In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Palestine, the land of the three monotheistic
faiths, is where the Palestinian Arab people was born, on which it grew,
developed and excelled. 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 unimagined levels
in its defense, as invasion, the design of others, and the appeal special
to Palestine's ancient and luminous place on the eminence where powers
and civilizations 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 civilizations
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 people's rebellions
but the heroic embodiment of our will for national independence. And so
the people was sustained in the struggle to stay and to 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 world's 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 that 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 recognized 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 U.N. 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 Palestine's civilian
inhabitants, was achieved by organized 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 recognized the Palestinian Arab people's 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 Organization,
its sole, legitimate representative recognized 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 people's 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 world's 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 last 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 Organization 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, and the aegis of a constitution which ensures the rule of law and
an independent judiciary. Thus shall these principles allow no departure
from Palestine's age-old spiritual and civilizational 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 civilization, 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 emein reality of state, to mobilize
potential, and to intensify efforts whose goal is to end Israeli occupation.
The State of Palestine proclaims its commitment
to the principles and purposes of 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 co-existence. It will
join with all states and peoples in order to assure a permanent peace based
upon justice and the respect of rights so that humanity's 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 Israel's
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 U.N. Charter and resolutions. With
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 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 honor 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 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 people's perennial flame. To the souls of our sainted
martyrs, the whole of our Palestinian Arab people 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 seizes the Kingdom from whom Thou wilt,
Thou exalted whom Thou wilt, and Thou
abasest whom Thou wilt; in Thy hand
is the good; Thou are powerful over everything."