The Quartet Plan was presented to stop the P.L.O. from pursuing their “UN bid”, or pressing it for a vote, because Israel was terribly upset, and the U.S. threatened to use their veto power to block it in the UN Security Council.

At the first 3-month mark, the two parties were to have met, and they were to have exchanged ideas on what the borders for a two-state solution should look like, and on security arrangements.

So, what has happened?

In December, the Palestinians let it be known that if Israel doesn’t present its idea of borders for a two-state solution by this date, the “hudna” or “truce would be over, and the Palestinians would again unleash all efforts for international recognition and admission to the international organization.

In a calm and rather leisurely reaction, the U.S. State Department said a few days later that the three-month marker was not a rigid or fixed “deadline” … and urged efforts to continue to bring the parties back to the table for direct negotiations.

[Only the Palestinians were refusing, saying it would be useless, mainly because Israeli settlement-building activities continued, while Israeli officials said to anyone who would listen that they were ready for direct talks, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even repeated his offer to go anywhere, almost anytime -- even to Ramallah...]

Then, King Abdullah II of Jordan flew by helicopter over the Israeli-controlled West Bank and landed in the refurbished helicopter pad at Ramallah Presidential Muqata’a for a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — a day before Abbas himself was due to travel through Jordan, on his way to another session of Palestinian reconciliation talks with Hamas officials in Cairo… Little was revealed publicly about that meeting, and some diplomatic sources suggested that the real purpose was that Abdullah needed help and had panicked, and was really asking Mahmoud Abbas for help .

What is more significant is that U.S. State Department envoy David Hale, who had met Abbas the evening before, was back in Jerusalem to meet Israeli PM Netanyahu just before Abdullah II landed in Ramallah. Then, Hale drove overland to Amman, and met Abdallah II back in Amman that evening.

Not long afterwards, Jordan announced that it would be hosting talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Amman — which would include direct meetings for the first time since September 2010. Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh announced that further contacts would be held — but not announced.

The U.S. Secretary of State then announced the date of the second meeting, in early January…

There was criticism from different Palestinian political groupings, from Hamas to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP], and Palestinian “youth groups” organized a couple of demonstrations outside the Muqata’a to protest.

A total of five meetings were held in Amman, prior to today’s deadline.

The Palestinians presented their maps and border proposals in an early meeting.

It was not until the last meeting of negotiators [the P.L.O.'s Saeb Erekat, and Israel's Yitzhak Molcho] that the Israeli delegation screeched up to the meeting, just hours before the deadline, with a kind of power-point presentation about its general ideas — but reportedly without any very specific indications of what Israel thought the borders for a two-state solution should be… and not much indication about security, either.

UPDATE: AP reported on Friday 27 January, here, that:

“Israel is proposing to essentially turn its West Bank separation barrier into the border with a future state of Palestine, two Palestinian officials said Friday, based on their interpretation of principles Israel presented in talks this week. The officials said Israeli envoy Yitzak Molcho told his Palestinian counterpart that Israel wants to keep east Jerusalem and consolidate Jewish settlements behind the separation barrier, which slices close to 10 percent off the West Bank. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing strict no-leaks rules by Jordanian mediators … Israel has confirmed that it presented principles this week for drawing a border with a Palestinian state. But the politically charged nature of the talks — even though they were held at a relatively low level, below that of Cabinet ministers — was reflected in the guarded refusal by any top official to discuss details. An Israeli government official said that as far as he knew, the information was incorrect, but declined to elaborate or go on the record, citing Jordan’s demand for discretion. Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, one of the closest Cabinet ministers to Netanyahu, said he has been supporting such an offer for months, and that Israel should concentrate on preserving the large West Bank settlement blocs, close to the pre-1967 border. But he could not confirm whether the offer was in fact made. ‘I do not know if (Molcho) said these words exactly, but it would be great’, Meridor told The Associated Press … Israel started building the barrier in 2002, in the midst of a Palestinian uprising that included scores of deadly attacks by Palestinian militants who crossed from the West Bank into Israel and blew themselves up among civilians … However, it was routed in a way that raised questions about Israel’s claim that it was a temporary security measure — weaving through the West Bank, looping wide around some settlements to leave room for expansion, and looking very much like a border a future Israeli government might argue for. The Palestinians condemned it from the start as a land grab. The Palestinian officials also said that Molcho portrayed the Jordan Valley, which makes up about one-fourth of the West Bank and borders Jordan, as a strategic Israeli security asset. However, that wording suggests less than a demand for firm territorial control. Netanyahu has said he wants a continued Israeli presence on the eastern border of a future Palestinian state as part of any peace deal. Netanyahu has long argued Israel needs the area as a security buffer — protection against possible attack from the east. The 1994 peace treaty with Jordan eased this concern — but the Arab Spring has given it new life: although it is almost never discussed by officials, mindful of riling Jordan, many in Israel ponder a nightmare scenario in which the Jordanian monarchy falls to Israel’s enemies, who then pour weapons and militants into the West Bank, reaching within miles (kilometers) from its major cities. A senior Israeli military official said last week the Israeli army had to consider in its planning the possibility of heightened threats from east of the West Bank. Israeli officials have said any presence in the Jordan Valley could be reviewed over time … The Palestinians argue that the period set aside for the contacts ended Thursday, or three months after the Quartet issued its marching orders. Israel says the intention was to have three months of talks, and so wants meetings to continue”.

