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. 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 unmitigated levels in
its defense, as invasion, the design of others, and the appeal
special to Palestine's ancient and luminous place on that 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 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 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 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 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 right 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 definitely 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 Holy 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 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 emergence in reality of our 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 coexistence. It will join
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 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 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 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 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 people's perennial flame. To the souls of our sainted
martyrs, to the whole of our Palestinian Arab people, to all free
and honorable 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; in Thy
hand is the good; Thou art powerful over everything.'"