PLO Proclaims Palestinian State : Council OKs Policy That Implicitly Recognizes Israel’s Right to Exist

The leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization proclaimed an independent Palestinian state today and pledged to seek peace with Israel through an international conference based on two key U.N. resolutions recognizing the Jewish state’s right to exist.

In a crowded rotunda at a heavily guarded conference site on the Algerian coast nearly 2,000 miles from the land that Palestinians consider their home, an independent Palestinian state was proclaimed at 1:38 a.m. by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

Wild cheers and applause erupted in the cavernous conference hall as Arafat, dressed in green fatigues and a checkered kaffiyeh , read the independence proclamation at the end of an emotional and at times highly acrimonious three-day meeting of the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s legislature.

New Manifesto

“The Palestine National Council hereby declares the establishment of the state of Palestine on Palestinian Arab soil with Jerusalem as its capital,” Arafat announced.

The independence declaration, along with a new PLO political manifesto that for the first time implicitly accepts Israel’s right to exist alongside an independent Palestinian state, was adopted by the council late Monday night.

Speaking to several hundred delegates and invited diplomats and observers, Arafat said the new state would be a democracy with political and religious freedom and non-discrimination regardless of race, color, religious beliefs or gender.

“It will be a state for all the Palestinians wherever they are,” he said.

Thunderous applause drowned out his words, and balloons in the red, green, black and white colors of the Palestinian flag were released into the air.

No Boundaries Set

The declaration of the new state did not set out its boundaries, which the Palestinians say should be determined in future negotiations.

The Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip are believed to be included in the homeland, although the documents did not specify that. Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Algerian Foreign Minister Boualem Bessaieh announced to the council early today that Algeria has officially recognized the new state, becoming the first country to do so.

Earlier Monday, Israel rejected the results of the Algiers meeting in advance, wire services reported from Jerusalem.

“We will not negotiate with the PLO,” said Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. “It’s not a problem of definition and formulations of various positions. We’ll not negotiate with them because they’re opposed to peace with Israel.

“What matters not is what they say,” said Shamir, whose government has long considered the PLO a terrorist organization. “I know what they do and what they can do.”

For the delegates here, as well as for the Palestinians whose 11-month-long uprising against Israeli rule in the occupied territories formed the backdrop for this meeting, this moment represented the climax of an intense and soul-searching debate over the direction that the PLO’s long and often bloody struggle to create a Palestinian state should take.

This debate began in earnest more than three months ago, when Jordan’s King Hussein abdicated his kingdom’s administrative and legal responsibilities with the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River and issued the PLO a difficult challenge to assume those duties. At this session of the Palestine National Council--which was formed by the Arab League in 1964 and has come to be known as the Palestinians’ parliament in exile--the debate took the form of a highly emotional argument over how far the PLO should go toward recognizing Israel’s right to exist.

In the end, the council, as part of a political manifesto approved late Monday, did endorse two key U.N. Security Council resolutions, 242 and 338, as a basis for peace negotiations with Israel. The vote was 253 to 46, with 10 abstentions.

Call for Withdrawal

Resolution 242, adopted in 1967 as a result of that year’s war, affirms Israel’s right to exist but also calls for its withdrawal from territories captured in the war. Resolution 338, adopted after the 1973 Six-Day War, calls for the implementation of 242.

The PLO had long rejected 242 as the basis for peace, arguing that it treated the Palestinians only as a refugee problem, ignoring their quest for self-determination and a homeland.

Acceptance of 242 is one of the conditions that the United States has set for opening a dialogue with the PLO. The others are that the organization renounce violence and explicitly acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

The council did include in its political manifesto a denunciation of “terrorism of every form” but defended the Palestinians’ right to struggle against Israeli occupation. The council reiterated its commitment to what is called the Cairo Declaration of 1985, which limited Palestinian guerrilla operations to military targets in Israel and the occupied territories.

On the question of Resolution 242, the council linked its endorsement of this resolution to acceptance of Palestinian demands for “self-determination” or statehood.

Weighed down by these qualifications, it was not yet clear whether, in American eyes, the PLO had yet gone far enough to meet either of Washington’s conditions for negotiating with the guerrilla organization.

However, it seemed clear early today that the Palestine National Council had gone as far as it now can toward swallowing what, for many Palestinians, is the emotionally bitter pill of recognizing Israel.

Although some PLO moderates were disappointed that the council did not go further toward meeting the U.S. conditions, they said the outcome of the historic meeting nevertheless points the PLO in the right direction and represents a major victory by Arafat over the PLO’s hard-line wing, led by George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Habash steadfastly opposed including Resolution 242 in a section of the political manifesto that calls for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict at an international peace conference under the auspices of the United Nations.

In the end, however, he agreed to abide by the will of the majority.

It was the first time that the PLO, as a whole, has endorsed Resolution 242, and most delegates agreed that it represented a major step forward for an organization, which was founded 24 years ago with the aim of destroying the Jewish state.

‘Tremendous Departure’

“It’s a tremendous departure from the past,” said Columbia University Prof. Edward Said, one of the Americans on the Palestine National Council. “There are no ifs, ands or buts about it--242 and 338 are in there very clearly.”

Despite their jubilant mood, most Palestinian delegates here remained painfully aware that their proclamation of independence does not, in itself, bring the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip any closer to being liberated from Israeli rule.

But many of them also believe that by declaring independence now, the PLO is finally taking its first necessary and responsible step toward someday transforming that 40-year-old dream into a reality.

“In itself, declaring independence may not bring us any closer to living in Ramallah or Jerusalem,” said Hanna Nasser, president of Birzeit University on the West Bank.

“On the other hand,” he added, “if we don’t do this, if we don’t say Palestine is a country under occupation, then who lays claim to this land now that Jordan has pulled out? This may not lead us to actual independence, but it’s the first step in that direction.”

One reason that it has been so difficult for the aging and exiled leadership of the PLO to take this step until now lay in their realization that in order to achieve the reality of an independent Palestine, they would have to forfeit a large part of their dream by recognizing Israel’s right to exist within pre-1967 borders, which enclose most of what, in 1948, was Palestine.

Lacking a land, citizens or other responsibilities, the PLO was able to put off the hard decisions that threatened to split its quarrelsome factions apart.

But now the nearly yearlong uprising, known as the intifada, along with the political vacuum created by Jordan’s decision to relinquish its claim to the territories, have increased the pressures on the PLO to act.

The most immediate impact of the declaration of independence on the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be psychological, officials here agreed.

“It will give new impetus to the intifada, and that’s really the most important thing now,” said Nasser.

“Now, the Palestinians in the West Bank have a more defined aim and, more importantly, the Palestinians both inside and outside the occupied territories will be in agreement over these aims.”