FURTHER UPDATE: Ethan Bronner’s report in the NYTimes later on Friday here, contains essentially the same description of the two different views on the Quartet’s 26 January “deadline”:

“The Palestinian view is that the terms of the talks — laid out last fall by the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States — required both sides to present their approach to borders and security by this week. The Israelis say the clock began ticking only when the two sides actually sat down this month and the deadline is therefore in April … ”

The NYTimes account added:

“A Palestinian official said the offer ‘effectively abandons international law and the framework we have been focused on for the past 20 years’. Speaking on the condition of anonymity on the subject of the talks, as did Israeli officials, the Palestinian said, ‘If you put it in perspective, it is as if the West Bank were not occupied, just disputed, with both sides having legitimate claims, while the rest of Israel remains outside the dispute’ … The Palestinian official who spoke anonymously added that the Israeli negotiator, Yitzhak Molho, did not provide any written documents or maps in his discussion with the Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, and did not include Jerusalem or the Jordan Valley in what he discussed. ‘Our starting point is the 1967 borders with minor swaps and theirs is the wall and settlements’, he said, referring to the separation barrier Israel has been building for the past decade along and inside the West Bank.’“In some ways, this is their way of reframing the occupation’ … A Palestinian official said the offer “effectively abandons international law and the framework we have been focused on for the past 20 years.” Speaking on the condition of anonymity on the subject of the talks, as did Israeli officials, the Palestinian said, “If you put it in perspective, it is as if the West Bank were not occupied, just disputed, with both sides having legitimate claims, while the rest of Israel remains outside the dispute … [Meanwhile] An Israeli official defended the offer. ‘The principle we laid out on Wednesday is that the majority of Palestinians should be on the Palestinian side and the majority of Jews on our side’, that official said. ‘These are preliminary discussions. The Palestinians have asked for clarification. We have asked for clarifications from them on some things as well. And we hope that in the coming weeks these talks will continue’.”

Mahmoud Abbas met the Quartet High Representative, Catherine Ashton, in Amman tonight.

It was later announced that the Fatah + the PLO would be meeting to discuss the situation on Sunday + Monday, and that Mahmoud Abbas would ask the Arab League for guidance at a meeting in Cairo on 4 February.

LATER UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times reported here in a story filed from Ramallah on Saturday 28 January [after Abbas met with the Irish Foreign Minister and the Deputy of the Foreign Affairs
Committee of the Japanese Parliament] that:

“Palestinian and Jordanian officials said the talks will be on hold for a week for evaluation and to give Abbas time to consult with Palestinian and Arab officials on whether to continue with them or not. But at two meetings with foreign officials visiting Ramallah to help salvage the talks, Abbas said the negotiations are at a dead end. Abbas told one of his guests that ‘Israeli intransigence and refusal to submit clear proposals on the issues of borders and security as requested by the Quartet [of Middle East peace mediators] have blocked the way to continue with the exploratory talks,” according to the official WAFA news agency’. In the second meeting, Abbas briefed his guest on the latest developments in the peace process, ‘particularly the impasse in the exploratory meetings being held in Amman as a result of Israeli government rejection of the two-state solution and a stop to settlements’, WAFA reported”.

