Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said just that on March 31, 1977 in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw:
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.
For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."
Now let’s review the original Palestine Liberation Organization’s mission statement from 1964, Article 24 (taken from the PLO's UN website):
Article 24: This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.
But there is a new revised version of the original PLO Charter which was rewritten to reflect the reality on the ground once the Israelis gained the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1968. The first thing we find is that Article 24 has been rewritten to read thus:
Article 24: The Palestinian people believe in the principles of justice, freedom, sovereignty, self-determination, human dignity, and the right of peoples to exercise them.
But it’s Article 1, 2, 3 that should concern us:
Article 1. Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the greater Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.
Article 2: Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.
Article 3: The Palestinian Arab people possess the legal right to their homeland and to self-determination after the completion of the liberation of their country in accordance with their wishes and entirely of their own accord and will.
You'd think the term Phased Plan would have at some point crossed the consciousness of Olmert and his rag-tag bunch of political never-do-wells, but I suspect term has yet to converge on their collective cognizance.
3 comments:
Kate: It's always interesting to go back to source documents. In this case, doing so can really put the palestinian leadership's words into a very sharp perspective.
That is really so true. Usually, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the problem is not enough people go back far enough.
Its really interesting to note how consistent the Palestinian Arab leadership has been all along. Even every lie never deviates from the distinct plan but is uttered in order to further the plan.
Of course, its also interesting how our political betters on both side consistently try to sweep it all out of our memories.
I once had an interesting conversation with a Palestinian. He was yabbering on about his grandfather's land and his brother holding on to the key to his father's house. He was trying to make a point about the Palestinian resolve.
I kind of freaked him out when I pointed out that Palestinian resolve was a mere spit in time compared to Jewish resolve. Two milleninums of mourning for Zion with every wedding or special occassion the words "next year in Jerusalem" would be uttered. If he wanted to impress me with his resolve he had to do better than the Jews.
What that palestinian man was demonstrating was pathological.
How many other groups of refugees have their been in the last century? Do they keep the keys to houses that don't exist anymore?
No. They build new lives. They don't forget, but they don't live in the past, either.
Only the palestinians have made refugee status a family hand-me-down.
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