PLO Votes to Strip Charter of Calls for Israel’s Destruction

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s parliament in exile Wednesday heeded an appeal from Yasser Arafat and voted overwhelmingly to annul all chapters of its 32-year-old charter that call for the destruction of Israel.

The closed-door vote, which coincided with Israel’s Independence Day, cleared the way for the final stage of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

“The Palestinian people chose the road of peace,” said Muin Shreim, a Palestinian representative to the United Nations and a member of the PLO’s parliament. “We think the Israeli government will honor their commitments as we do.”

Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres had threatened to halt the negotiations if Arafat failed to honor his commitment to amend the charter by early May. The vote is expected to provide a boost for Peres’ election bid on a platform to continue the peace process.

Peres, clearly pleased, told reporters that the vote proves Arafat is a reliable partner for peace. “People always asked, ‘Can you trust Arafat?’ It emerges that he can be trusted,” Peres said. “We are not in a perfect world, but he is battling terrorism; he changed the charter, exactly as he set out to do.”

During two days of heated debate, many members of the PLO leadership argued against bowing to the Israeli demand to change the charter while Israel continues a two-week military assault on Islamic guerrillas in Lebanon and keeps Palestinians under closure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But in the end, the Palestine National Council fell in line behind Arafat, voting 504 to 54 to excise the anti-Zionist clauses from its 1964 charter. Arafat needed 446 votes, or two-thirds of total membership, to make the change.

Israel has sought the elimination of hostile articles of the Palestinian charter for decades. Under the interim peace agreement he signed in September, Arafat agreed to eliminate the clauses, such as those calling for “armed struggle to liberate Palestine” and for the “elimination of Zionism in Palestine.”

Most Palestinians apparently were unaware of or uninterested in the fact that the PLO charter contained such language. Polls consistently show that a majority support peace with Israel.

But many Israeli opponents of the peace accords have argued that no matter what Arafat said publicly, he and the PLO could not be serious about peace as long as such language remained in their constitution.

U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, shuttling among Israel, Syria and Lebanon in search of a cease-fire on that front, called the vote “a historic milestone on the road to peace.” He added, “This will give us a lot of forward momentum.”

Uri Savir, Israel’s chief negotiator with the Palestinians, said the vote gave a “green light” to proceed with the peace process, including the redeployment of Israeli troops from the West Bank city of Hebron. The redeployment was postponed after a wave of Hamas bombings in Israel in February and March killed more than 60 people.

The actual council vote was to amend the charter by canceling articles that contradict the letters of mutual recognition that the PLO and Israel signed prior to their 1993 peace agreement.

The council then asked its legal committee to draft a new charter to be presented to the group’s central committee in about six months.

That formula was Arafat’s, reportedly crafted with three of his advisors in negotiation with Israeli and U.S. officials. Many council members had wanted to replace the charter with the PLO’s 1988 Declaration of Independence, which calls for a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Israeli officials had said that was unacceptable, and Arafat managed to delay any discussion of a new charter.

Even those who voted with Arafat acknowledged Israel’s hand in the event. “We are all here with Israeli permits,” said Abu Ali Shaheen, a member of Arafat’s Fatah group within the PLO.

Israel allowed hundreds of PNC members to return from decades of exile to participate in the session, the first to be held on Palestinian soil since the council’s founding meeting in 1964, in what was then Jordanian-held East Jerusalem. Palestinians also cannot travel between the West Bank and Gaza without an Israeli permit.

Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, a member of the PNC and of the Palestinian Legislative Council elected in January, was among the 54 who voted against changing the charter.

“Of course I don’t agree with the covenant of 30 years ago, but we shouldn’t change it now,” Ashrawi said. “It’s no time to think about rescuing Peres when the whole peace process is in jeopardy. If you want to save the peace process, then both sides should comply with the peace agreement.”

She and three other independent members of the Legislative Council signed a letter saying that to change the covenant under closure made it look as though the Palestinians were caving in to “Israeli blackmail.”

Israel sealed the borders of Palestinian-ruled areas after a wave of Hamas suicide bombings began Feb. 25, killing more than 60 people. The closure prevents tens of thousands of Palestinians from going to their jobs in Israel and has severely limited trade.

In their letter, the four independent council members said they would not agree to the changes in the covenant until Israel lifted the closure, recognized the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and to establish a Palestinian state, released prisoners, stopped the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and overturned its annexation of East Jerusalem.

Their views were widely shared, although few went so far as to vote against Arafat.

“The debate was heated, and a lot of people argued that we are not getting anything back from Israel,” said PNC member Ghazi Hamad. “Yasser Arafat convinced them. . . . He told them they can’t pull the rug from under the negotiators’ feet.”

Despite Arafat’s efforts to bring them in, some of the more radical PLO members boycotted the vote.

Final Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, set for May 4, are to resolve the outstanding issues of Palestinian borders, statehood, Jerusalem and Jewish settlements.