Shaath said that this "hudna" would last until January 26, the end of the three-month period that the Quartet gave the two parties [Israel + the PLO] to meet and agree on intitial steps to resume negotiations.

After that, Shaath indicated — and unless Israel stops settlement building by then — the PLO will resume its international efforts, including the suspended “UN bid”.

The admission of the State of Palestine to full membership in UNESCO in Paris on 31 October was something of an unplanned surprise, Shaath suggested: “It’s been on the agenda every year since 1989″, he suggested, but this year, it just happened: “we won”, he said. After that, Shaath told journalists, Abu Mazen [Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas] declared a moratorium on any further moves [well, a lot of donor funding, including USAID money, as well as the immediately-important Israeli transfer of the PA VAT + Customs duties it collects, which goes to pay PA salaries, was at stake].

Shaath also said that separate efforts to join distinct UN agencies and international bodies was just a lot of wasted effort, because if accomplished through the “UN bid” — or, otherwise, by taking the easier and more immediately productive route of going to the UN General Assembly to ask for an upgrade in status from observer organization to observer but non-member state.

Meanwhile, Palestinian-American professor Rashid Khalidi has talked to Victor Kattan — the transcript is published here — analyzing the PLO strategy for its “UN bid” filed on 23 September for full UN membership for the Palestinian state:

Rashid Khalidi [RK]: “…If your objective is a narrow diplomatic one to obtain maximum benefits at minimum costs, which is a perfectly rational approach, it might have been advisable to have avoided the Security Council and to have gone directly to the General Assembly. If, however, this was part of what I would call a declaration of independence from the United States, and the idea was to illustrate the fact that the United States is an obstacle to a just resolution of the conflict, then I don’t see why a defeat in the Security Council, by a U.S. veto or a lack of necessary votes, doesn’t serve that purpose and then that could be followed by going to the General Assembly and achieving the same objective. Obviously you don’t want to suffer a defeat if you don’t have to and another argument would be why should the Palestinians accentuate their differences with the U.S..

VK: What did you think of Abu Mazen’s speech before the UN General Assembly?

RK: I thought that it was an unexpectedly good speech. I think that a not fully appreciated result of the whole initiative was the re-opening of questions that have been ignored – especially in the U.S. It generated an enormous amount of interest in the Palestine question, and I don’t think the PA/PLO capitalized on it at all, as much as they should have, and might have, and ought to have. But, nonetheless the media frenzy around the UN effort opened up issues having to do with the role of the U.S., having to do with the moribund so-called peace process, having to do with going back to the UN and international resolutions as a basis of a resolution, having to do with the anomaly between Israel getting sanctioned as a state in 1947 by UN General Assembly resolution [GA 181, the November 29, UN partition plan] and the Palestinian state being disallowed. All these things have been opened up and I think the whole discussion has moved on a little bit. Now obviously it requires capitalizing on that. One of my constant regrets is that there has never been a serious Palestinian official effort to effectively make the case…

VK: What did you think about the position adopted by some Palestinians and Palestinian organizations, including many in the U.S., who opposed the Palestinian strategy to go to the UN because of the question of refugee rights among other issues?

RK: I think those were unwarranted fears. I cannot see how the continuation of a strategy at the UN, in which the PLO has been engaged for a very long time, would necessarily jeopardize the status of the refugees. I think you can argue that the two-state solution is problematic among other things because it does not fully take into account the refugee issue. But that is a problem some people have been talking about since 1974 when it was first floated by the PLO. That is a fundamental problem of the two-state solution. How is that made compatible with a just resolution of the Palestine refugee issue along the lines of GA resolution 194? I don’t think that is something raised by going to the UN in September 2011, that’s raised by a strategy that has been adopted since 1974. And that’s a legitimate concern…

VK: What did you make of President Barack Obama’s address to the UN?

