By: Aaron Lerner Date: 25 January, 1998

When President Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger,
said before the Netanyahu/Arafat visits to Washington that "this
is the time for tough decisions", I assumed he had both parties in
mind.COMMENTARY ON CLAIMED CHANGE TO PALESTINIAN CHARTER

By: Aaron Lerner Date: 25 January, 1998

When President Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger,
said before the Netanyahu/Arafat visits to Washington that "this
is the time for tough decisions", I assumed he had both parties in
mind.

Unfortunately, comments coming out of the Clinton Administration
before the trip gave reason to believe that this was not going to
be the case.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's one-sided comment that
``it is important for us to move forward on these further
redeployments and to fulfill some of the obligations of the interim
[Oslo] agreements that has to do with opening airports and safe
passage,'' certainly did not jibe with "even-handedness".

The Washington visits clearly illustrates just what kind of "tough
decisions" Clinton's team had in mind for Arafat: the decision to
hand over yet another letter about the Palestinian Covenant and an
agreement to a photo opportunity at Washington's Holocaust
Museum.

The Clinton Administration's satisfaction with Arafat's handling of
the Palestinian Covenant is a real puzzle:

Back on September 9, 1993, Arafat promised in a letter to Yitzhak
Rabin that
"the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the
commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer
valid. Consequently, the PLO undertakes to submit to the
Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary
changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant."

But nothing happened.

When The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement On The West Bank
And The Gaza Strip was signed in Washington on September 28, 1995,
Arafat promised "The PLO undertakes that, within two months of the
date of the inauguration of the Council, the Palestinian National
Council will convene and formally approve the necessary changes in
regard to the Palestinian Covenant."

But nothing happened.

With elections in Israel approaching, the Palestinian National
Council met and is reported to have decided "The Palestinian
National Charter is hereby amended by canceling the articles that
are contrary to the letters exchanged between the P.L.O and the
Government of Israel 9-10 September 1993" and "Assigns its legal
committee with the task of redrafting the Palestinian National
Charter in order to present it to the first session of the
Palestinian central council." The canceled articles were not
specified.

A week later, on May 5, 1996, Gaza attorney Faisal Hamdi Husseini,
the head of the Palestine National Council (PNC) Judicial Committee
announced that he would submit a new Palestinian Covenant in three
months in which 21 articles will be changed or canceled. Keep in
mind the number 21, I will be returning to it shortly.

Three months passed and Husseini didn't do anything. But this
didn't stop the Clinton Administration and Shimon Peres from
asserting that Arafat had, in fact, honored this obligation.

Which brings us to the first of several "Catch-22" situations: If
Clinton and Peres were correct in their claim that Arafat actually
changed the Charter, why did Dennis Ross include in the January 15,
1997 Note for the Record that "The process of revising the
Palestinian National Charter will be completed."

And they were supposed to act on this "immediately".

They didn't.

Last Thursday Faisal Hamdi Husseini told me "There has been a
decision to change the covenant. The change has not yet been
carried out." He noted that there were no technical problems
holding up the process: "When one side advances matters, the
second side will also advance."

There is only one way to change the Charter, and it's stated
explicitly in the Charter itself: "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."

But Arafat has no plans to convene the PNC to approve an explicitly
amended Charter. Instead he produced yet another letter. This
time addressed to President Clinton.

And in a masterstroke of ex-post engineering, this letter declared
that when the PNC voted they thought they were dropping or changing
a total of 28 articles - 7 more than Husseini, the man responsible
for putting together a revised Charter, said he was going to deal
with!

Instead of advising Arafat to finally get to work, State Dept.
spokesman James Rubin said that the US considers the contents of
the letter "an important step towards completing the process of
revising the charter. As far as what additional steps need to be
made, at this point all we want to say is that these need to be
discussed
directly between the parties."

Does it matter that the PNC hasn't really amended the Charter?
Here is the paradox: Is it that the Clinton Administration doesn't
want to press Arafat for a PNC vote because it doesn't think he can
pull it off? If this is so then a crucial assumption at the very
foundations of the Oslo process is false.

And if this underlying assumption is false, it would be folly for
Israel to continue trading land for worthless paper.

The visits could have been a watershed event in which Clinton
finally insisted on Palestinian compliance. Instead we are witness
to continuation of his destructive "damn the violations full
withdrawal ahead" policy.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director
IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-9-7411645
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
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