That's funny.
The Palestinian National Charter - Adopted by the Palestine National Council, July 1-17, 1968:
http://www.pna.gov.ps/Government/gov/plo_Charter.asp
Article 2: Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.
Weizmann
et al made a terrible fuss when the British created Transjordan from the mandated territories. (They made a great fuss previously when the Brits let the French have territory south of the Litani Valley, which the zionists claimed was integral and vital for a viable state in Palestine.) Not all zionists have accepted that British Imperial
diktat should apply. You'll recall Ussishkins podium-pounding "A Jewish majority on both banks of the Jordan!" back in 1929, or Ben-Gurion's same statement to the Peel Commission. Israel claims to have abandoned that position by making peace with Jordan and withdrawing from Southern Lebanon. If they are not to be held to a historical but revised position, why should the Palestinians be?
Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time
The legality of the UN partition is a matter for debate, the immorality of it is undeniable.
1968:In 1968 the PLO did not recognize Israel, Arafat was the leader of the PLO.
1968-1988: From '68 to '88 the PLO was responsible for 20 years of well-documented international terrorism. Arafat was the leader of the PLO...who still did not recognize Israel.
Examples? (Mycroftian I know, but I will actually respond if you provide them.)
(3) the Department of State statement of November 26, 1988, found that `the United States Government has convincing evidence that PLO elements have engaged in terrorism against Americans and others' and that `Mr. [Yasser] Arafat, Chairman of the PLO, knows of, condones, and lends support to such acts; he therefore is an accessory to such terrorism'
You'll excuse my scepticism after the "convincing evidence" of Iraqi WMD. What would be the strategic, or even tactical, aim of PLO terrorism against 'Murricans?
1989:In '89 America refuses to deal with Arafat/the PLO because the PLO refuses to recognize Israel and because of PLO terrorism.
The US position has always been that zionists had the right to create a nation where other people lived. Kathleen Christison's
Perceptions of Palestine is an excellent treatment of the US-Zionist relationship over the last century or so. The Palestinians who suffered, and continue to suffer, the consequences of zionist colonialism take a different view, unsurprisingly. So do I.
1993:
In 1993 after 25 years of international terrorism and two civil wars the PLO finally signs "a deal" to make peace with Israel... and recognize it. The Palestinian Authority is created, Arafat is appointed its chief executive officer, and a plan for eventual self-government by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is set in motion. The mega-murderer is suddenly a statesman, an international star, and in 1994, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize!
Recognition of Israel, but not recognition of a Palestinian State by Israel. Only a belated recognition that there might actually be Palestinians. There is world recognition of the need for a Palestinian nation-state to cater for the Palestinians who have suffered eviction and/or occupation as a result of the creation of Israel. Israel stand alone in refusing to accept that.
Since there never was a Palestinian state in recorded history that is in reference to Israel, the PLO must recognize the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of Israel.
Which it has done, and which has been confirmed and ratified by the democratically elected Palestinian Authority, which, while never a sovereign authority in the sense of representing a sovereign nation-state, is a
de facto national authority recognised by the international nation-state system, including the US and the UN. Israel does
not recognise it as such.
The UN partition stipulated a state for the indigenes, a Palestinian State in effect, but Israel refuses to recognise that such an entity exists. But then, Israel never did accept partition. Not even after it was created. That doesn't change the fact that a Palestinian State has existed just as validly and just as long as Israel has. The Palestinians have recognised Israel, and limited their ambitions by doing so. Israel refuses to recognise a Palestinian State, and all the evidence says it's because doing so
would limit their ambitions in the West Bank and Gaza.
So what happened after the PLO signed a deal with Israel in '93 to follow Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338?
More Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists after the Oslo agreement was signed than before it.
Here you slip with great facility from "PLO" to "Palestinian". Should I equate Kach with the Israeli government? Should I equate Rabin's assassins with Islamic Jihad? Yes to the last, of course; both groups were rejecting peace by actions. Arafat must be one of the most attempted-assassinated characters in history. (King Faisal of Jordan, as I recall, survived 13 known attempts, including a faulty hand-grenade landing practically in his lap.)
There was continued Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP terrorist activism within the Autonomy and a delay in a crackdown on them. The PLO, now called the Palestinian Authority, would not extradite known terrorists to Israel. But the PA did meet to amend the PLO Charter to recognize Israel....wink wink.
Would not extradite "known terrorists". That would be a list provided by Israel, I imagine. Let's assume Arafat sends his police out to round them up and turn them over to the Israelis, where they are incarcerated without trial for indefinite periods. Next week, a new list.
Arafat was not a dictator. The PA was a democratically elected constitutional body - Israel, by the way, doesn't have a constitution - which required legal procedures before a citizen could be scooped off the streets and presented to a foreign power. Things like charges and a
prima facie case. They weren't getting that from Israel.
The PA claims it cancelled the articles, but to date, Nov 19th 2005, no amended PLO articles have ever been produced. The PLO charter appears as originally written on the official Palestinian Authority website without amended articles. To which an entire multi-page JREF thread was spent endlessly debating the difference between simply saying the "articles were amended" and actually producing "amended articles".
Then the Palestinian Authority reneged on its promises of democratic reform and establishment of the rule of law.
See above. Democratic reform of
what? Are you perhaps suffering from sloganitis? The Palestinian Authority
replaced the military occupational authority that had held sway since 1967 in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, in those parts that had not been expropriated by force and colonised. The PA long pre-existed the territorial existence, just as the World Zionist Organisation and the Yishuv long pre-existed Israel. It was a diasporan creation. The PLO enabled it, it didn't dictate it.
It held elections exactly once and never again since Arafat was overwhelmingly elected. The Palestinian education system continued to instill hatred for Jews and called for the destruction of Israel. Terrorist activity also continued, with the PA ineffectual in halting it - when not encouraging it outright.
What did the Yishuv do to stop the Irgun murdering British policemen, or bombing Arab markets, or assassinating UN mediators? Before it was Yishuv policy? They knew who they were, they knew where they were, but they weren't going to start a civil war. These were critical times, the birth of a nation. The Hagana tried to suppress the Irgun for a time, but they wouldn't, when it came to it, draw down on them. The birth of a nation is a difficult time. I think it was webfusion who pointed out that the Israelis are still creating a new nation in very trying circumstances.
How easy is it for the Palestinians, do you think? Not terribly, IMO.
On November 12, 2003 Arafat said this:Well..ok Mr. Arafat, what are the first 18 words of the Road Map?Mmmmmmm....well...ok... what is being preached on Palestinian TV to the masses?This status quo remained until Arafat's death in 2004.
There's no
status quo when the settlements keep expanding, and there are never any talks about negotiations about a final settlement that
might, if it ever were to happen, involve Israeli recognition of a sovereign Palestinian State. A recognition that would make any future expansion an agressive war by definition.
How the creation of Israel in the first place, to satisfy a uniquely nationalist-colonialist ideology conjured-up by German-loving anti-semitic Jews and students - I kid you not, look it up, it's horrifying but true - was not an act of aggression in the first place escapes me. Mycroft has dismissed it as "the interaction of two peoples", but only one party
chose to have an interaction at all.