RK: In my memory it is one of the worst, if not the worst, speech an American President has ever given to the UN on the Palestine issue … It was a repudiation of long-held American positions and an adoption of the Israeli position that the U.S. has in the past been unwilling to adopt. In the past there have been campaign speeches and statements by Presidents running for re-election or candidates for the Presidency, or pandering to AIPAC or to other similar lobbying organizations by Presidential candidates, or speeches by Presidents that I can remember that have been pretty awful, including some by this President. But I cannot recall a speech to the UN General Assembly by an American President that quite plumbed these depths … [A]nyone who understands the making of American foreign policy and its interaction with the domestic scene will understand that really you had two Obama Presidencies. You had the one before November 2010 when the Democrats lost control of the House and the one after November 2010—and we are still in that period. Actually in the first couple of years the Administration had the illusion that it had all the time in the world to do whatever it pleased and it launched a number of initiatives: the Istanbul speech, the Cairo speech, the demand for a settlement freeze and so on and so forth, essentially wasting an enormous amount of time in a situation where it thought it was politically invulnerable. What happened in November 2010 is that the Administration discovered that they were extremely politically vulnerable—and the Republicans wasted no time in beating them about the head with the Palestine-Israel issue. The Administration has never recovered. They are still cowering in the corner on this issue. Frankly, Netanyahu has more support in Washington than the President does. He knows it, and they know it”…
…

An American politician [and presidential candidate -- it doesn't matter which one, but it happens to be Newt Gingrich] picked up and mindlessly repeated one of the more insufferable commonly-expressed attitudes in Israel: Palestinians are an “invented people”.

This argument goes like this: the Palestinians don’t exist, they’re just a collection of opportunists who moved to Palestine for jobs or economic opportunity or whatever, they never had their own state before [so, why should they have one now]? etc, etc, etc…

I have heard this from people who I otherwise consider to be friends. I have heard this on the media. I have heard this from educated Israelis. I have heard this from educated Israelis who had responsible positions in major international organizations including the United Nations… it is repeated almost non-stop, without shame, without a bat of the eye, without a flush of the skin, without a quiver of the chin.

This is despite the decision of the United Nations from 1974 [yes, following the visit of PLO Yasser Arafat, in fatigues, waving an olive branch with a pistol in a holster at his waist] endorsing the Palestinian right of self-determination — a right that belongs to a people, the Palestinian people…

And, as M.J. Rosenberg wrote, in an article entitled “The Real ‘Invented’ People” published on Al-Jazeera’s English-language website, Jews were recognized as a people for the first time less than seven decades earlier, in the Balfour Declaration — that later was incorporated in the League of Nations’ Palestine Mandate .

Rosenberg attributes this, in his opening paragraphs, to the Zionist movement. But, it became a fact — the Jewish people were recognized as a people for the first time in history — however little understood, after this proposition was formally accepted by the post-First-World-War League of Nations.

True, many Palestinians don’t like this — they do not like the colonialist idea, taken up by the essentially anti-colonial League of Nations, that their ancestral homeland was given for sharing to another people [declared as a people before the Palestinians were awarded the same courtesy], so long as their own national rights were safeguarded [which they were clearly not].

True, many Palestinians think they can define Jewishness as membership in a religious community, and continue to refuse to recognize the Jewish people as a people, not too much unlike themselves.

M.J. Rosenberg wrote, in his article posted here, that:

“Seventy-plus years later, it is impossible to argue that the Israeli nation is not as authentic and worthy of recognition as any in the world (more authentic than some, in fact). The Hebrew language is spoken by millions of Jews and Palestinians. The Israeli culture is unique: Bearing little resemblance to any other in the world … And the Palestinians are every bit as much a nation. If the ultimate definition of authentic nationhood is continuous residence in a land for thousands of years, the Palestinian claim to nationhood is ironclad. They never left Palestine (except for those who either emigrated or became refugees after the establishment of Israel).

Those who deny that Palestinians have a nation base their case on two arguments, both of which are logically incoherent. The first is that Palestinians never exercised self-determination in Palestine; they were always governed by others from ancient times to the present day.

The answer to this is: So what?

Most nations in the world lacked self-determination for long periods of their history. The Polish nation existed between 1790 and 1918 even though the state was erased from the map – divided between Russia and Austro-Hungary. It achieved independence in 1918 only to again lose it to the Nazis, and then the Soviets from 1939 until 1989. Would anyone today argue that the Polish nation was invented? The idea of it is ridiculous, especially when offered by Israelis or Americans (or Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians… ) whose national existence would have been unimaginable a few centuries ago.

The second argument is that Palestinians never thought of themselves as Palestinians until Jews started moving into their territory, that Palestinian nationalism is a response to Zionism.

