CORRECTED VERSION OF JAN. 29 STATEMENT ON PLO COVENANT

Jerusalem,
February 2, 1998

Arafat's Letters to Clinton and Blair Fail to Amend the PLO Covenant
(communicated by the Israel Government Press Office - due to transmission
error, paragraphs 2 & #on page 2 of the previous version of this document,
dated January 29, 1998, were incorrect. Chairman arafat's letters to President
Clinton and Prime Minister Blair were identical. We regret the error.)

Following is a clarification of 4 myths concerning the PLO
Covenant:

1) Myth: The PLO fulfilled its obligation to amend the
Covenant when the Palestinian National Council (PNC) voted in
April 1996 to alter the document.

Fact: On September 9, 1993, in his exchange of letters with
the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat committed
himself to amending the articles in the PLO Covenant which deny
Israel's right to exist or run counter to the PLO's other
commitments, such as the renunciation of violence and terror.

On April 24, 1996, the Palestinian National Council (PNC)
convened in Gaza and adopted a resolution concerning the Covenant
by a vote of 504 to 54 with 14 abstentions. Translated from the
Arabic, the text of the resolution read as follows:

“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 pivotal problem with the PNC resolution is that it did
not change the Covenant. 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 Covenant for
presentation at a future date. Since the Covenant is a legally binding
document, declaring a willingness to alter it does not amount to
amending it. No changes were adopted and implemented by the
PNC, nor was there any specific mention of articles to be amended.

In the Note for the Record which accompanied the January
15, 1997 Hebron Protocol, the PLO reaffirmed its commitment to
“Complete the process of revising the Palestinian National Charter.”
In agreeing to this, the PLO was admitting that it had failed to
change the Covenant in the April 1996 PNC vote, otherwise
there would be no need to “complete the process” of revising it.

2) Myth: Chairman Arafat's recent letters to President Bill
Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair set the record straight
regarding which articles in the Covenant were changed.




Fact: There are two problems with Chairman arafat's recent
letters concerning the PNC's April 1996 decision.

First, the PNC resolution made no mention of specific
articles which were being changed in the Covenant. Now, some 21
months after the PNC vote, Arafat is attempting to retroactively
define the articles which the PNC members had in mind when
they cast their votes.

Second, Chairman Arafat's letters contradict statements
made shortly after the PNC vote and repeated recently by a
wide variety of senior Palestinian officials. Less than a month
after the PNC vote, PNC Chairman Selim Zaanoun asserted that the
Covenant 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 Covenant'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 Covenant 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 Covenant 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 Covenant remains as it was and no changes whatsoever
were made to it. This has caused it to be frozen, but not annulled.”

The PNC itself failed to make any mention of changing the
Covenant in its closing statement. At the close of its session, on
April 25, 1996, the PNC published a concluding document
summarizing its activity. The statement included 19 specific
resolutions and decisions on subjects ranging from Jerusalem to
Israeli settlements, but contained no reference to any decision to
amend the Covenant. (Al-Quds, April 26, 1996; Voice of Palestine,
April 26, 1996)


3) Myth: Chairman Arafat's letters effectively complete the
process of revising the Covenant.

Fact: Article 33 of the Covenant states that the only body
empowered to change the document is the Palestinian National
Council (PNC) and that such changes must be approved by a two-
thirds majority of the PNC in a special session. Thus, Chairman
Arafat's letters are insufficient. Under the procedure outlined by the
Covenant itself, Arafat's letters have no legal bearing on the text
of the document. The PLO's obligation to convene the PNC in
order to amend the Covenant remains unfulfilled.

4) Myth: The PLO Covenant is an outdated document of no
significance.


Fact: The Palestinian National Covenant is the founding
charter of the PLO, delineating the organization's stated aims and
goals. Its tenets are echoed daily in the rhetoric of Palestinian leaders
and media. Almost all of the articles in the Covenant explicitly or
implicitly deny Israel's right to exist and reject any peaceful solution
to the Arab-Israeli conflict. For example, Article 19 states, “the
establishment of Israel is fundamentally null and void, whatever time
has elapsed…” Article 22 asserts that, “the liberation of Palestine
will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence and will contribute
to the establishment of peace in the Middle East….”

The Covenant also denies the existence of the Jewish people
as a nation and any ties that it might have to the Land of Israel
(Article 20). It declares that “armed struggle is the only way to
liberate Palestine and is therefore a strategy and not tactics” (Article
9).

A document Israel submitted to the Palestinian Authority
(PA) in mid-January 1998 details the necessary steps to amend the
Covenant:

“Stage One
a. issuance of a statement by the legal committee specifying
the articles of the Covenant which were amended or annulled
in accordance with the April 1996 Palestinian National
Council (PNC) decision (i.e. the articles in the Covenant
which are inconsistent with the Palestinian obligations in the
framework of the peace process).

Stage Two
b. reconvening of the PNC to pass a new resolution which
affirms the statement issued by the legal committee
concerning which specific articles in the Covenant were
amended or annulled.

At the same time, the Palestinian Authority must refrain from
replacing the articles with other articles which contradict the
agreements and/or the peace process, for such a step would
be considered a failure to fulfill their obligation to amend the
requisite articles in the Covenant.”

To comply with their obligation, the Palestinians must amend
26 of the 33 articles in the Covenant which deny Israel's right to
exist or advocate violence and terror. The articles which must be
changed are: 1-15, 18-23, 25-27 29 and 30.

The Covenant's continued relevance to Palestinians was
underlined by a recent article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat
Al-Jadeeda, which said, “many in the Palestinian public still believe
in the Covenant and see it as our nations' only source of authority in
the current and upcoming stages of the conflict… The Covenant
from ‘A' to ‘Z' is a Palestinian document which battles the
Zionists…” (Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, October 19, 1997)

As the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said in a speech to
the Knesset on October 5, 1995, “the Palestinian Authority has not
up until now honored its commitment to change the Palestinian
Covenant… I view these changes as a supreme test of the Palestinian
Authority's willingness and ability, and the changes required will be
an important and serious touchstone vis-a-vis the continued
implementation of the agreement as a whole.