Palestinians erasing doubts about sincerity in ending Israeli struggle

News analysis

Karin Laub, Associated Press, Jerusalem

Palestinians erasing doubts about sincerity in ending Israeli struggle — Paris Post-Intelligencer, 25 April 1996 — Paris Post-Intelligencer · Paris, Tennessee · 25 April 1996

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“JERUSALEM (AP) — By formally ending their armed struggle against Israel, the Palestinians have gone a long way toward erasing doubts about Yasser Arafat’s sincerity and restarted a peace process stalled by deadly suicide bombings.

The decision to delete anti-Israel clauses from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s charter also provided a major boost for Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel in his quest to retain his job in May 29 elections. Right-wing Israelis had made much of the fact that the charter advocated armed struggle to establish a Palestinian state in all of what is now Israel.

But with the vote Wednesday to formally end that struggle, their objections to peacemaking lost steam. ‘This is a meaningful change with historic dimensions, the greatest ideological change of this century,’ said Peres, who called Arafat on the telephone to congratulate him. ‘It seems that it is possible to trust Arafat.’

Israel is also expected to remove troops from most of Hebron — the last West Bank city it occupies — and go ahead with talks next month with the PLO on explosive issues including Palestinian refugees and the future of disputed Jerusalem. Arafat, in turn, solidified his rule when the Palestinians’ highest body voted overwhelmingly to amend the charter.

The sweeping 504-54 victory gives the Palestinian leader greater leverage in confronting the Islamic militant groups that sent out suicide bombers in an effort to wreck peace. Arafat said the decision was a victory for the nascent Palestinian democracy and for peacemaking. ‘This is a success for the peace process,’ he told CNN.

The vote in the Palestine National Council — tantamount to a formal recognition of the state of Israel — takes the Palestinians themselves a step closer to statehood. Peres had said that if Arafat met his promise to have the charter amended, Israel would start negotiating a final peace agreement with the Palestinians on May 4.

Under their peace accord, the two sides have three years to reach agreement on the future of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. The Palestinians hope the outcome of the talks will be a Palestinian state. If Peres is re-elected, that may very well be the case.

In a sign that it was softening its position, Peres’ Labor Party prepared to vote today on a new platform that would scrap a clause opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state. Arafat himself presented that simple choice to Palestine National Council delegates this week.

Yelling at hard-liners poised to vote ‘no,’ Arafat said that if the charter was not amended, the Palestinians would miss their last real hope for independence. Peres, meanwhile, faces several difficult decisions in the weeks leading up to the elections… The Palestinians have sent a clear message that they are serious about peace.

That message may win over centrist swing voters who favor peacemaking, but don’t want to put their security at risk. In a sign of how widely the Palestinian vote was welcomed in Israel, Netanyahu, the opposition leader, called it a positive step.

Yet Netanyahu has moved steadily toward the political center as the election draws near, saying for the first time this week that he would consider meeting with Arafat.”

Context added by this archive

The vote to amend the PLO charter, 504 to 54, reported as a news analysis. The correspondent is identified at the foot as having covered Israel and the Palestinian areas since 1987.

Cite this clipping

"Palestinians erasing doubts about sincerity in ending Israeli struggle," Paris Post-Intelligencer, 25 April 1996, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1996-002. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1996-002