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HT This Day: September 11, 1993 -- Israel, PLO formally recognise each other
Implacable rivals, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, formally recognised one another today and embarked on a different course that may well herald a new era of peace and change the political landscape in West Asia.
Implacable rivals, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, formally recognised one another today and embarked on a different course that may well herald a new era of peace and change the political landscape in West Asia.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the mutual accord, recognising the PLO, in Jerusalem.
The document said the Government of Israel had recognised the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and would commence negotiations with the PLO within the West Asia peace process.
PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat had taken the historic step late on Thursday night in Tunis and put his name on a document that formally announced the PLO’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist in peace and security.
State Radios in Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Tunisia reported the signing.
Israel Radio said Mr Rabin signed the formal agreement after receiving a letter from Mr Arafat which said the PLO recognised the right of Israel to exist, renounced violence and promised to push through amendments to parts of the PLO charter offensive to Israel.
The letter was brought from PLO Headquarters in Tunis by Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Joergen Holst.
“It is a historic moment that hopefully will bring about an end to 100 years of bloodshed and misery between the Palestinian people and Israel”, Mr Rabin said. But be acknowledged that the course he was taking with his long-time enemy was risky.”
“I see this as a moment of importance with many opportunities, but not a few risks. . .all of this is being done with the assumption that the other side will also fulfil all its obligations”, he said.
In a measure of the distrust that still bedevils relations, Mr Rabin took out his glasses and carefully read the full-page letter from Mr Arafat as the audience of officials, uniformed army officers and journalists waited for nearly a half-minute in silence.
Hours earlier, Mr Arafat announced in Tunis that he had signed a document in which the PLO recognised Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and renounced violence. The PLO had since its inception 29 years ago called for the destruction of Israel.
The mutual recognition, worked out in months of secret meetings in Norway and a final burst of round the-clock bargaining, is the biggest breakthrough in West Asia diplomacy since Israel’s 1979 peace treaty with Egypt.
As Mr Rabin penned his signature, hundreds of angry demonstrators outside the building waved placards reading our homeland is not for sale.
“No other man since the Nazi has so much civilian Jewish blood on his hands as Yasser Arafat”, said Mr Ariel Sharon, the right-wing former Defence Minister.
The mutual recognition cleared the way for a signing in Washington on Monday of a separate agreement giving Palestinians a measure of self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Jericho, occupied by Israel since the 1967 West Asia war.
In a full-page six-paragraph letter Mr Arafat said it recognises the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security and says it accept UN Resolutions 242 and 338 which encapsulate the land-for-peace formula.
The PLO pledges to resolve all disputes through negotiations and renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence.
But Mr Arafat goes on to promise that the PLO will enforce the peace against anyone who tries to cause violence.
The PLO, he said, assumes responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their “compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators”.
A third letter was from Mr Arafat to Norway’s Foreign Minister Johan Joergen Holst, who helped broker the agreement by hosting months of secret talks in Oslo between PLO officials and Israelis.
It says that the PLO encourages and calls upon the Palestinian people in West Bank and Gaza Strip to take part in steps leading to the normalisation of life, rejecting violence and terrorism”.
The wording was designed to meet Israel’s demand that Palestinians end the nearly six-year-old Intifada, or uprising, against Israeli military rule which has claimed 1,139 Palestinians and 146 Israeli lives.
Most importantly for Israel, Mr Arafat’s letter to Mr Rabin said the PLO that articles in the Palestinian covenant which deny Israel’s right to exist are now “inoperative and no longer valid”.
He pledges in the letter to Mr Rabin to ask the 500-member Palestinian National Council to approve the changes. This was key demand from Israel, which wanted to be sure the pledge was authoritative and went beyond the promise of a single man.
In contrast, Mr Rabin’s letter was a single letter of only six lines. It said: “In response to your letter of September 9, 1993, I wish to confirm to you that, in light of the PLO commitments included in your letter, the Government of Israel has decided to recognise the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and commence negotiations with the PLO within the Middle East peace process”.
PLO men quit: Three Palestinians resigned from the PLO’s ruling committee today and others issued harsh warnings in response to the Israel-PLO pact on mutual recognition.
PLO’s representative in Lebanon, Shafik Al-Hout, announced he was quitting the 18-member Executive Committee in protest over concessions made by the leadership of the PLO.
In Jordan, Abdul Rahim Mallouh of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Tayseer Khalid of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine announced their withdrawal from the ruling committee.
The PLO leadership has not only recognised Israel but also its right to exist on Palestinian lands,” Mr Mallouh said.
PLO’s architect of the autonomy deal with Israel-Mahmud Abbaswill sign the agreement for the organisation at a ceremony on Monday in Washington, it was announced here today.