Again, so what?

When European Jews docked in Jaffa, Palestine in the early immigration waves of the late 19th century, there were Arabs waiting at the port. When the Jews purchased land, it was Arabs who had to move out. And if those Arabs didn’t call themselves Palestinians until the Zionist movement began, neither did the Jews call themselves Israelis. Until 1948, they were just Jews. But each of the two peoples knew who they were and who the other was.

The bottom line is that today, the Palestinian nation is as authentic as the Israeli nation – and vice versa. Those who think either is going away are blinded by hatred”.

The AP had an interview with Rice to coincide with the publication of her memoir, No Higher Honor, today: “Rice’s account confirms then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s claim that he had laid out a comprehensive proposal for peace during secret meetings with Rice and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas … In the book, Rice recounts a private dinner with Olmert in May 2008 when she said he presented the plan. It contained ways to address the most difficult issues preventing Israel and the Palestinians from agreeing on terms for a separate Palestinian state, she wrote. Olmert proposed a system for shared jurisdiction of Jerusalem and return of a limited number of Palestinians who left their homes in what is now Israel when the Jewish state was created in 1948, Rice wrote. Olmert also would end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and hand over about 94 percent of the territory to the Palestinians for the bulk of their state, she wrote. ‘Concentrate, concentrate’, Rice describes herself as thinking as Olmert spoke. ‘This is unbelievable’.”

The AP story is headlined: “Mideast peace prospects [have] worsened under Obama”.

This AP interview as Condoleezza Rice’s book is published here.

Rice claims, as many media accounts do, that the Obama Administration raised the bar too high by its early adoption of a demand for a settlement freeze after which direct negotiations would resume. This, she [like most media accounts] says, was the main problem that blocked the possibility of resuming direct Israeli-Palestinian talks — which, she implies [backing the Palestinian position on this point] should have resumed at the point they were broken off.

Now, she said, the lack of talks is the the main factor in the dangerous increase in tension in the region.

The Washington Post also published this AP story, which quoted Rice as saying: “I do think focusing on settlements in that particular way was a mistake … The parties then were able to have a reason not to sit down … and they’re running out of time … When they’re not talking, they’re sliding backward”.

This is posted here.

This report is posted here.

Has Abbas forgotten that the PLO accepted the late Yasser Arafat’s decision to issue a Palestinian Declaration of Independence at a meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers on 15 November 1988 –a Declaration which was based in part on the UN’s 1947 partition plan contained in UNGA resolution 181 of 29 November 1947…

Professor John Quigley, an American expert on international law, recently discussed aspects of UN Resolution 181, during a visit to Ramallah, as we reported on our sister blog, www.UN-Truth.com, here. In response to a question about the legality of UNGA Resolution 181, which many Palestinians believe was a serious infringement on their right to self-determination, Quigley replied that what gave UNGA Resolution 181 legality, or legitimacy [he avoided specifying the term] was the PLO’s own acceptance of it, over 40 years later, as the basis for the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988…

According to the AP report, in tonight’s interview on Israeli TV Channel 10 Abbas also “confirmed Olmert’s account that the Israeli leader was prepared to withdraw from 93.5 percent of the West Bank. The Palestinians, Abbas added, responded by offering to let Israel retain 1.9 percent of the West Bank. Peace talks stalled three years ago and last month, Abbas bypassed bilateral negotiations to ask the UN to recognize an independent state of Palestine. In his TV interview, Abbas acknowledged the Palestinians might not be able to muster the necessary nine votes in the 15-member Security Council to approve the statehood bid”…

The documents were posted a short while ago by Colum Lynch, correspondent at UNHQ/NY, on the Foreign Policy website, here.

It is notable that Mahmoud Abbas signed the letter as President of the State of Palestine, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

According to this account, written by the NYTimes’ Isabelle Kershner, “Mr. Abbas said that after they arrived at the United Nations on Sept. 19, the Palestinians would hand their application to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for submission to the Security Council, and that a copy would go to the General Assembly chief. Then, he said, the Palestinians will see what occurs. Earlier Thursday, Palestinian officials and supporters kicked off a popular campaign to accompany the United Nations bid, with several dozen people marching to the United Nations headquarters in Ramallah”.

