Arab Newspaper Prints P.L.O. Independence Plan

Special to The New York Times

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JERUSALEM, Nov. 4 — An Arabic-language newspaper today published what it said was a Palestinian “declaration of independence” that will be issued by the Palestine Liberation Organization this month. The declaration named Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state but made no mention of its borders or recognition of Israel.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Alon Liel, said the declaration was “definitely unacceptable” and more extreme than expected. Mr. Liel said Israel expects the Palestine National Council, the governing body of the P.L.O., to declare an independent Palestinian state when it convenes in Algiers. The meeting is expected to begin Nov. 16.

Debate Has Intensified The P.L.O. debate over the declaration of a Palestinian state in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip has intensified since King Hussein of Jordan severed his ties with the areas. The declaration published today in Al Fajr, a Jerusalem daily, had four points.

The first said, “We the Palestinian people represented by the P.N.C. announce the declaration of the Palestinian state on the soil of Palestine and with Jerusalem as its capital, all according to the inherent rights of Palestinians to live in their homeland in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 181.”

Resolution 181 is the 1947 partition resolution setting out the boundaries of proposed Jewish and Palestinian states. Mr. Liel said that Israel will “react negatively if the declaration is based on United Nations Resolution 181 and doesn’t mention Resolution 242, recognizing Israel and renouncing terror.” Resolution 242 urges Arabs and Israelis to negotiate.

‘The Only Path’ Today’s declaration also said: The P.L.O. “is the sole representative of the Palestinian people.” The P.L.O. calls on Soviet, American, Arab and European leaders to “work hard toward implementing all U.N. resolutions connected to the Palestinian problem.”

“The only path to solve the problem is the one of implementing all international resolutions through an active international conference with the participation of the P.L.O.” To the surprise of some here, Israel’s military censor authorized publication of the declaration’s text. An army officer in the censor’s office refused to discuss the reasoning.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead and no dated folio line, so the date recorded here could not be checked against anything printed on the page. Nothing on the page contradicts it.

Context added by this archive

This clipping and CP-1988-095 are two stories printed on the same sheet of newsprint, which is why they share a scan. They are separate records because they are separate articles with their own headlines and datelines, and merging them would attach one story’s dateline to the other.

Cite this clipping

"Arab Newspaper Prints P.L.O. Independence Plan," The New York Times, 5 November 1988. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1988-094. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1988-094