Palestine, the land of the three monotheistic faiths, is where the
Palestinian Arab people was born, on which it grew, developed and excelled. The
Palestinian people was never separated from or diminished in its integral bonds with
Palestine. Thus the Palestinian Arab people ensured for itself an everlasting union
between itself, its land and its history.
Resolute throughout that history, the Palestinian Arab
people forged its national identity, rising even to imagined levels in its defense, as
invasion, the design of others, and the appeal special to Palestines ancient and
luminous place on that eminence where powers and civilisations are joined ... All this
intervened thereby to deprive the people of its political independence. Yet the undying
connection between Palestine and its people secured for the land its character, and for
the people its national genius.
Nourished by an unfolding series of civilisations and
cultures, inspired by a heritage rich in variety and kind, the Palestinian Arab people
added to its stature by consolidating a union between itself and its patrimonial Land. The
call went out from Temple, Church and Mosque that to praise the Creator, to celebrate
compassion and peace was indeed the message of Palestine. And in generation after
generation, the Palestinian Arab people gave of itself unsparingly in the valiant battle
for liberation and homeland. For what has been the unbroken chain of our peoples
rebellions but the heroic embodiment of our will for national independence? And so the
people was sustained in the struggle to stay and lo prevail.
When in the course of modern times a new order of values
was declared with norms and values fair for all, it was the Palestinian Arab people that
had been excluded from the destiny of all other peoples by a hostile array of local and
foreign powers. Yet again had unaided justice been revealed as insufficient to drive the
worlds history along its preferred course.
And it was the Palestinian people, already wounded in its
body, that was submitted to yet another type of occupation over which floated the
falsehood that "Palestine was a land without people. This notion was
foisted upon some in the world, whereas in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of
Nations (1919) and in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the community of nations had
recognised that all the Arab territories, including Palestine, of the formerly Ottoman
provinces, were to have granted to them their freedom as provisionally independent
nations.
Despite the historical injustice inflicted on the
Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to
self-determination, following upon UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which
partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution
that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of
the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty.
By stages, the occupation of Palestine and parts of other
Arab territories by Israeli forces, the willed dispossession and expulsion from their
ancestral homes of the majority of Palestines civilian inhabitants, was achieved by
organised terror; those Palestinians who remained, as a vestige subjugated in its
homeland, were persecuted and forced to endure the destruction of their national life.
Thus were principles of international legitimacy violated.
Thus were the Charter of the United Nations and its Resolutions disfigured, for they had
recognised the Palestinian Arab peoples national rights, including the right of
return, the right to independence, the right to sovereignty over territory and homeland.
In Palestine and on its perimeters, in exile distant and
near, the Palestinian Arab people never faltered and never abandoned its conviction in its
rights of Return and independence. Occupation, massacres and dispersion achieved no gain
in the unabated Palestinian consciousness of self and political identity, as Palestinians
went forward with their destiny, undeterred and unbowed. And from out of the long years of
trial in ever mounting struggle, the Palestinian political identity emerged further
consolidated and confirmed. And the collective Palestinian national will forged for itself
a political embodiment, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, its sole, legitimate
representative recognised by the world community as a whole, as well as by related
regional and international institutions. Standing on the very rock of conviction in the
Palestinian peoples inalienable rights, and on the ground of Arab national consensus
and of international legitimacy, the PLO led the campaigns of its great people, molded
into unity and powerful resolve, one and indivisible in its triumphs, even as it suffered
massacres and confinement within and without its home. And so Palestinian resistance was
clarified and raised into the forefront of Arab and world awareness, as the struggle of
the Palestinian Arab people achieved unique prominence among the worlds liberation
movements in the modern era. The massive national uprising, the intifada, now intensifying
in cumulative scope and power on occupied Palestinian territories, as well as the
unflinching resistance of the refugee camps outside the homeland, have elevated awareness
of the Palestinian truth and right into still higher realms of comprehension and
actuality. Now at least the curtain has been dropped around a whole epoch of prevarication
and negation. The intifada has set siege to the mind of official Israel, which has for too
long relied exclusively upon myth and terror to deny Palestinian existence altogether.
Because of the intifada and its revolutionary irreversible impulse, the history of
Palestine has therefore arrived at a decisive juncture.