There was some initial confusion elsewhere about this “popular campaign” delivering a letter to the UN office in Ramallah — with some, particularly in Israel, thinking that this was the presentation of the official request.

This was a matter taken up at the UN regular noon briefing for journalists at UNHQ/NY on Thursday, according to the transcript, here:

Question: Speaking of which, reports, there are reports out from Gaza, from, sorry, from Ramallah that some sort of Palestinian letter, either by the Palestinian Authority or by activists, was sent to the Secretary-General. Has such a letter been received by the Secretary-General? What is your understanding of this, the nature of this?

Deputy Spokesperson: Mr. Serry has received the letter and he is in the process of transmitting it to the Secretary-General.

Question: Received a letter from?

Deputy Spokesperson: From I believe it was an activist; a member of an NGO.

Question: An activist? Meaning you don’t perceive this to be an official Palestinian request for membership of the UN?

Deputy Spokesperson: Well, we’ll have to wait till the letter is received in the Secretary-General’s office and its contents are read.

Question: But you said Serry has already received it, so I assume that you know the content of it?

Deputy Spokesperson: No, I don’t know the content of it, no.

According to the NYTimes: “Mr. Abbas said that if the Quartet produced a package to pave the way back to negotiations that included an Israeli freeze on settlement construction and the use of the pre-1967 lines with agreed land swaps as the basis for talks on borders — both longstanding Palestinian demands — the Palestinians ‘will go to the United Nations and we will return back to talks’.”

Abbas also said: ” ‘To be frank with you, they came too late’, Mr. Abbas told a group of foreign reporters on Thursday evening at the Mukata, his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The international powers had ‘wasted all the time’ since the beginning of the year, he said, and even now, less than two weeks before the prospective bid at the United Nations, they still had not produced any concrete proposal. Mr. Abbas was speaking after meeting in recent days with two senior American diplomats, David Hale and Dennis Ross, and Tony Blair, the envoy of the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers that includes the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations. He said he had also spoken by telephone with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this week”.

International law expert Francis Boyle, who once advised the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian leaders, wrote about this over the weekend, in a commentary published on 26 August on Counterpunch.org, here.

In this piece, Boyle stated that “In the 15 November 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence that was approved by the PNC [Palestine National Council] representing all Palestinians all over the world, the Executive Committee of the PLO was set up as the Provisional Government for the State of Palestine—pursuant to my advice. In addition, the Declaration of Independence also provides that all Palestinians living around the world automatically become citizens of the State of Palestine—pursuant to my advice. So the Executive Committee of the PLO in its capacity as the Provisional Government for the State of Palestine will continue to represent the interests of all Palestinians around the world when Palestine becomes a UN Member State. Hence all rights will be preserved: for all Palestinians and for the PLO. No one will be disenfranchised. The PLO will not lose its status. This legal arrangement does not violate the Palestinian Charter, but was approved already by the PNC”…

Now, thanks to research carried out yesterday by Xavier Abu Eid in Ramallah, here is a letter from the PLO to the United Nations, dated 9 December 1988 — three weeks after the PLO issued a Declaration of Independence at a meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers on 15 November 1988 — informing the international organization of the formation of a Provisional Government:

Declaration of the formation of the provisional Government of the State of Palestine – 15 November 1988

“The Palestine National Council, at its nineteenth extraordinary session, the session of the intifadah, decides as follows:

1. A provisional Government shall be formed for the State of Palestine as soon as possible, in accordance with circumstances and the evolution of events.

2. The Central Council and the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization shall be empowered to appoint a time for the formation of the provisional Government, the Executive Committee shall be entrusted with its formation, and it shall be presented to the Central Council for a motion of confidence. The Central Council shall adopt the provisional system of government until such time as the Palestinian people exercises full sovereignty over the land of Palestine.

3. The provisional Government shall be composed of Palestinian leaders, notables and skilled human resources within the occupied homeland and outside, on the basis of political pluralism and in such a manner as to embody national unity.

4. The provisional Government shall draw up its programme on the basis of the instrument of independence, the political programme of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the resolutions of the national councils.

5. The Palestine National Council hereby entrusts the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization with the powers and responsibilities of the provisional Government until such time as the formation of the Government is declared.

