Changes and the PLO Covenant

Article V of the US Constitution reads:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary,shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification maybe proposed by the Congress; provided that no

Article V of the US Constitution reads:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary,shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification maybe proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

It is this way, and this way only, that the Constitution is amended. A gathering of assorted congressmen and other government officials purporting to amend the Constitution and announcing that they have done so, does not mean it happened. And if the President of the United States agrees it was amended, that still doesn’t make it so.

Without wanting to draw anything like a parallel between the US Constitution and the PLO Charter, we nevertheless point out that on September 9, 1993, Yasser Arafat wrote to Yitzhak Rabin, “The PLO undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian National Covenant.” Like the Constitution, the Covenant contains within itself the legal mechanism for its alteration, namely Article 33:

This Charter shall not be amended save by (vote of) a majority of two thirds of the total membership of the National Congress of the Palestine Liberation Organization (taken) at a special session convened for that purpose. [English version by Laila S. Kadi, PLO Organization Research Center, Beirut, Dec. 1969, page 141.]

There are those who would have you believe that the Charter was amended in April 1996 (when it was actually referred to a committee from which it never reemerged) and again in 1998 when Arafat wrote to President Clinton that the Executive Committee had excised the offending articles. But if the Charter had actually been amended in 1996, why was Arafat writing to the President in 1998?

In fact, these machinations are a pretense in English that the PLO has given up its central thesis – that the State of Israel is illegitimate and that armed revolution is an acceptable, indeed noble, mechanism for Israel’s elimination. They have not given it up in Arabic. And as long as they do not fulfill the requirements of the Charter for its emendation, the Charter will stand in Arabic as the fundamental document of the Palestinian revolution.

All the pretending the President and others may do in Gaza will have no more legal effect on the Palestinian Charter than wishing would make changes in the US Constitution.