Whereas the Palestinian people reaffirms most definitively
its inalienable rights in the land of its patrimony: Now by virtue of natural, historical
and legal rights, and the sacrifices of successive generations who gave of themselves in
defense of the freedom and independence of their homeland; In pursuance of Resolutions
adopted by Arab Summit Conferences and relying on the authority bestowed by international
legitimacy as embodied in the Resolutions of the United Nations Organisation since 1947;
And in exercise by the Palestinian Arab people of its rights to self-determination,
political independence and sovereignty over its territory, The Palestine National Council,
in the name of God, and in the name of the Palestinian Arab people, hereby proclaims the
establishment of the State of Palestine on our Palestinian territory with its capital
Jerusalem (Al-Quds Ash-Sharif).
The State of Palestine is the state of Palestinians
wherever they may be. The state is for them to enjoy in it their collective national and
cultural identity, theirs to pursue in it a complete equality of rights. In it will be
safeguarded their political and religious convictions and their human dignity by means of
a parliamentary democratic system of governance, itself based on freedom of expression and
the freedom to form parties. The rights of minorities will duly be respected by the
majority, as minorities must abide by decisions of the majority. Governance will be based
on principles of social justice, equality and non-discrimination in public rights of men
or women, on grounds of race, religion, color or sex, under the aegis of a constitution
which ensures the rule of law and an independent judiciary. Thus shall these principles
allow no departure from Palestines age-old spiritual and civilisational heritage of
tolerance and religious coexistence.
The State of Palestine is an Arab state, an integral and
indivisible part of the Arab nation, at one with that nation in heritage and civilisation,
with it also in its aspiration for liberation, progress, democracy and unity. The State of
Palestine affirms its obligation to abide by the Charter of the League of Arab States,
whereby the coordination of the Arab states with each other shall be strengthened. It
calls upon Arab compatriots to consolidate and enhance the emergence in reality of our
state, to mobilize potential, and to intensify efforts whose goal is to and Israeli
occupation. The State of Palestine proclaims its commitment to the principles and purposes
the United Nations, and to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It proclaims its
commitment as well to the principles and policies of the Non-Aligned Movement.
It further announces itself to be a peace-loving state, in
adherence to the principles of peaceful coexistence. It will join with all states and
peoples in order assure a permanent peace based upon justice and the respect of rights so
that humanitys potential for well-being may be assured, an earnest competition for
excellence may be maintained, and in which confidence in the future will eliminate fear
for those who are just and for whom justice is the only recourse.
In the context of its struggle for peace in the land of
Love and Peace, the State of Palestine calls upon the United Nations to bear special
responsibility for the Palestinian Arab people and its homeland. It calls upon all
peace-and freedom-loving peoples and states to assist it in the attainment of its
objectives, to provide it with security, to alleviate the tragedy of its people, and to
help it terminate Israels occupation of the Palestinian territories.
The State of Palestine herewith declares that it believes
in the settlement of regional and international disputes by peaceful means, in accordance
with the UN Charter and resolutions. Without prejudice to its natural right to defend its
territorial integrity and independence, it therefore rejects the threat or use of force,
violence and terrorism against its territorial integrity or political independence, as it
also rejects their use against the territorial integrity of other states.
Therefore, on this day unlike all others, November 15,
1988, as we stand at the threshold of a new dawn, in all honour and modesty we humbly bow
to the sacred spirits of our fallen ones, Palestinian and Arab, by the purity of whose
sacrifice for the homeland our sky has been illuminated and our Land given life. Our
hearts are lifted up and irradiated by the light emanating from the much blessed intifada,
from those who have endured and have fought the fight of the camps, of dispersion, of
exile, from those who have borne the standard for freedom, our, children, our aged, our
youth, our prisoners, detainees and wounded, all those whose ties to our sacred soil are
confirmed in camp, village and town. We render special tribute to that brave Palestinian
Woman, guardian of sustenance and Life, keeper of our peoples perennial flame. To
the souls of our sainted martyrs, to the whole of our Palestinian Arab people, to all free
and honourable peoples everywhere, we pledge that our struggle shall be continued until
the occupation ends, and the foundation of our sovereignty and independence shall be
fortified accordingly.
Therefore, we call upon our great people to rally to the
banner of Palestine, to cherish and defend it, so that it may forever be the symbol of our
freedom and dignity in that homeland, which is a homeland for the free, now and always.
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful:
"Say: O God, Master of the Kingdom, Thou givest the Kingdom to whom Thou wilt, and
seizest the Kingdom from whom Thou wilt, Thou exaltest whom Thou wilt, and Thou abasest
whom Thou wilt; in Thy hand is the good; Thou art powerful over everything." Sadaqa
Allahu al-Azim.
Source: Lukacs, Yehuda: The Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict a documentary record 1967-1990, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1992. |