What is the Palestinian Charter? What exactly is offensive about it? Why, after the Palestinian Authority previously claimed that it had revised the Charter, did it have to commit again to complete the process? The Palestinian Charter is the guiding document of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Its articles outline the procedure for the destruction of Israel and the Palestinian takeover of the entire area.

In its current form, the PLO Charter is nothing less than a call for total and unending war on Israel. The greatest myth propagated by the Palestinian Authority, until recently, was that the Charter had been revoked and was no longer valid. This myth, which has been imparted to visiting Australian politicians, including Senator Kim Carr et al, is that the Palestinian Authority, by convening the Palestinian National Council in 1996 revoked the Charter. This is incorrect. The Palestinian Charter has not been changed.

On April 24, 1996 the Palestinian National Council convened in Gaza to consider the revision of the Charter. However, instead of changing the Charter the PNC voted in favour of a resolution that stated: "It has been decided upon:

1. Amending the National Charter by cancelling the articles that are contrary to the letters exchanged between the PLO and the Government of Israel, on September 9 and 10, 1993.

2. The empowerment of a legal committee with the task of redrafting the National Charter. The Charter will be presented to the first meeting of the Central Council."

The PNC resolution did not alter the Charter. While the PNC declared its readiness, in principle, to change the document, the only practical step taken was the empowerment of a legal committee to draft a new Charter for presentation at an unspecified future date. Since the Charter is a legally binding written document, amending it is not simply a matter of declaring a willingness to alter it, but necessitates the actual adoption and implementation of changes to the document. No such changes were made by the PNC, and no specific articles in the Charter were specifically identified for removal.

Further acknowledgment by the PA that it had not revised the Charter came with the Note for the Record of the Hebron Agreement, signed on January 15, 1997. In that agreement, the PA agreed to "complete the process" of revising the Charter, admitting that the process had not been carried forward since the PNC meeting almost one year before.

But at least the PNC members knew what was being changed in the Charter. Less than a month after the PNC vote, PNC Chairman Selim Zaanoun asserted that the Charter had been amended but said that "no specific articles" were cancelled (An-Nahar, May 16, 1996). In an interview on January 22, 1998, Faisal Hamdi Husseini, head of the PNC’s legal committee, said, "The change has not yet been carried out".

The day after the PNC vote, Sufian Abu Zaidah, head of the PA’s Israel desk, claimed that all 33 of the Charter’s articles had been "cancelled" and that it had been replaced by the PNC’s 1988 Algiers declaration (interview with Israel Radio, April 25, 1996). PA Planning Minister Nabil Shaath said after the vote that 16 articles had been altered while other PNC members claimed that 4, 7 or 10 articles had been changed (Jerusalem Post, May 1, 1996). Faisal Hamdi Husseini, head of the PNC’s legal committee, said on May 5, 1996 that he would submit a new Charter for approval at a later date in which 21 articles would be changed, thereby implying that none had been amended (Jerusalem Post, May 6, 1996).

At the time of the vote, other PLO officials acknowledged the Charter had not been changed. PLO Executive Committee member Sakhr Habash said, "the text of the Charter remains as it is since it has not been amended yet. Therefore, it is frozen, not cancelled," (An-Nahar, May 5, 1996). An internal report published shortly after the PNC vote by the Research and Thought Department of Arafat’s Fatah faction of the PLO contained a similar determination.

The report stated, "The text of the Palestinian National Charter remains as it was and no changes whatsoever were made to it. This has caused it to be frozen, but not annulled." But can’t Arafat simply change the Charter by virtue of letters he has written to President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair? No. Article 33 of the Charter states that a two-thirds majority of the PNC is required to make amendments to the Charter. Since the PNC has not been reconvened since April 1996, the Charter cannot have been revoked.

Most importantly, the revision of the Charter represents the will and commitment of the recognised leadership of the Palestinian people, to renounce the history of hatred that has filled the Palestinian heart for the past century.

Though not strictly related to the PLO Charter, the constitution of Fatah, the largest of the constituent bodies of the PLO, and Yasser Arafat’s powerbase, is even more vitriolic. As an example, first among Fatah’s goals is stated in Article 12: "Complete liberation of Palestine and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence." In an upcoming edition, the second part of the Review’s ‘Peace Process for Beginners’ series focuses on the continued use of anti-Semitism and hatred in the language of the Palestinian Authority.