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Declaration of
Independence
State of Palestine
November 15th, 1988
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."
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