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The State of
Palestine was proclaimed on November 15, 1988 by the
Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), in Algiers, by a vote
of 253-46, with 10 abstentions. The declaration invoked the
Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and UN General Assembly Resolution 181
in support of its claim to a "State of Palestine on our
Palestinian territory with its capital Jerusalem". It
became the most diplomatically successful of a number of efforts
to create a Palestinian state, despite the fact that, because
the State of Palestine did not have control over any territory
at the time, it did not fulfill a typical requirement of an
autonomous state — possession of sovereign territory.
Currently, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), along with
the United States, the European Union, and the Arab League,
envision the establishment of a State of Palestine to include
all or part of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East
Jerusalem, living in peace with Israel under a democratically
elected and transparent government.
The State of
Palestine was recognized immediately by the Arab League, and
about half the world's governments recognize it today. It
maintains embassies in these countries (which are generally PLO
delegations). The State of Palestine is not recognized by the
United Nations, athough the European Union, as well as most
member states, maintain diplomatic ties with the Palestinian
Authority, established under the Oslo Accords (Leila Shahid,
envoy of the PNA to France since 1984, was named in November
2005 representant of the PNA for Europe).
While the
declaration concerns Palestine as defined by the British Mandate
of Palestine, which includes Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, it
is generally interpreted to have recognized Israel within its
pre-1967 boundaries, or was at least a major step on the path to
recognition. Just as in Israel's declaration of independence, it
partly bases its claims on UN GA 181. By reference to
"resolutions of Arab Summits" and "UN resolutions
since 1947" (like SC 242) it implicitly and perhaps
ambiguously restricted its immediate claims to the Palestinian
territories and Jerusalem. It was accompanied by a political
statement that explicitly mentioned SC 242 and other UN
resolutions and called only for withdrawal from "Arab
Jerusalem" and the other "Arab territories
occupied."
Yasser Arafat's statements in Geneva a month later were accepted
by the United States as sufficient to remove the ambiguities it
saw in the declaration and to fulfill the longheld conditions
for open dialogue with the United States.
Palestine
is one of many historical names for the region between the
Mediterranean Sea and the banks of the Jordan River, plus
various adjoining lands to the east and south. Many different
definitions of the region have been used in the past three
millennia (see also definitions of Palestine).
By
the
Courtesy of Palestine and
Wikipedia
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