Islamic Group Challenges PLO Over Palestine

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Islamic Group Challenges PLO Over Palestine By DAN FISHER and DAN WILLIAMS, Times Staff Writers GAZA, Israeli-Occupied Gaza Strip—Neither the Palestine Liberation Organization nor anyone else has the right to endorse Israeli rule over any part of historic Palestine, according to an underground “covenant” produced by an influential Islamic fundamentalist group here.

The document, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, was apparently produced in answer to recent statements by PLO officials that they are preparing to implicitly recognize Israel as part of a move toward trying to create an adjacent Palestinian state.

See Threat to Unity Both Israeli and Palestinian nationalist sources described the declaration as a threat to the extraordinary unity that has been shown by West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians during their nearly nine-month-old anti-Israeli uprising.

By calling for jihad, or holy war, as “the only solution to the Palestine problem,” the covenant is seen as undermining support in the occupied territories for any moderate PLO political initiative. Palestine “cannot be given up in part or ceded,” the document says. “No one has this right.

No Arab country, nor all the Arab countries together, no king or president, nor all the kings and presidents together have that right. Neither the PLO nor any other organization has that Please see PALESTINE, Page 16 … “The covenant, dated Aug.

18 and issued under the name of the Islamic Resistance Movement/Palestine, appears at a time of growing tensions between the predominantly secular PLO nationalists and Palestinian religious fundamentalists. The fundamentalists are strongest here in overcrowded Gaza, where the uprising began and where it has been particularly violent.

But in recent weeks they have also appeared to be gaining support on the West Bank of the Jordan River, long considered a secular stronghold.

Late last month, the Islamic Resistance Movement, known by its Arabic acronym as HAMAS, enforced a full commercial strike in major West Bank towns against the wishes of the secular intifada leadership… Palestinian sources say that Israeli officials have encouraged such divisions as a means of weakening the Palestinian cause.

The government has allowed some fundamentalists to operate semi-openly here in Gaza, for example, while cracking down on militant PLO factions. ‘I have my suspicions that over the last 10 years the Israelis tried to encourage fundamentalism as a power to curb nationalism,’ said Rashad Shawa, a former Gaza mayor and head of a prominent local clan.

‘But to their disappointment, [the various groups] joined hands against the Israeli occupation.’… ‘For me, a secular state is out of the question,’ said Sheik Akhmad Yassin, a prominent Islamic leader here.

In an interview at his home in a particularly squalid Gaza neighborhood, Yassin, who is paralyzed from the neck down, said that creation of neighboring Israeli and Palestinian states ‘is not a satisfactory solution… The solution we are looking for is a unified Palestine.’… The new HAMAS covenant defines all of historic Palestine—including Israel and the occupied territories—as ‘an Islamic trust for all the generations of Muslims until the resurrection.’… The document describes HAMAS as ‘a humanitarian movement that protects human rights and is committed to Islamic tolerance toward other religions.’

It is not hostile, it adds, ‘to anyone who does not stand in its way. In Islam, followers of Christianity and Judaism can live in safety and security.’ However, the covenant cites well-known anti-Semitic tracts in condemning the Jewish national movement.”

How this transcription was made

The other part of this article was added on 2 November 2026 from a second clipping (m016_1.png). Headline corrected on 2 November 2026 from the opening of the article, which the archive did not hold until now: the record read “Palestine: Islamic Issue”, which is the jump slug, not the headline the paper set.

Context added by this archive

September 1988. The intifada is nine months old and led by the secular PLO, and Hamas is still being introduced to American readers, by its acronym, as a new development. A former mayor of Gaza says Israel spent ten years encouraging the movement in order to curb nationalism.

The covenant is quoted on tolerance and then on antisemitic tracts, in consecutive sentences, and the paper names them as antisemitic.

Cite this clipping

"Islamic Group Challenges PLO Over Palestine," Los Angeles Times, 5 September 1988, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1988-037. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1988-037