New book: PLO never nixed anti-Israel charter [pg.3]

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
With attention focused on the issue of whether Hamas will amend its anti-Semitic and anti-Israel charter as it takes up Palestinian governance, a new book argues that even the 1968 Palestinian Liberation Organization charter, which called for "armed struggle" to "liberate Palestine," was never legally revised. Reply, by Eli Hertz, president of the non-profit Myths and Facts organization, notes that the charter appears on the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) official Web site and the palestine-un.org site, and that the "Fatah constitution," featuring a call for the "complete liberation of Palestine," still appears on the www.fateh.net Web site. Hertz argues that the meeting 10 years ago in Gaza of the Palestinian National Council, at which all anti-Israel clauses of the charter were ostensibly abolished, was a charade, and that the PNC merely took "a bureaucratic decision" there to set up a committee to discuss abolishing those clauses. That "committee" took no further action, he writes. As posted on the PNA site, the 33-article 1968 charter is followed by text relating to subsequent amendments, including the PNC's 1996 "decision" to cancel those articles "contrary to the letters exchanged [by] the PLO and the Government of Israel" at the start of the Oslo process in 1993. Similarly, on the palestine-un.org site, text outlining "decisions & actions related to the Palestine National Charter" is posted along with the original articles.