.
In fact, they repeated their position that the PNC meeting of April 1996 had bid farewell to the old covenant.
“The PNC will not be reconvened on this issue,” Dr. Ahmed Tibi, Arafat’s Israeli adviser, said flatly.
As far as he was concerned, “even if the members of the PNC all sing the Betar anthem, Netanyahu will not fulfill his commitments,” Tibi said, referring to the nationalist Zionist youth movement.
On Sunday, before his departure for Washington, Netanyahu seemed to somewhat soften his position.
In an interview with CNN, the premier said “the atmosphere of the talks in Washington would be significantly improved if the Palestinians would dump the part of the PLO charter still calling for the destruction of Israel.”
Changing the charter, Netanyahu appeared to be saying, was not a precondition for any Israeli concessions.
Netanyahu was tacitly admitting that the charter was not a major obstacle to achieving mutual understanding.
Indeed the main obstacles continued to be the dispute over the size of the Israeli withdrawals and the sincerity of the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to crack down on terror.
For their part, the Palestinians reacted to the Israeli Cabinet’s list of demands by preparing their own set, which Arafat was expected to present during a meeting Thursday with President Clinton.
One document, prepared by Tibi, points an accusing finger at “Israeli terror and incitement by individuals and organizations,” presumably right-wing extremists seeking to avoid any rapprochement between the two sides.
The second, prepared by Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, spelled out alleged Israeli violations of already signed commitments.
On the eve of his visit to Washington, Arafat radiated confidence.
In a speech Monday in the Gaza Strip, Arafat chalked up a new charge, claiming he was aware of Israeli plans for a possible takeover of the territories.
“Have they forgotten Beirut? Have they forgotten the intifada?” Arafat asked mockingly, referring to the Palestinian uprising.
Arafat then told the cheering crowd that nothing would stop the Palestinian people from creating their own Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
And whoever does not like it, Arafat said, repeating a phrase he has used before, “can go drink from the waters of the sea of Gaza.”
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