Palestinian Declaration of Independence

On 28 October 1974, the 1974 Arab League summit held in Rabat designated the PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and reaffirmed their right to establish an independent state of urgency." Legal justification for the declaration was based on United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) of 29 November 1947, which provided for the termination and partition of the British Mandate into two states. On 14 May 1948 the British mandate ended, the State of Israel was declared and the Arab Legion of Transjordan (later Jordan) invaded the West Bank (only to annex it in 1950). In September 1948 Egyptian forces captured the Gaza strip and kept it under military rule. Until the Six-Day War in June 1967 these two territories remained under Jordanian and Egyptian rule. Despite the 1988 proclamation of the State of Palestine, at the time the Palestine Liberation Organization did not exercise control over any territory, and designated Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, which was under Israeli control and claimed by it as Israel's capital. The PLO was hence a government in exile between 1988 and 1994. The PLO began to exercise a limited rule in the Areas A and B of the West Bank and part of the Gaza Strip as a consequence of the 1994 Gaza-Jericho Agreement, under the umbrella of the Palestinian National Authority. In 2012, Palestine was upgraded to the status of non-member observer state in the UN. ==Significance==

The declaration concerned the Palestine region, as defined by the borders of the British Mandate of Palestine, which includes the whole of the State of Israel as well as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (at the time part of the Israeli Civil Administration). It references the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine of 1947 and "UN resolutions since 1947" in general as providing legitimacy to Palestinian statehood. The Partition Plan served as the basis for the Israeli Declaration of Independence, but was not accepted by the Palestinian Arab leadership at the time. Though, in September 1948, the All-Palestine Government was declared within the Gaza Strip as an Egyptian protectorate and recognized by most members of the Arab League, which is regarded by some as the first attempt to establish an independent Palestinian state; All-Palestine had however been dissolved by Egypt several years later. The 1988 declaration does not explicitly recognize the State of Israel. However, an accompanying document that explicitly mentions UN Security Council Resolution 242, and Yasser Arafat's statements in Geneva a month later were accepted by the United States as sufficient to interpret the declaration as recognising Israel in its pre-1967 boundaries. The declaration's reference to Palestine being the "land of the three monotheistic faiths" has been held as recognising the Jewish historical connection to the land. Referring to "the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination," the declaration recalled the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and UN General Assembly Resolution 181 as supporting the rights of Palestinians to statehood. The declaration then proclaims a "State of Palestine on our Palestinian territory with its capital Jerusalem". The borders of the state are not specified. The population of the state was referred to by the statement: "The State of Palestine is the state of Palestinians wherever they may be". The state was defined as an Arab country by the statement: "The State of Palestine is an Arab state, an integral and indivisible part of the Arab nation". == Immediate responses in the occupied territories and Israel ==

Over the weekend of 11-12 November 1988, the Israeli military sealed off the occupied Palestinian territories in anticipation of the PNC meeting, with the goal of preventing any disturbances. The number of soldiers deployed to the territories was significantly increased, while telephone and power lines in the territories were severed, roadblocks erected to prevent Palestinians residents travelling between zones in the territories, loudspeakers in mosques were removed, Palestinian flags were torn down, and residents of towns were forced by soldiers to clean nationalist graffiti. and forbidding the Israel Broadcasting Authority from televising any footage of the PNC convention. Israeli patrols to enforce the curfew used megaphones to warn Palestinians that leaving their homes meant that they could be shot. As well, the military carried out preventative arrests of several hundred Palestinians. Israeli Minister of Defence Yitzhak Rabin warned that the military was "prepared to use maximum force to put down any demonstrations following any pronouncement in Algiers." The declaration of independence was met with near-unanimous condemnation in Israel, including among both right-wing and centre-left politicians. Yossi Ben Aharon, director general of the Prime Minister's Office, described the declaration as " an exercise in disinformation whose purpose is to create the impression of moderation." The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs released an official statement accusing the PLO of being "unable or unwilling to recognize reality," saying that "any recognition or legitimization of the declaration will not be conducive to peace in the Middle East," and ordered Israeli diplomats to intensively lobby governments and news organisations in the countries in which they were stationed to not recognise the declaration. Chief of the General Staff Dan Shomron warned Palestinians that "after a year in which they have been paying the full price, all they can get from the PNC overseas is appeals to the heart, festive declarations and nothing beyond it." Prominent Palestinian newspaper editor Hanna Siniora stated that he felt "the same joy I experienced at the birth of my first child," describing the declaration as "a triumph for the voice of moderation within the Palestinian camp." The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, the coalition (formed of the Palestinian Communist Party, the DFLP, the PFLP, and Fatah) directing the First Intifada, applauded the declaration, describing it as "not a concession with nothing in return, as some believe, but rather a realistic, revolutionary and responsible declaration which puts an end to the Zionist lies about the aims of our triumphant revolution." Salim Tamari of the Institute for Palestine Studies has argued that the "main achievement of the UNLU in its first year is that it imposed its own perceptions and initiatives of the mass movement on the external leadership of the PLO," with the declaration of independence representing the peak of the UNLU's influence in its relationship with the PLO leadership in exile, with the PLO leadership subsequently exerting greater and greater influence over the UNLU as the Intifada continued. Scott Macleod of Time Magazine wrote that "certainly the actions represented a victory for Palestinian moderates." George Habash, leader of the far-left Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), had opposed the Declaration during the PNC's deliberations, but afterwards accepted it to maintain the unity of the PLO. The blanket curfew was lifted by the Israeli military over the weekend of 18-19 November. In the weeks following the declaration, even as no widespread disturbances by Palestinians broke out, the Israeli military continued to escalate operations against the First Intifada, including pre-emptive raids and selective curfews on Palestinian villages, with the aim of "forestalling disturbances" and to "deflate nationalist elements." ==Consequences==

