A ranking Palestine Liberation Organization official claims that the PLO no longer calls for Israel’s destruction, and in fact dropped that demand from its Covenant 14 years ago.
Shalah Kallar, also known as Abu Iyad, said the PLO is prepared to have a common border with Israel in a Palestinian state, according to an interview in Baghdad, published in the Greek daily Eleftherotypia Tuesday.
Abu Iyad dismissed the famous Covenant article which calls for the destruction of Israel by armed struggle.
“The articles you are referring to, and which the Israelis promote so much — we do not include them since the 1974 PNC meeting that reshaped our program,” he said.
The PNC is the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s quasi-legislative body sometimes referred to as the Palestinian parliament-in-exile.
Abu Iyad insisted that the Arabs have become more moderate. “Unfortunately, the Israelis of today speak the same language the Arabs used to speak 30 years ago,” he said. “We say yes to peace, yes to a political solution, de-facto recognition of the Palestinian land.”
But according to the PLO official, Israel’s Labor Party, which declares itself moderate, has not shown any willingness to share mutual borders with a Palestinian state.
Abu Iyad said one of the causes of friction between PLO chief Yasir Arafat and President Hafez Assad of Syria is the PLO’s relations with progressive and peace-loving Israelis.
Assad believes relations with those Israelis and with Egypt will only benefit the conservative Arab countries and Morocco, which Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres visited two years ago at the invitation of its ruler, King Hassan II.
Abu Iyad also said Arafat instructed the PLO in Athens to lodge an official protest with the Greek government for releasing an Israeli citizen, Itzhak Ferara, whom the PLO accused of being an agent of Mossad, the Israeli secret service.
Ferara was arrested last Thursday on the complaint of the PLO counselor in Athens, Ismat Sabri, that he was on a mission to kill him. Ferara was released Friday without charges being filed against him.
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