Adopted by the National Council at its extraordinary session at Algiers on 15 November 1988″.
- – - – -

This document is posted on the United Nations website here.

Professor Boyle has done a great deal of work on international law and the Palestinian situation.  [Though I am under no obligation to say this, I will state, to avoid useless future arguments, that not all of it, I agree with.]   Boyle did write, at the request of the then-PLO Ambassador to the UN, the late Zuhdi Labib Terzi, a Memorandum of Law completed in December 1987 [based on an oral presentation he gave at a UN panel in June 1987], arguing, as he later wrote in Counterpunch, here,  “that the time had now come for the Palestinian People to unilaterally proclaim their own independent nation state under international law and practice. I then proceeded to sketch out precisely why and how this could be done. I argued that the Palestinians must not go to any International Peace Conference to ask the Israelis to give them their State. Rather, the Palestinians must unilaterally proclaim their own independent nation state, and then attend an international peace conference where they would simply ask Israel to evacuate from Palestine”.

What was the PLO reaction?

For months, as Boyle wrote, “There was a deafening silence from the PLO. It was clear that the creation of a Palestinian State would generate too many internal political problems for the PLO, which at that time operated upon the principle of consensus. Back in those days the Palestinian Independence Movement was a genuine democracy. The creation of a Palestinian State would have forced the PLO to make some very difficult political decisions that could have produced a terrible division among the different groups composing the Palestinian Independence Movement”…

Then, Boyle added: “On July 31, 1988 I was teaching Summer School when King Hussein of Jordan announced that he was severing all forms of legal and administrative ties between Jordan and the West Bank. Later that afternoon in class, my students asked me what I thought would happen as a result of this decision: ‘Honestly speaking, I really do not know’. When I returned to my office at the end of teaching that very class, there was a message sitting on my desk from Zuhdi Terzi asking me to come to New York immediately in order to discuss my Memorandum of Law. In attendance as this meeting convened at the PLO Mission to the United Nations in New York were Zuhdi Terzi, Nasser Al-Kidwe, and Ramsey Clark, as well as Tom and Sally Mallison. Since I had already drafted a comprehensive Memorandum of Law on how to create a Palestinian State, I had to do a good deal of the talking. The Palestinians had a list of questions from PLO Headquarters in Tunis that they wanted us to answer for transmission back to the PLO Leadership. The first question was: ‘Why should the PLO create an independent Palestinian state?’ My answer was characteristically blunt and succinct: ‘If you do not create this State, you will forfeit the moral right to lead your people!’… On November 15, 1988, the Palestine National Council meeting in Algiers proclaimed the existence of the new independent state of Palestine. On that same day, after the close of prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the crowd came out of the Mosque into the Great Courtyard in front of the Dome of the Rock … Then one man got up and read the Palestinian Declaration of Independence right there in front of the assembled multitude. It was my advice to the PLO that the Palestinian State must also be proclaimed from their own capital in Jerusalem; that since this State would be proclaimed ‘In the Name of God’ (which it was), the State must be proclaimed in the Grand Courtyard in front of the Al-Aqsa Mosque the third Holiest site in Islam –at the close of prayers on Independence Day”

…

And that was on 15 November 1988.

An editorial published in Haaretz on Friday said that “As the UN vote on Palestinian statehood within the June 4, 1967 borders approaches, Israel’s government is showing increasing symptoms of hysteria … [Recently] Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened that Israel would revoke the Oslo Accords. This week Lieberman proposed severing all ties with the Palestinian Authority to preempt the wave of violence he says will erupt the day after the UN declaration”.

The Haaretz editorial, which can be read in full here, also notes that “It’s hard to think of a more dangerous and foolish move than destroying the PA and cutting off the livelihood of tens of thousands of security personnel and officials who depend on it for their wages. As Defense Minister Ehud Barak said at the debate, this move would lead to anarchy in the West Bank, making Israel responsible for the welfare of 2.5 million people”.