The declaration was accompanied by a PNC call for multilateral negotiations on the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 242. This call was later termed "the Historic Compromise", as it implied acceptance of the "two-state solution", namely that it no longer questioned the legitimacy of the State of Israel. The PNC's political communiqué accompanying the declaration called only for withdrawal from "Arab Jerusalem" and the other "Arab territories occupied." Yasser Arafat's statements in Geneva a month later were accepted by the United States as sufficient to remove the ambiguities it saw in the declaration and to fulfill the longheld conditions for open dialogue with the United States. As a result of the declaration, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) convened, inviting Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO, to give an address. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 43/177 was adopted "acknowledging the proclamation of the State of Palestine by the Palestine National Council on 15 November 1988," and it was further decided that "the designation 'Palestine' should be used in place of the designation 'Palestine Liberation Organization' in the United Nations system." One hundred and four states voted for this resolution, forty-four abstained, and two – the United States and Israel – voted against. By mid-December, 75 states had recognised Palestine, rising to 93 states by February 1989. On 29 November 2012, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 67/19 upgrading Palestine to non-member observer state status in the United Nations. It was adopted by the sixty-seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly on the date of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People and the 65th anniversary of the adoption by the General Assembly of resolution 181(II) on the Future Government of Palestine. The draft resolution was proposed by Palestine's representative at the United Nations. It, however, maintains the status of the Palestine Liberation Organization as the representative of the Palestinian people within the United Nations system. On 31 December 2014, the United Nations Security Council voted down a resolution demanding the end of Israeli occupation and Palestinian statehood by 2017. Eight members voted for the Resolution (Russia, China, France, Argentina, Chad, Chile, Jordan, Luxembourg). However, the resolution did not get the minimum of nine votes needed to pass the resolution. Australia and the United States voted against the resolution, with the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Nigeria, South Korea and Rwanda abstaining. In 2020, UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese characterized the question of Palestinians' enduring statelessness as "particularly fraught" due to both the survival of the use of the concept of nationality as common identity and communal bond in the Palestinian context in particular, as it pertains to their exile and subsequent diaspora, and the confusion caused by less-than-full reinstatement of the concept of Palestinian citizenship, with the "significant exception" of those still with Jordanian conferred citizenship (who remained in Jordan after King Hussein ceded the West Bank in 1988). She characterized the de facto existence it may have as still being insufficient for the purpose of international law: "[S]ome of the functions that give purpose to [...] "the 'legal bond' that makes a person citizen of a state [...] exist" means "de facto citizenship may having a meaning in the perimeters of the State of Palestine's jurisdiction", e.g. the first Palestinian election held, being revived based on the in fieri realization of Palestinian self-determination. Albanese classified "important milestones" towards breaking the conditions of Article 1 of the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons which evaluates "statelessness" in opposition to being "considered 'citizens' of any state under the operation of its law", such as the "exercise [of] limited state functions" as a result of the Oslo Accords, and accordingly the PNC's declaration of independence in 1988. However, it would be "premature" to argue that which requires a fully sovereign state, consisting of examples given of granting entry of persons to the country and the realization of most of the fundamental rights and freedoms, in accordance with its law, thus Palestinians remained over the threshold of eligibility to receive international protection as refugees and stateless persons. This argument was in response to one from Palestinian professor Mazin Qumsiyeh who, in commissioning the Draft Palestinian Nationality Law for the PLO in 2011, endorsed the status of de facto citizenship of the State of Palestine, inferring that the question of citizenship is based on the one of self-determination, though calling it merely "not comparable" to the status of citizens of fully sovereign states. Albanese considered her reasoning as explaining the lack of the law's adoption. ==See also==