The PLO never renounced terror (as we've seen before) ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

The PLO never renounced terror (as we've seen before)

The New York Times writes an apologia for anti-Israel groups in wake of the murders of two Israel embassy workers in Washington DC last week.

The article emphasizes that "The pro-Palestinian movement ...has long included a wide spectrum of activists, with a variety of views on the role violent resistance should play in achieving a Palestinian state."

Some chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, for example, the most organized pro-Palestinian group on many college campuses, have embraced the Thawabit, a set of principles written by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1977 that is considered central to the Palestinian national cause. Among them is the right of resistance, including through armed struggle.

I've seen the phrase "Palestinian national constants" often in Palestinian websites and the words of Mahmoud Abbas, but I never knew they were formalized. It turns out they were, in a document that is surprisingly hard to find.

It came from the 13th meeting of the Palestinian National Council in Cairo in March, 1977. It includes support for terrorism in its third article:

The Palestinian National Council affirms that the struggle in the occupied territories, in all its military, political and popular forms, constitutes the central link in its struggle programmes. On this basis, the Palestine Liberation Organization struggles to escalate the armed struggle in the occupied territories, and to escalate all other forms of struggle associated with it, and to provide all forms of material and moral support to the masses of our people in the occupied territories in order to escalate this struggle and support their steadfastness to defeat and liquidate the occupation.

If you think that these national constants were superseded with Oslo, that is not so clear. According to Khaled Elgindy, these principles - and specifically "armed struggle" - were confirmed in another Cairo meeting between Palestinian factions, including Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, in March 2005:

Those gathered confirmed their adherence to Palestinian principles, without any neglect, and the right of the Palestinian people to resistance in order to end the occupation, establish a Palestinian state with full sovereignty with Jerusalem as its capital, and the guaranteeing of the right of return of refugees to their homes and property.

We knew this. Fatah's 2009 political platform, also difficult to find, advocates armed violence as well and has never been superseded.

This is yet more proof that every single Palestinian faction supports terror, and any reticence that they show towards "armed struggle" is purely tactical and not strategic.