Henry Siegman, currently research professor at the University of London, analyzed what’s behind this “hysteria” this week in an article saying that “The alleged legal objection to the Palestinian initiative is that it violates the terms of the Oslo accords, which preclude measures by either party to resolve unilaterally any of the permanent status issues. If it were true, as Israel’s government maintains, that an impermissible unilateral measure frees the other party from the Oslo accords’ obligations, then Palestinians were freed of Oslo’s obligations long ago, for both the UN and the International Court of Justice have declared that Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are not only impermissible unilateral acts but in clear violation of established international law. More fundamentally, however, it is simply not true that the proposed Palestinian initiative violates the Oslo agreement. Palestinians do not intend to ask the UN to address any of the permanent status issues they are required to negotiate with Israel. If the UN were to declare that Palestinians have achieved the requirements of statehood—as they have in fact been found to have done by the IMF and the World Bank—and a Palestinian state were accepted into full UN membership, Palestinians would still have to reach agreement on each of the permanent status issues with Israel. The United States and Israel have warned Palestinians to abandon their UN initiative on prudential grounds as well, for even if they were to succeed in obtaining UN recognition of their right to statehood in the Occupied Territories, nothing would change on the ground, for Israel’s government would be as indifferent to such a UN declaration as it has been to countless other UN directives. Indeed, Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has threatened that in those circumstances Israel would feel free to annex far more West Bank territory than it already has. But if were true that UN action would have no effect whatever in advancing the Palestinian cause, except perhaps to spur an even greater Israeli land grab, why is Israel engaged in such frantic efforts to prevent a UN showdown? Indeed, why does it not welcome the Palestinian initiative? The answer is that what the Netanyahu/Lieberman government fears most is an international confirmation that the 1967 border is the point of reference for Israeli Palestinian territorial negotiations”…

Henry Siegman, a former president of the American Jewish Congress, argues firmly that, contrary to the hysterical arguments being advanced, the UN is the right venue for this matter, and the U.S. preference to return to stagnating peace negotiations is not. He states that “The assumption that in the absence of an agreement, the occupying power can retain its permanent hold on the occupied territories is absurd”.

And, he writes, “What is so shameful is that not only have we failed to support a legitimate Palestinian demand but we threaten to punish them severely for it”.

Siegman’s analysis is posted here.

An earlier article by Daniel Levy, now in the U.S. but formerly the chief staff drafter on the Israeli team of the Geneva Initiative, said some of the same things — and also accused the Quartet of “sophistry” when it comes to the 1967 borders.

Levy’s step-by-step explanation centers around a jousting match between the U.S, and the European Union around a surprising Obama Administration effort to fudge the expressed EU resistance to a 2004 letter from then U.S. President George W. Bush to then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (that letter was part of an American effort to help the Israelis accept the Road Map). In that letter, Bush wrote that existing realities on the ground (meaning, Israeli settlements in the West Bank) should be taken into account.

The EU never accepted that 2004 Bush letter — and the EU said they vigorously opposed it in a Quartet meeting attended by then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. But, how was that expressed? The Quartet adopted a statement drafted in extremely diplomatic language saying that it could only accept changes that both parties agreed.

The U.S. never mentioned the Bush letter again — and journalists asked about its status a couple of dozen times, without any clear recommitment — until Obama’s recent speech to AIPAC.

Daniel Levy goes through this in detail:

“The U.S. presented to its Quartet ‘partners’ a suggested one page text that looked rather like an exercise in cherry picking Obama’s recent speeches by the Israeli Prime Minister’s office (given the recent traffic between Jerusalem and Washington and the end product it is reasonable to speculate that that is precisely what happened). The American pitch went something like the following: the proposed text is a reflection of the President’s speech, the Quartet had encouraged the President to give such a speech, the President had taken some political heat for the speech, the Quartet had even endorsed the speech (which it did in a May 20 statement), therefore the Quartet should now stand united behind the American draft, demonstrate to the Palestinians that they have no alternative but to accept the Quartet position, resume negotiations, and drop the UN idea. The text was quite clearly pre-cooked with the Israeli leadership, so no problem of acceptance from Israel.

It reads like an attempt to ensure that September could be navigated safely by not even starting the negotiations before then — instead focusing on this new ‘preparatory work’. Under the conditions embodied in the U.S. text, the only preparatory work that one can imagine might lead to success would be a Hogwart’s crash course in Wizardry (although American officials no doubt have different ideas and are proposing the kind of minimalist Israeli confidence-building measures that have made such a massive contribution to peace in the last decade!)”.

Daniel Levy’s article, detailing the Quartet’s “sophistry”, was published here on Foreign Policy magazine’s Middle East Channel.