NCJ Number
123237
Journal
Terrorism Volume: 11 Issue: 5 Dated: (1988) Pages: 385-408
Date Published
1988
Length
24 pages
Annotation
This study examines the Palestine National Council (PNC) resolutions adopted in Algiers on November 15, 1988, and compares them with subsequent pronouncements made by top officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Abstract
Despite subsequent claims of PLO leaders, nowhere in the PNC resolutions is there any explicit recognition of Israel. United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which may be construed as implying recognition of Israel's right to exist, were accepted by the PNC only tangentially as a basis for an international conference. Some have argued that by partially basing its "Declaration of Independence" on United Nations Resolution 181 of 1947, which partitioned Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, the PNC implicitly accepted Israel's right to exist. The PNC, however, referred to 181 exclusively as a source of "international legitimacy" for the Palestinian state, not the Jewish state. Nowhere in its resolutions did the PNC define the borders of the Palestinian state it declared, which by implication would have also defined the borders of Israel it was ready to accept. Subsequent statements by PLO leaders suggest that the PNC may still intend to "revitalize" its 1974 "phase program" for the "liberation of all Palestinian soil." The PNC took no steps to amend its 1968 Palestine National Covenant, which calls for Israel's destruction. Appended summaries of PNC Algiers documents and Arafat's statement to the press on Geneva on December 14, 1988.